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Here in Australia, the Commonwealth Treasurer from the Howard Liberal government announced that government's intention to simplify the definition of Small Business for tax purposes to "any Australian business with an annual turnover of AUD2million or less". With a date of effect of 1 July 2007 this definition encompasses an estimated 2 million or 96% of all Australian businesses.

With the election of the Rudd Labor Government in November 2007, we will watch for changes affecting small business.

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The domain name is the address of a web site, what the internet user types into their browser to get to a website. While the ISP through whom you have your internet connection may offer free space which you are able to use for your first website, the free space is usually restricted in size and technologies that can be used in the website. The name of your website will be further along an address, after something that identifies the ISP.

It is more common for a business to want to have its own domain name. Whilst people do find websites through online directories and search engines, it is becoming increasingly common for people to directly type a business name as a website address, and expect to find the business they are aiming to locate. There is also a view that a separate domain name adds to the professional image for a business, more so than use of free space.

An important point to remember is that you don't buy a domain name outright, but you buy it for a period of time, after which you will need to renew otherwise it could go to someone else.

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To get your website "on the web" means moving all of the web pages and pictures and any other bits and pieces that your website uses onto a server that is connected to the internet and accessible to internet users. Such servers are run by businesses, some of which specialise in this activity and others that offer this in conjunction with other things that they do. These business are known as Internet Service Providers(ISPs) plus perhaps other titles for the other parts of their business. The process of supporting your website on their server is known as Hosting.

To go live with your website you will need to choose an ISP to Host your website and buy a hosting package.

There are many Internet Service Providers in the market and each offers a range of hosting packages. Here are just a few of the important things to look for to help you make your decision:-

• Technology - All of the technology used in your website must be supported by the hosting package. If you choose a hosting package that does not have all of the required technologies then your website won't run properly, or maybe not at all. Your web designer will be able to tell you the technologies that you will need to have in your hosting package. For example, your site may be written only with HTML, or use something like PHP or ASP or ColdFusion, it may have a database such as MySql or MS-Access.
• Size - How big will your website be - including all of the code, the pictures, and the database if you have one? Also look at the amount of download that you can take from your website to make sure it will fit your needs. This won't be downloads that your customers take, but download that you take for example if you take data from your database for your own statistical analysis or off-site backups.
• Support - What hours do their support team work? If you will need someone to help with any implementation tweaking over a weekend will there be someone available to help?
• Statistics - Does the ISP offer web page statistics so that you can see how many visitors come to your site? Do the statistics go down to the level of telling you what the visitors do once they get to your site?
• Backup - How often does the ISP backup your website and what will they charge if you need to get it recovered from a backup? Do they back up your website only? Do they backup your website's database?
• Email addresses - How many email addresses do you need for your site? How many addresses will the ISP give you in your package?
• Price - How much does the ISP charge for a hosting package to suit your needs? They may offer a cheaper rate if you pay for a year at a time. Remember to find out the price including all of the technologies and statistics and backups. Sometimes a package includes all of these, and sometimes the package may have "add-on" prices for different pieces of the support that you need. If you need more email addresses, how much will it cost to have extra addresses added?
• Domain name administration - The domain name is the unique name for your website, the address that internet users type into their browser to get to your site. The domain name for your website must be held by the ISP that hosts your website. When you pay for your website address through an ISP, they are recorded as the Domain Name Administrator. If you have already paid for a domain name through one ISP but want a different ISP to host your website, you can usually transfer the domain name to your chosen ISP for a small charge.

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When your web developer builds your website they will most often use a PC or a server of their own. This will be different from the server where your website will live when it is available to the public over the internet - in fact it should be different.

Once the website is ready to load up to a production hosting server, the person implementing the site will need to know about the differences between their own development and testing server(s) and the production server. These differences will often require some fine tuning of the code so that your website will run as intended in the live internet environment.

If problems occur then you will want them to be dealt with fairly quickly. It will be an important part of the service that you get from your developer to understand whether you will take the tested code and do the "go live" work yourself, or whether you want your web developer to do that for you.