Personal Sites

IRT does not support personal Web sites, however any Stanford community member can have a personal site, subject to Stanford's policies. These sites typically have a URL of the form www.stanford.edu/~myname/ and are hosted on the Leland server.

Since Leland is a Stanford-ITSS service, not an IRT one, you will need to contact ITSS using the HelpSU form for futher assistance. Be sure to specify that you want help setting up a Leland site.

Additional information about Leland Web sites is available at: http://www.stanford.edu/leland/

Here are some options for setting up a personal web site not on Leland:

ISP home page - Most ISPs, PacBell, AOL, Earthlink, etc, offer web space and tools to use it as part of the subscription. If you're going to have access at home anyway, this is a real cheep and easy way to set up a site.
Userland - This groovy site is great for setting up weblog-style (regularly changing content, often personal expression-related) web sites. I believe it's free to use. The entry is at http://www.userland.com/
Free hosting - There are any number of sources for free web hosting. The trade-off is generally advertising, sometimes just the ubiquitous banner add, sometimes the totally annoying pop-up ad window (may its inventor roast in hell). Try a Google search for possibilities: http://www.google.com/search?q=free+web+hosting
Paid hosting - There are just as many businesses out there selling hosting services. Try http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bargain+web+hosting or http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=web+hosting+services

On domain names:

Some services will offer domain name registration as a services. You can also do this yourself through a site like Network Solutions or any of the many similar companies that have popped up.

You can only register domain names that aren't already taken, and it costs something to register the domain for a few years (it will have to be renewed periodically). Most if not all of these services now offer domain forwarding. That is, when the user types in your domain, they get referred to whatever URL you provide the register.

Also, some hosting services will allow you to apply your domain name as a "virtual host." This means that users will see your domain name as the URL at all times. Check with your hosting service to see if this is available. There may be a fee for the service, depending on how you are hosted.