Receiving payments by credit card

Your web site is up and running.  Visitors from all over the world can look for information and have the opportunity to share their experiences with each other.

Suppose you would like to try selling products and receive payments by credit card.  You can't just pop up an order form on your site and ask people to type in their credit card number and expiration date.   Whenever a person fills out your form and submits it to you, the information people enter on your form will be passed on to several other servers across the internet.  If this information is intercepted by a deceitful person, you will be held liable for any fraudulent charges that appear on your customer's account.

Therefore, a better approach will be safeguarding your customer's financial information.  In other words, you will need to place your order forms on a secure server that you will rent from your hosting service.