Domain Names and Web Hosting
I thought I would write an article some basic information on domain names and web hosting services since they are both something that I know quite a bit about and they are things that many people are wanting to learn about so that they can create their own website or blog. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t know everything there is to know about these things but I do know much more than the average person knows about them.
I have owned many domain names over the last two decades plus and have learned quite a bit about them. The same goes for web hosting services. In this article I will share some of my knowledge and experiences as well as some helpful information about these two things and hopefully you will gain something that can help you now or in the future.
First let me start off by discussing domain names since you will need a domain name or multiple domain names before you will need a web hosting service. If you decide you want to start your own website or blog and you want to take it seriously as well as have others take it seriously you will need to buy your own domain name.
You can get a free subdomain name if you use the free hosting providers like weebly.com, blogger.com and other similar types of these kind of sites but if you want people to take you more seriously then buying your own domain name is the best way to go.
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Most domain names start at around $10-15 per year for or so depending on what domain extension you want to use. There are even coupon codes that you can find around the internet on various websites that you can use to get a domain name for as little as $.99 to save a few dollars.
Another thing to think about before registering your domain name is which hosting provider you are going to use because most will give you a free domain name of your choice when you buy your hosting plan. That can save you a few dollars as well.
When you register your own domain name you can register it for as short as one year if you want to so that you can see if your website or blog is going to do well before you decide to register it for longer. Many domains can be registered for up to 10 years at a time but I wouldn’t recommend that unless you are 100% sure you will keep your site going for that long. I would recommend registering a domain name for a year or two when you first register it just to make sure it’s something you are going to stick with and keep.
Another thing to consider when you decide to register your own domain name is which domain extension you want. The domain extension is the part of the domain that starts with the “Dot” at the end of a domain and is followed by a few letters, like the .com or .net part of the domain names that most people out there will be familiar with.
Now the .com domain extension is the most popular and most valuable by far followed by the .net version of domain names (usually). There are hundreds of domain name extensions out there that you can actually register and use but the .com and .net are the most common and familiar ones, especially the .com extension.
A piece of friendly advice, make sure to do a lot of research and thinking when you decide to register your own domain name before you actually buy the domain. Try to pick a domain name that has something to do with what your website or blog is going to be about.
Also, try to avoid buying a domain name that is easily misspelled, hard to pronounce or has an unusual spelling if at all possible. The last thing you want is to have people going to the wrong website or blog instead of yours. When you are trying to decide what domain name you want for your site you also need to see if the domain name you want is not already taken.
You can check to see if the name you want is available by doing a “Whois” search and this will tell you if the name you want is available for you to register. A couple of good websites to do a whois search are whois.com and who.is but there are many more and you can also usually find them at the footer part of most domain registrar (Domain Seller) websites.
After you have decided on your domain name and have found that it is available for you to register, you are going to need to find a good web hosting service provider to host your website of blog.
You might want to do this before you buy your domain name because many web hosting service providers will give you a free domain name when you buy their hosting service so you don’t have to go and pay to register the domain name you want before checking to see if the hosting provider you are going to use offers a free domain name.
There are also many different private domain name sellers who have many websites available for purchase if you can’t find an available domain name you like that isn‘t registered already. You can also check domain marketplaces like sedo.com or flippa.com.
These type of websites have thousands of domains listed for sale by people all around the world that are listed for sale through their website. You can always find some good domain names on those types of domain buying and selling platforms but the prices will be much higher that at a domain registrar.
Now let’s talk about web hosting. There are many different types of web hosting available but most of you will want to start out with what is called “Shared Web Hosting” until you need something with more resources and power. That will not happen until your site starts to get a lot of traffic and/or it has grown to include a very large number of web pages.
Shared web hosting is the least expensive type of paid web hosting and usually many of the web hosting providers offering this type of hosting don’t put many limits on most of the features such as the amount of space you can use, the amount of bandwidth your site uses as well as some other key features.
You might be asking why a web hosting provider can offer so much for this very inexpensive type of web hosting. The answer is, because with shared web hosting the hosting provider has many different customers using the same web server as you with many different websites using the available resources on that server.
Because they have many customers using the same server they can spread the cost of the server and its resources out over many people thus lowering the web hosting costs to the customers on a given shared web hosting server.
Shared web hosting can cost as little as a few dollars a month so that makes it the most economical choice to fit the web hosting needs of most people that will not need anything more than this until they start getting a lot of website or blog visitors coming to their site. There are a large number of web hosting providers out there, so shop around and see what you can get with the different hosting providers before deciding which web hosting provider to use.
You can also search on one of the major search engines like Google or Bing for web hosting reviews to try to get an idea as to the quality of their hosting and customer service. You can also find some web hosting forums through some searches and go to them and ask questions about any particular web host you may be considering using. (Having good quality web hosting is important and you can find out why HERE.)
There are some other types of web hosting services but since this article is geared towards the basics and most common form of web hosting these will not be covered in this article. (If you would like to find out more about some other types of web hosting you can read THIS.)
Choosing the right domain name and web hosting service to use are important decisions to make that can have a big impact in the success of a website or blog so be sure to do your research so that you can try to make the decisions for these two important things based on good information that can help you and your site to become a success.
Good luck and may your website or blog reach the Apex in its Niche!