do it simply - Help and Advice

So you don’t want you website to end in .co.uk.com.org.new.website.. You get the idea.. Luckily the WWW have seen the light and are now offering lots of more useful web address endings. Everything from .name to .bike or .guru. For you, this means that the name you had your heart set on may still be out there. Keep in mind that you may pay a premium for these new suffixes.. there is no need in your fledgling business to pay out lots of money for a creative ending when a good ‘ol .co or .com will do.

So where do you search for your address at? I have been using  123reg.co.uk for years. I am not an affiliate, they don’t offer anything different then the rest, but, they don’t change their prices, they have been around for years, and I trust them. Their website is easy to use and I have never had a problem in 10 years. That said.. you can always just use their site to search for a domain, then go purchase it elsewhere.

Ok, found the name you want? Now what? Hosting! You will never see your website out in the wild unless you host it somewhere. This just means that some computer, somewhere in the world, has given you some disk space. You can typically purchase your web address and hosting at the same time. 123reg offer this service and although I don’t use it, plenty of people do. I tend to purchase my domains from them and then use a different hosting provider. Again, there are hundreds to choose from, and I have been using Hostgator for 10 years and I have been more then happy with their service, their pricing, and their online help.

If you decide to organise your own hosting, you really only need a basic package for your business. Something that provides 1GB of space, at least 3-5 email accounts, at least 1 database, and FTP access. The rest is sparklers that aren’t necessary at this stage.

So, this is the first tough part of the process of getting your website out into the world wide web. Many people panic here and pay a company some silly amount of money to take the uncertainty away. You then either end up with something you didn’t need and are paying for it for at least 12 months, or you end up with something you don’t understand and you have to go back to the company and ask for more help (and possible more cost) or run to someone who does websites for a living.
Let’s see if I can take some of the fear and mystery out of the process for you.