I thought maybe I’d try to give a brief overview of the process of buying a domain and setting up a website. It seems like there’s a least a few people who would like to set up a website but are intimidated because they have no idea how the process works. I’ve tried to explain things and I’ve shared the companies that I use. If other people who’ve done this think I’ve missed something, feel free to chime in, although it might be nice if this didn’t turn into a long thread of host recommendations (there’s a few other existing ones or we could start a new one for that).
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To set up your own website, you’ll need two things: a domain and a host. While some sites offer both, these are independent of each other.
Domains
Domains are paid for by the year, although you can pay for multiple years at a time if you like. Once you’ve registered it, it’s yours and you’re free to do with it what you want, including use whichever host you choose.
If pick a host that offers domain registration and it doesn’t cost too much, sometimes it’s easier to go that route because you won’t have to change the DNS (we’ll address that later). Frequently, though, registering through your host won’t be the cheapest option and you may want to do it elsewhere.
I use godaddy.com to register my domains. It’s $8.95 a year, cheaper if you reserve for a longer period of time. You’ll want to be careful during the registration process though as they like to try and sell you extras that you don’t need. Dotster.com is another good place to try and they currently have a deal for $6.99.
Once you’ve resgistered a domain, you’ll want to pay attention to when it expires. If you want to keep it, you’ll want to make sure you renew it before it expires. Once it expires, it can be difficult to get back and will sometimes be snatched up by those stupid search engine spam sites.
Web Host
A host is where you’ll actually store all your website files. Most charge by the month but again, you can usually pay for a year in advance and sometimes get a discount for doing so. There are lots of good, inexpensive hosts around. A few things you’ll want to think about when picking one are:
- amount of space you’ll need
- how many email accounts you need
- whether you’ll want to host multiple domains on one account
- if the host offers sql databases (even if you don’t know what these are, lots of available software packages require them)
Bandwidth can also sometimes be important but that’s really only if you have a very high traffic site.
I use vervehosting.com. They have good prices and I adore their customer service. Dreamhost.com is another reputable host. There are millions of others. Even a search on the DPC forums will result in a number of threads about the hosts that people use.
Getting It Done
So, decide where you want to get both of these things from and if it will be from the same place or not. If you decide to do both things at one site, it’s usually generally a pretty easy process.
If you decide to buy your domain separately from your hosting, register the domain first. Then set up a hosting account.
Then you’ll need to hook up the two. This is done by modifying the dns. Somewhere in the information from your new host, they’ll list what the dns servers are. There will be two. For instance, for vervehosting, it’s ns.vervehosting.com and ns2.vervehosting.com.
Then, when you registered your domain, you probably set up some sort of user account. Somewhere in the options there, you’ll need to enter those two servers in the options. Once you’ve done this, it can sometimes take a day or two for it to actually put that info to use and connect your domain to your account. Once it kicks in, though, you should be able to upload files and have them appear at www.yourdomain.com/file.html
Next steps are creating your pages (maybe learning some html, etc.) and conquering ftp. Maybe we’ll do that later. :)
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Hopefully this will be helpful for someone. Feel free to PM me if you have questions or need some help getting through the process.
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