You will need to chose a place to host your blog or website. Although there are free options out there, having your own hosting account gives you the most control over your website.
There are many many options for hosting providers these days. Consistent among the top of them is Site 5. I have used them for quite a few years. Customer service is excellent and their plans are among the best avaiable. I was lucky to get in early on with an exceptional plan with unlimited domains, storage and bandwidth. And recently they have brought it back again! Even if you have only one site now, you will probably want more later, so don’t limit yourself with a one domain account.
Questions to consider about your hosting account
You should of course weigh the merits of varioius hosing companies.
- What types of plans do they have?
- How much does the plan that fits my needs cost?
- How do their plans compare to that of other companies?
- Do they provide the software you need? PHP, Ruby, Perl, etc.
- How is their customer service? Do they have phone, chat, email, support desk, and/or forums?
- How do they rank among other hosting providers?
I highly recommend Site 5.
Linux or Windows Hosting
Unless you really need to host something on Windows, chose Linux hosting. The reasons for that are primarily security and speed. In addition, most software for your website, such as Wordpress or Drupal runs on Linux. Save yourself a lot of headaches and use Linux.
I’ll soon post how to set up your blog.
For the purposes of social networking and blogging, your first domain name should be your own name if possible. People are interested in you. And you probably don’t know what niche topic you might end up blogging aobut . So to start out, pick a domain that contains your name.
Choosing your Domain Name
Ideally that will be your first and last name. As you can see, mine is RosinaBignall.com. However, some names may not be available. So, have in mind a few other options. Such as adding your middle initial, or using your first initial. If you really can’t find something and you have a certain topic you’d like to blog about, add keywords from that topic to the domain name.
A few other suggestions:
- Keep it short – some say under 20 characters if possible which for most names should be plenty.
- Use a .com extension – when people think of websites they assume .com with only a few exceptions (such as non-profits which should be .org). Do not choose a .me, .mobi, .org, etc. extension. As a last resort you can use .net, but try to find something that is .com first. Other extensions have their place and are useful, but in general you want a .com.
Registering your Domain
Now that you have a domain name in mind, it’s time to go register it. Chose a good, reputable domain name registrar. There are plenty of them, but I use GoDaddy for my domains. They are always among the top rated registrars. I have been using them for years and have transferred all my domains there that were scattered to other registrars. So here’s a link to GoDaddy, I highly recommend them. There used to be really low priced domain registrars but rarely anymore, sometimes you can find great deals at GoDaddy, so watch for them.
A few suggestions:
- Don’t search for a domain name until you are ready to buy. You can lose it if you do, there are people who watch the searches and buy up the ones being searched for and try to sell it at a much higher cost. It’s probably less likely with your name and less common now than it was a few years ago, but I lost bignall.com that way and it still happens.
- When you register your domain, register for as many years as you can. Never less than 2 years, but 5 or more is better. The longer it is registered, the higher value it will have in search engines and the less likely it will be seen as fly-by night website.
So go visit GoDaddy and register your domain. Soon I’ll do another article on setting up web hosting.
I added the Tweet this plugin to my blog today. Now my posts will go to twitter automagically.
Take a look at this new course. It looks really great. Check it out.
My new blog is up and running! I’ve decided to move my various blogs to my own domain to make it easier to keep them updated and interesting. So, in a day or two, you should see my old blogs showing a post saying they’ve been moved, and the posts from those blogs moved here. And, I’ll start adding new content. Enjoy and keep your comments coming!
