Making your own website has never been easier. There are loads of great free tools and resources that you can use to create your very first website. Many years ago you had to learn HTML coding and how to use very technically difficult programs to make your website. Nowadays you can have a website made in no time using online tools that are extremely easy to use.
If you have decided that you want to build a website, for whatever reason be it for a hobby or your business, there are a number of important things you will want to consider.
Your Domain name
The first is the domain name. What domain are you planning on using for your website? Will you go for a tld (top-level domain) such as .com or .net, or will you go for a local country-level domain such as .ca if you are based in Canada, or a .co.uk if based in the United Kingdom?
Maybe you have an idea for a great name for your website, but then you go to register the domain but find it has already been registered. What will you do in this situation? Will you look for an alternative domain extension, or for an alternative domain name?
Web Hosting
Once you’ve selected and registered the domain name that you want for your website, the next step is to find somewhere to host your website. It’s always good advice that you choose a web hosting company that is based in the country where you reside. If you are in Canada for example, then you should pop over and visit the Fortunelords website, where you can find details about many different Canadian hosting companies.
Using your Registrar for hosting
There are lots of registrars (companies that provide domain name registration) that also offer you a variety of web hosting packages. These are very useful for beginners, as you won’t need to worry or even try to understand things such as “updating your dns”.
Other times, you will want to use a different company for your hosting, and keep your host and registrar separate. There are a number of reasons why many people prefer this route, but for the beginner, it is usually best to have everything in the same place.
What type of hosting package will I need?
When it comes to choosing your hosting, you will find that nearly all web hosting companies will offer different hosting packages. These will have different levels of resources being made available to you. Some of the most important are the storage space and the bandwidth. The storage space refers to the amount of space in GB that you can use on the server. The bandwidth relates to how much bandwidth (traffic) your site can use within any given month.
As your website will be new and with little traffic to start, it will probably be a good idea to start with the basic hosting package, which will be the cheapest option. If you do need more server resources later on, then the majority of hosting companies will allow you to upgrade your account to the next level.
Why do some companies offer hosting for just $1 ?
There are lots of hosting companies that offer cheap hosting, usually starting from $1. This is very cheap in comparison to other hosts that charge anything from $10-$50 a month. What’s the difference you may ask. Well basically, it comes down to that famous old expression – “you get what you pay for”. Most $1 hosting is on servers that are technically limited and have a lot of restrictions in place. You may only have a very small amount of storage space or bandwidth.
Another thing that many of these cheaper hosts do is to oversell their services, and you might find that one server is hosting thousands of websites. The problem with this is that you never know what other sites are being hosted there along with yours. There might be a lot of websites that are dealing in illegal activities such as movie or software downloads, or different scams. In this situation, these servers are referred to as “bad neighbourhoods” and in some instances, may cause problems with how Google and other search engines rank your websites.
You might also experience very poor or non-existent customer support, and the security of these cheaper servers may easily be compromised by hackers who can then gain access and take over your websites.
It is always advisable that you do some thorough research before you choose your website. There are lots of places online where you can read up on different hosts and see comparisons between them. When it comes to web hosting, you want a solid stable company that offers a secure service and good support. Those should be the basic requirements when it comes to selecting your web host.
