There are a few components to having a website and a few terms you need to know about before registering your domain name and getting hosting.

The Domain Name: This is the dot com part of your website, there are various companies that are registrars of domain names, just like anything in life you have to buy it, more accurately you are leasing it.... you pay an annual fee, and if you ever stop paying it, the name goes up for grabs.  Im happy to help you with this process, or just do it for you as part of getting your website up and running and it will all be in your name.
A really important point that I cannot emphasize enough is that you MUST own your domain name! Not owning your domain name is like opening your business and giving the legal rights to it to someone else, and also giving them all the copies of the keys to the front door.  They may let you in every day, but anytime they like, you are locked out.
You might be thinking, well how could that happen?  There are various on-line design sites where you create your website yourself online and as part of the process you "register" your domain name, but what most people do not notice buried very deeply in the TOS in tiny print way past the point you would of stopped reading is the statement they are actually registering it in their name and they own the domain name and you do not.  You are now their hostage, so later when you realize that your website is not being indexed in google because the on-line web creation tool used non-compliant code and google sees your site as junk code and skips it not bothering to index it (that really will happen).  You cannot take your dot com and go elsewhere, well you can for a nice chunk of cash if you would like to buy it again for a much larger price, that is unless its actually doing well and generating some traffic, depending on just how bad a company you are doing business with, they may just say no and keep it, using your site to convert traffic for themselves.

That may sound alarmist, and maybe your thinking its web designer fear pandering to get you to use me, well I do want your business, but I want it because you made a rational decision about what is best for you long term, not because I tried to manipulate you, fact is one of the largest "create your own website quick and cheap"  companies is out there doing exactly that right now and the vast majority of their customers have no clue they do not own their own domain name until its way too late.

Registering a domain name is fairly simple and cheap usually around $10.00-$15.00 per year.  The simplest thing to do is register your domain name as part of getting your hosting, when you do it this way many hosts offer you your domain registration free for the first year.  I suggest using godaddy.com for registration, with one big heads up, BUY NOTHING other than your registration, these guys have really great pricing in domain names, but they try to make up for that by selling you every kind of useless crap you can imagine, they assume you do not know you need NONE of it, and pitch you like crazy.  Purchase nothing except your domain name for around $10.00 per year, usually it will be sold to you for 2 years at a time.  I do NOT reccomend them for hosting, only your domain name registration.

Hosting: Hosting is nothing more than renting space on a computer called a server, it is called that because its only function is to "serve" content (your website) to the internet.  There are good hosting companies and bad hosting companies. I use a company called Dreamhost  it is one of the better ones and I do offer you 3 months of free hosting with your web design and your site will sit right next to mine ( on Dreamhost ), after the 3 months is up, my hosting is only $15.00 per month if you pay for the entire year, and $20.00 per month if you want it billed monthly, I also have an option for quarterly billing if you prefer.

I do not use standard "Shared" hosting, all my sites are hosted on a Virtual Private Server, this means you do not have to worry about your site running slowly as can happen on a standard shared account (this is an occasional issue with Dreamhost and any other host for that matter.) When it does happen on a standard Dreamhost account they will eventually catch it and take care of it, but it can literally be days before that happens, and your site can be stupid slow, or down all together. Using a VPS prevents that from happening since I am monitoring the load on the server and have the ability to increase the resources available to the sites hosted whenever necessary. This is very advantageous over being on standard shared hosting. Read More: Hosting Details


First a bit on bad hosting, the first really bad hosting you could choose is to use a free hosting company.  This is bad for more reasons that I am willing to go into but I will toss out the big one and its enough, for this reason alone do not do it.  If they give you something they want something and that is normally some sort of banner that is forced onto your site letting the world know you are on free hosting and they should be too.  Most web surfers are going to close the browser window the second they see that free hosting banner.

Anyone that has ever visited a free site hosted on geocities for example knows what I am talking about, the second I hit a site and see a "geo hosting" banner I move on to the next site on the list.  I could care less if you have the best content ever, I know that my experience as an end user is going to be interfered with by your "free" host, and I am gone.  There are more than a few other reasons that you should not use free hosting, but that one alone is simply enough.  Free hosting is the kiss of death for your site and no business should ever use it.

What should you be looking for: 

Is it reasonabaly priced for what you are getting, most small businesses are looking at $15.00-$20.00 a month, and I am focusing on a brick and morter business looking for the web to give them exposure and drive more business in thier direction, and have the option of doing some on line sales if they choose. If yours is a "web based" business read on.

The nuts and bolts of what makes a host good or bad is not determined by the monthly price, as much as it is determined by the back end, the type of server your data is on, the uptime, the quality of their bandwidth and one of the most important the ease of use.  Lets take the type of server for example, if it is a smaller webhosting company the actual servers could be older and slower so your website may not display as quickly as it should to the end user, they may oversell the server, cramming too many websites on it and that may slow down the performance. Think about the first computer you ever used years ago compared to the computer you are on now and the vast difference in performance between the two.  Its no different with servers, you want to choose a host that continues to upgrade their equipment as needed and that does not cram too many websites on the servers they have.  There are a couple of hosts that as soon as you mention their name, I will tell you right up front I will simply not work with them.  Either take on a new host, or find a new designer, life is too short for the amount of aggravation I know I am going to get using these companies.

Here are two of the better ones, I use the first one on my list Dreamhost. Both of them are around the same price and the 1,2 applies it is the order I would rank them as a choice. They all offer the basics you want in good hosting, so it comes down to the more subtle things like the user friendly issue in helping to make a decision.
  1. Dreamhost: I have been with them a while and I have no intention of moving, there have been a few glitches along the way but the tech support is good and so is their customer service, the back end is easy to use uncluttered and the pricing is fair.  The servers are fast and not overloaded.  You get your domain registration free as part of your hosting signup, and yes you own it.   If you have a web based business this would very much be my choice because of the ease of upgrading your hosting to a Virtual Private Server when and if necessary. They also work with google apps as part of the setup and that's is a real bonus. (More about google apps later).  Lastly I really like using the back end they have developed, it is so user friendly compared to.
  2. Bluehost: Uses C-panel as the back end as opposed to the custom back end in Dreamhost, its not as user friendly, the features are about the same with the exception that they limit the number of databases you can have, this can be an issue.  The servers are fairly fast and not overloaded.  If you are going to use google apps its not quite as simple to implement as dreamhost. I would say they are on par with Dreamhost with the exception of the ease of use.
Heads up if you do not want my suggestions and go searching, you will most likely run into the various "Top Ten" lists of hosts, some of these are legit, but MANY of them are not.  The dirty little secret is that the "Top Ten" are all the same company.  Imagine that... hmmm... a hosting company with 10 different names and websites putting up a bunch of other very convincing websites, ranking the top 10 hosts on the internet, and they own all ten...no matter what you end up choosing from the list, they get your money and you end with mediocre hosting. So, if you run into these, heads up, you have been informed.

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