We’ve written about all of this before but many of our friends are interested in having their own websites so we’ll do it again. Over the next few posts we’ll give you a step by step how-to on developing your own website. Stick around. It’s not as hard, or as expensive, as you might think. Here are some details to consider:

1. You’ll need a name for your site, of course. We’re in the same boat, almost literally. We’ve inherited a diary from an English sailor which describes his complete military service in World War 1. What makes this diary interesting is that he served on the H.M.S. Lion, the flagship of Admiral Beatty, famous for his role in the Battle of Jutland in 1916. On our new site, the handwritten diary will be transcribed page by page. Each day, a new post will be written, complete with links to the ships and places described in the diary. Therefore, we need a name. We’re thinking of something along the lines of ‘A Diary of War’ but we’ll shorten that down to something more manageable.

2. When it comes to a name, you have to choose what kind of domain you want to use. Everyone is familiar with ‘.com’ (dot com) domains but there are others. This site is a ‘.ca’ site, meaning that the domain is controlled by the Canadian Internet manager, know as CIRA. You can choose .org. .net or any one of the dozens of domains available. Check out the prices at GoDaddy or some other registrar to see what the differences are. Price is always a factor, right?

3. Hosting is the next thing you need. You don’t need hosting to get a domain name. Get the domain name first, then look for hosting. We use FatCow. It’s cheap, fairly fast and quite reliable, at least from our experience. As they say, your mileage may very. Let’s see what they have to offer today:

FatCow uses shared hosting. At these prices, you can’t expect a dedicated server and, quite frankly, you don’t need one. When, and if, your website becomes really popular, you can move to a dedicated server. With FatCow, you can add more sites to the same account, as many as you want. If you want to use WordPress, FatCow is perfect for you. It’s very easy to get things up and running. Just because we use FatCow, don’t think that you have to do the same. There are other hosting companies out there but be careful with who you choose. Make sure they offer everything that FatCow offers and that they are a well-known company. Search for reviews on any company before you sign up.

That’s it for now. Next time we’ll go over some of the types of domains. We’re thinking of a .ca name for our new site or, possibly, a .org.

Thanks for reading!