Tag Archives: domain registration

Domain Registration, Hosting, Internet

Register Your Domain Name – part of a series on setting up a new website

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Last time, we talked about some ideas you should mull over before setting up your new website. Since you need a domain name, that’s the first thing you should consider. As we mentioned, we’ve got this diary from WW1 that we’d like to share. Our considerations for a name involved the words diary, war, lion, navy, ww1 and so on. Here is how you search for a good domain name:

Photo of domain name search on GoDaddy
.com is the default name shown here but you can search and choose other letters.

As we mentioned, there are many types of domain. The TLD or Top Level Domains are the most popular and include: .com, .org, .net., .info, .gov and so on. The newest one, .xxx, is reserved for porn sites, in case you haven’t heard about that.

We searched and chose ‘ww1diary.com’. We felt that is was simple, effective and, because of the .com domain letters, it would be easy to remember. Everyone seems to know something something something.com as if that is the only domain out there and that’s the reason we like to stick to .com domains. In our case, it doesn’t really matter because we will depend on Google searches to develop an audience. If you want to develop a business, get a .com for sure unless you are willing and ready to work hard to develop an audience. Brand recognition and .com names go hand in hand.

Once you have selected a name and found that it’s available with the domain letters you want to use, you might want to think about the other variations of your name. If you’re trying to lock up your online identity, why not secure as many other domains that might piggyback on your fame. If you think that Microsoft or Apple doesn’t have every variation of their name locked up, you’re wrong. We still remember when ATI, the video card manufacturer that is now within AMD, didn’t lock up ati.com. They had atitech.com but who would search for that? If you searched for ati.com all you got was a photo of a pile of dog poop, believe it or not. This is a perfect example of why it’s important to lock up as many domains as you can afford if you’re worried about someone else benefiting from your site’s popularity. Here’s an example of a successful domain name search:

Photo of successful domain name search
The .com is available as well as other domain types.

Here you see that many other types of domains are available. GoDaddy offers the .info name for free with the .com name at this moment but don’t expect that all the time. GoDaddy has many revolving offers at any given moment.

After your successful search, continue on through the checkout process. GoDaddy will make offers all the way through, hoping to make a bigger sale than just the .com name but think about each choice carefully.  We just go for the domains, none of the extras. If you don’t want the hassle of renewing often, register your domain for more than one year.

TIP:  We don’t recommend hosting your domain from the same company that it is registered with. There isn’t much chance of GoDaddy going out of business any time soon but their hosting is expensive.  We’d rather spring for hosting with another company, knowing that our domains are safe with GoDaddy.

That’s it! You now own a domain. The next step is hosting your site and we’ll get to that next time.

Thanks for reading!

 

Domain Registration, Hosting, Internet

Set Up a New Website – from scratch!

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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?

Photo of GoDaddy page
GoDaddy is cheap and fast and fairly secure. $12.99 is a good deal.

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:

Photo of FatCow website
Price per month is good, usually billed at a full year in one shot. Cheap!

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!