One thing that can be very confusing for persons putting together their first website is the area of domain names, registration, and hosting. Here’s a primer, and a heads-up: as tempting as it may be, don’t purchase hosting from the same place you register your domain name!

• Domain Name. This is your “.com” (.net, .org, etc.). You must first think up your domain name (we can help you with that!) then check to see if it is available and register it. Examples of places to do that: networksolutions.com, smallbusiness.yahoo.com, dotster.com. These are “registrar” services.
• Hosting. This is the service provides a server for your website and possibly Email services as well. For instance, many FrozenBlues clients also purchase hosting on our servers, to reduce development costs (it takes us less time to develop websites on our server than with a 3rd party) and help ensure quick page loads when people visit their website.

Caution #1: Do not let a 3rd party (like your web developer) do your domain name registration for you. Do it yourself, so that the registration is owned by you, and all notices come to you. More on that to come.
Caution #2: Do not purchase hosting from your registrar. Often their services are substandard, and once set up with them, it can be extra hard to move off. Again, more on that to come.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Domains & Hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.