Domain Names And Website Hosting

You are advised to purchase your domain name after you have worked out the theme or topic of your website. There are various schools of thought regarding what domain name you should choose. The bit after the . is called the extension, for example com, or info. Generally the extension should be .com, unless you are building a country specific website, when for example you might use .co.uk – The obvious domain names have long since been snapped up, and are valuable because they are short, memorable, iconic, and desirable.

My advice is:

  • use .com if available, unless you are building a site which is country specific, in which case use the extension for that country. For example, if you were building a website whose topic was related specifically to the uk, you would use a .co.uk extension.
  • keep it short
  • have the domain name related to your website theme
  • If you can get a domain name which is exactly as per your main keyword, do so. Otherwise, buy a domain name that contains your main keyword.

I buy all my domain names at www.namecheap.com

Website Hosting
After five years of building websites and numerous web hosts used, I have no hesitation in recommending Hostgator – To get more information click on the link below.

Unless you build websites you don’t tend to think about web hosting, but have you ever wondered how it is that websites are visible to you?

Web pages are hosted on web servers (effectively, large, fast computers) located in clean conditions in secure premises with power backup and technicians available to deal with any problems. The content on the servers is usually backed up daily so that web pages can be restored if the servers crash.The servers are capable of serving the web pages up to thousands of users all trying to access a site at the same time.

As you can imagine, having all this technology available together with the premises and staff would be very expensive for an individual. Although you can rent your own server from a hosting company, the majority of users opt for shared hosting.

Shared hosting means that you share a server (and cost) with a number of other users. My recommended shared hosting provider is Hostgator who will get you set up for just $7.95 per month (host unlimited domains) For more details of Hostgator web hosting click here.