The Three Things I Need to get Online

A commonly asked question that I receive is, what do I have to do to go online? There are four main parts to getting your website online:

1, A domain

Your domain is the name of your site e.g.. www.yoursite.com there are a number of places you can go to find and buy a domain online, you can do a general search in Google for e.g.. “Domain Registration” or you can use sites like Net Registry, melbourneIT or Godaddy. Who you use doesn’t really matter but some are more expensive that others and depending on whether you are looking for a .com, a .com.au or .nl, some companies won’t be able register all domains, so it’s a good idea to look for a registrar in your country that can register the domains you want.

One suggestion is to think of what you are advertising e.g. if you are selling only in your country you will probably be able to find a more relevant domain with a dot suffix to match your business name but if you are aiming higher and want to advertise internationally you should try for a .com. in my opinion and if you can find a .com buy it! You can also buy a .com.au or .nl and point them at the same website.

2, Hosting space

Is the place where your website will reside. I find it best to keep your domain and hosting with the same company that way the bills come from the same place making things less confusing. It doesn’t matter if your domain and hosting are in different place, you just need to point your domain at your hosting and the internet will do the rest.

One thing to remember when setting up hosting is, there are two types of hosting, Windows and Unix you will need to talk to your developer first to make a decision on which type to use. I have developed sites for people in one technology, only to find the client has set up on the wrong platform, it’s then too late for me to re develop and the hosting needs to be changed. It’s not very costly but a pain.

3, Email Accounts

Email accounts usually come with your hosting although you may get some with your domain. This is a little confusing as your domain is www.yoursite.com but you get your email accounts e.g.. you@yoursite.com via your hosting. And again it doesn’t matter where your domain or hosting reside, just try for the cheapest package.
Usually you will get a package with your hosting for 100 email addresses with 100M of space you can then spread out over the addresses. If need be you will always be able to buy more email space.

4, And a developer

You can do it yourself or bring in a pro. The actual design of your site can be time consuming but first and foremost you need a nice design. Once you have that, creating extra pages is no big issue. If you have a design you like then it’s only a matter of copy and paste to create new pages. You will have to get your text and images together for each page, but again copy and paste.

So cost wise

A domain will set you back between $9 to $29 per year depending on the dot suffix.  A .com is the cheapest but hardest to find, a domain with your country’s dot suffix will probably cost more and you may need registered business that reflects the name before you can buy it..

Hosting and email, between $7 and $20 per month, all depends on which country you are hosting in, again it doesn’t matter unless you need to collect information that deals with the time e.g.. if you host in the USA and your site in mostly used in Australia the time difference  can create problems. e.g.. if your site sends out time critical email, the time stamp on the email will not match up with the current time.

You’re the  developer, you can do it yourself but in most cases you should use a pro. You want your site to look better than your competitors. Sites start from a few hundred dollars up to the revamp on the Wall Street Journal a few years back @ USD29M. It all depends on what you need your site to do and you need to discuss that with your developer.

Cheers,

Mike.

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