Today and for the following 3 articles, I will cover setting
up your own website. From reserving your website’s
name, like www.yourname.com; finding a hosting service; building
the website itself; and finally, doing the marketing to let
internet users know about it!
How do I host my own website?
The first step in getting started with a new website is to
register a “domain” name, which is essentially
your websites name on the Internet. (www.baliadvertiser.biz
is Bali Advertiser’s domain name.)
Before you decide to register a domain name though, you will
want to thoroughly think about how you are going to use the
domain name. For instance, the longer a domain name is, the
more the chance of a potential visitor spelling it incorrectly.
Also, long domain names are harder to fit on business cards,
letterheads or classified ads in newspapers. If your sites
name uses words like “for” or “to”,
you may want to register all variations of the word. For instance,
if you decide that your site’s name will be meforyou.com,
you would also want to register me4you.com and mefouryou.com
to cover any potential users spelling of your site. Also think
about misspelled versions of your site, to catch those people
that spell your website name wrong when they attempt to find
you.
If you are registering a business website, the “.com”
version is really the best one. Getting the “.net”
or “.org” or “.biz” versions are ok,
but most people will type “.com” without thinking
about it. This means you could end up spending a bunch of
money creating and marketing your site, just to drive traffic
to someone else, because they have the “.com”
version of your address.
You should also consider using as descriptive a name as is
possible. Unfortunately, the best single word generic domains,
such as business.com or realestate.com are all taken. Don’t
forget about foreign words that work for your site since they
are more likely to be available at this point in time. (For
instance, QuePasa.com)
Start by making a list of every domain name that you might
possibly want to register. Once you have the list, you need
to know which ones are available. You can check to see if
your desired name is available by going to a domain registrar.
My suggestion would be to stick with one of the major registration
companies such as the creator of the domain name system, www.networksolutions.com
or with their major competitor www.register.com (the one I
prefer).
The main reason for using these services (and generally paying
a little more than the discount registration firms) is for
ease of transitioning once you have registered your name.
The most you will pay for a site is $35 per year.
Both of these services give you an option to “park”
your domain, which means they will simply display a page letting
a potential user know that a website is forthcoming instead
of them getting the “404”, “Not found”
error.
If you don’t have plans to build your site in the near
future, it may make sense to park it, but in most cases, you
will want to have it placed with the company that you plan
to use for hosting the site. (See the next article “Part
2 – Finding a hosting service”)
If you find that one of your favorite names has already been
taken, but when you actually type the address into your browser,
no website appears, you may have a chance to buy the name
from the owner.
If you would like to contact the owner of a domain name that
has already been registered, go to
http://networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois to get the
contact information. In most cases, the original owner will
demand a price that is beyond reality for most of us, but
you never know!
Have a question or problem? Write me at BaliPCAdvisor@GMail.com.
I’ll try and answer as soon as I can.
Bali PC Advisor and other Bali Advertiser article Archives
now ONLINE: http://baliadvertiser.biz/articles/index.html.
NEXT time: Setting up your own website. Part 2 – Finding
a hosting service
PakBruce, your Bali PC Advisor!
