This chapter gives background on how the Internet works and reasons for some of my recommendations. If you trust me and want leap right into doing things, skip ahead to Domain Name Selection.
Table of Contents
How the Internet Works
To have a website, you need two things:
- A domain name (or subdomain of someone else’s domain).
- A server that is always on, which you will rent from a “hosting provider.”
I recommend you get your own top-level domain, such as yourname.com. Use a domain registrar – a company certified to create entries in the worldwide catalog of all top-level domains. Often your hosting provider is also your domain registrar.
A subdomain would be, for instance, yourname.wordpress.com. The owner of the top-level domain, wordpress.com in this case, would create the subdomain for you.
When someone uses a web browser to request a URL, their computer consults the global domain name service (DNS) for the address of the server hosting that domain. The answer points to the server you rent from the hosting provider. The browser contacts that server, the server assembles the page and sends it back.
Should You Get Your Own Domain Name?
Yes.
It generally costs more, but is worth it. There are many reasons, but this is such a no-brainer that I’ll stick to the main two.
- It looks more professional.
- It gives you control and options for the future.
Control is important; you don’t want to be forced to give up that domain name. It has value as part of your brand. If you build a following, people will share your content, create bookmarks, and subscribe to your blog. If your domain is yourname.SomeCompany.com, and you later stop doing business with SomeCompany, you’ll have to change the URL of your website.
Doing that breaks those links. You lose whatever Google ranking you had. It’s a potential disaster. If you don’t own the top-level domain name, you’re at the mercy of whoever does. The owners of that domain could close up shop or become unpopular (ask anybody who chose to have their main web presence on myspace.com). You could decide they’re too expensive, or want to leave them for some other reason. They could decide they don’t like you and delete your website, as artist Dennis Cooper learned the hard way.
It’s also nice to have an email address you can keep forever. Changing email addresses is arduous. Your hosting service will include the ability to create private email accounts nobody is mining for data to sell. If you change to a different hosting provider, you can keep the same address.
Should You Buy Nearby Domains?
No.
When you choose a domain name, the domain registrar will offer to also sell you variants of the name. So if you got fred-g-dawkins.com, they might suggest you would also want fred-g-dawkins.net and .biz and fredgdawkins.com and so on.
This isn’t worth the extra cost. People don’t type URLs much — they search for you or follow links — so they won’t misspell it or leave out the dash when they try to go to your site. If you’re concerned someone will deliberately buy up names similar to yours to pretend to be you or otherwise piggyback off your fame, there’s no way you can buy all the potential variants. If it happens, there are ways to deal with it then.
Will You Want an Email Address in Your Domain?
Assuming you have your own domain name, you have the opportunity to create email addresses within your domain, e.g. fred@fred-g-dawkins.com. You can either have a separate mailbox on the hosting server, or set it to forward to another email address you already use, on gmail or wherever.
This gives you a nice, professional-looking address to print on business cards.
If you have only a forwarding address, when you reply to email sent to that address, the reply will show as being “from” whatever mailbox you’re really using – so people will send email to mary@maryjustice.com and get a reply from maryjustice885@gmail.com, for instance.
For this reason, I prefer to have a mailbox in the domain rather than just a forwarding address. Many hosting providers include this in their hosting plan. It’s also possible to hook in a third party email service to your domain name. A lot of people use G Suite for this. It’s not hard to set up, though using the web hosting provider’s email system is generally simpler.
People often are concerned about having too many email inboxes to keep track of if they use multiple accounts. To deal with this, I use the free Mozilla Thunderbird email client on my workstation. It can connect to multiple email accounts and show you everything together in a merged inbox, or let you switch to see only email addressed to a single account. Mobile devices have built-in email programs which work similarly. I rarely read email in a web browser window.
What is Domain Privacy?
You probably do want domain privacy service.
ICANN, the international authority for domain registration, requires there be correct contact information associated with every registered domain, including name, phone number, email, and street address. This is public information, easy to look up online.
For those who prefer not to publish personal contact information, domain registrars offer the option to hide it from the public, often at no extra cost. The domain registry will instead show contact information of a domain privacy service — a business existing specifically for this purpose. If they get any communications the domain owner needs to see, business or legal stuff, they’ll forward them to you. Spam, they filter out.
You’ll also have a contact form on your website to let people send you email without exposing your email address.
Managing Passwords
To run a website, you need multiple logins.
It’s best to use a different password on every website – not just for this, but in general. That way, if someone manages to hack a website and steal your password, they don’t have access to your data on other sites also.
It can be hard to keep track of all those passwords. Your web browser can remember them for you, but that’s not secure. Anyone who hacks into your computer can easily read the list of memorized login information and have access to your online existence.
If you don’t already have one, get a password manager program. I use Bitwarden, which is free, integrates well with the Firefox and Chrome browsers, and provides a smartphone app. Several others are also fine. These programs use one master password to control access to a file that contains your other passwords, encrypted. You only have to remember one password, and the password manager automatically fills in username and password for sites you visit, like the built-in password memorization function of the browser but with greater security.
You don’t have to have a password manager program to have a website; it’s just a good idea for your online safety.
Domain Name Selection
It can be hard to find a good domain name that’s not already in use. Your own name (or pseudonym) is usually good, or two or three words not commonly seen together. Made up words are OK. Whatever you end up choosing, unless it’s your own name, use the United States Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Search (TESS) to make sure your chosen name is not too close to someone’s registered trademark. Nasty letters from lawyers, having to find a new name, redoing your publicizing efforts — these are things you don’t want.
An existing trademark isn’t necessarily a blocker. Whether it’s a problem depends whether you’re doing business in the same geographical area, whether you’re in the same line of business as the trademark holder, etc. If there’s a name you really like and someone else is using something similar, consult an intellectual property lawyer to see whether your use would infringe on their trademark, or contact the trademark owner for permission.
Do a web search to see what else people are doing with similar names. You don’t want to get confused with someone else, and you especially don’t want to be perceived as trying to be confused with someone else.
Don’t just type in domain names in the address field in a browser to see whether the one you want is available. Some companies track these attempts and will buy up domains people try but then don’t buy immediately, offering to resell at a higher price. Use Google Domains (https://domains.google) or the search at your selected hosting provider (see below).
Where to Register a Domain
If your domain name is not already registered, do that through your hosting provider as you’re signing up for hosting. Every hosting provider on my recommended list is also a domain registrar, and this is the easiest way to do it.
If you already have a domain registered, that’s fine. There’s no need to transfer it to the hosting account. In fact, some people prefer to separate them so that their hosting provider can never lock them out of their domain. In cases where the hosting provider decides the content of a site is objectionable or they believe it’s being used to send spam, they’ve been known to delete sites and lock accounts. If the domain name is registered elsewhere, one can open an account with a different hosting provider and restore the site from backup.
Unless your content is particularly controversial, this isn’t a likely scenario. For a new website without an established audience, switching to a different domain name isn’t a big deal. As the value of your domain name increases through people linking to your content (and adding your email to their address books), you might consider transferring the domain name to a different registrar down the road.
If you already have a domain name, I’ll show how to make it point to your new website.
Where to Get Hosting
“Hosting” refers to renting space on someone else’s servers so your website is always online. You need a server for people to fetch your website from. You’ll create the website directly on that server – you don’t make it locally and upload it.
Hosting normally costs in the range of $5 to $15 per month, often with a lower-priced introductory period or sale pricing. If you want more than one website, providers have plans that let you host them all on one account for less than it would cost to have separate accounts.
Take maximum advantage of the introductory rate by signing up for multiple years of hosting at a time, if you can afford to pay that much at once. If you end up having to move to a different provider, I’ve never had trouble getting refunded a prorated amount for the unused hosting time.
If you already have a reasonably priced hosting provider who supports WordPress, you don’t need to change. But it’s not hard to move your site elsewhere if you aren’t happy with them.
The Best Hosting Providers
Choosing a good hosting provider is important, for security and support. I’ve set up a webpage, torknado.com/rh, listing choices I feel are currently best for the nontechnical person on a budget.
If you already have a domain, don’t choose hosting based on where the domain is registered. You need someone with adequate technical support who pays attention to security and performance.
It’s fairly easy to change website hosts if you’re unhappy with your first choice. You can move your entire site, with all the URLs unchanged, to a new hosting provider. You don’t need to change where the domain is registered to do this.
Hosting providers generally offer a choice of plans. These differ in terms of speed, traffic limits, storage limits, number of websites you can host, and other factors.
Certain providers include things others charge separately for, so consider that in your price comparison. These things are:
- Cost for domain name registration. Often one year is free as an introductory offer, but how much are subsequent years?
- How many websites do you want? Some plans limit you to one. Perhaps that’s all you need. An extra domain name that forwards people to your main site, is not counted as a separate site. Extra websites in subdomains of your top-level domain (e.g. yourname.com and yourseries.yourname.com), are also considered one site.
- Does the hosting price include an email account, or is that extra?
- Does the hosting price include SSL (aka TLS)? All services I recommend include this essential.
Start with the most basic level of service allowing the number of domains you want to host. If you need more later it’s easy to upgrade.
At that price level, you’ll share a server with other websites, but this won’t be noticeable. Other people with accounts on the same server won’t be able to poke around in your files, nor will you lose data because of others’ actions (we’ll set up automatic backups besides).
I have several domains hosted on a single one-step-up-from-basic account, so the price per site is very reasonable. If someone you trust also needs a website, consider buying hosting together.
SSL Certificates
SSL (sometimes called TLS) is a secure communication technique for websites. This encrypts all communication between the visitor’s computer and the server, protecting against eavesdropping and “spoofing” (a hacker creating a fake website resembling the real one, to fool people into entering passwords or other private information).
If you’re using secure browser communication, the URL begins with “https:” rather than “http:” and/or there’s a lock icon to the left of the browser address field.
On your website, you probably won’t be transmitting or collecting private information. Still, I’ll have you enable SSL. It’s included with your hosting service, it boosts your SEO, and it makes your login secure when you connect to your website on a public network (say, in a coffeeshop). See Request an SSL/TLS Certificate for details.