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louise-knight

louise-knight

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Louise Knight
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So.. I was just wondering if anyone could explain to me what it is I need to do to get a website.. domain er.. thing? What sort of price I'm looking at, and where is a good place to host it? If that's what you do?!

I'm having a site built for me, so need to get on it with doing this! But honestly.. I have no idea what's what!

I probably sound really naive, and I would go straight to google, IF I know what it was I was looking for!

So any help is much appreciated!

Lou :)
 
There are an endless number of companies on the web who will sell you a domain name and hosting, can your website builder not recommend and hosting company and domain reseller?

I use godaddy.com for the registration of my domain names, the hosting of my site, the stats gathering for my site and my email. They seem reliable and once you get used to their website I have had no problems with them.

The only issue I have found is that their servers can be a bit awkward when setting up a contact form on your site, which is another thing to check when building your site and selecting who is going to host it. I think the hosting servers need to allow third party scripting PHP and/or ASP for things like form submission to work.

One of the things that I would recommend you check is the size of the email inboxes you get with each service provider. As if people are going to be emailing you large images, your inbox could get clogged up. I deal with big companies, who still can't receive email messages over 10MB!!!! In this day and age :nono:
 
Hi Louise,

I use the Vidahost Starter Hosting package whiich is just over £30 for the year. http://www.vidahost.com/domains. They are very reliable both in terms of server uptime and in terms of support. In the 18 months or so that I have been with them, I've never had a problem. My main reason for choosing them was the quality of service. It has never taken them more than an hour to respond to my emails (in fact it's usually less than 1/2 hour).

Sorry if you know any of this, but here's basically how to get your site hosted:

1. Decide on your domain name i.e. 'www.louise-knight.co.uk or .com'
Whether you choose .co.uk or .com is up to you. If you wanted, you could buy both the .co.uk and .com domain names. You choose one as your 'main/primary' domain and use the other as a parked domain to redirect traffic. That way, if someone types www.louise-knight.com instead of .co.uk, they will still reach your site. It's useful to have, but if budget is a concern, then you might just want to stick to the .co.uk extension.

2. Register the domain. This bit is easy. Once you have picked your name and extension, just follow the on-screen prompts. At some point, you will be asked to fill in a form which details who owns the domain name, your company name etc. I can't quite remember which fields are mandatory other than name & address.

3. Get hosting for your website. Hosting is basically renting some space on a server which holds the files and images for your site. As mentioned in the previous post, there are countless hosting companies. Some are better than others. If your site, is critical to your business, then it's worth going with a company who answers your emails and or calls. I'm sure there are cheaper hosting companies than Vidahost, but I like to know that they will respond quickly if I have an issue with setup etc.

Select a package. For a single site, a starter pack will do, but as the previous poster mentioned, check that the hosting package meets your needs. The package I use has a 1GB storage limit and a 25GB/month traffic allowance.

Once you have selected a hosting package, they will give you a password and a secure link to access your server space. Once you access the link, it will take you to the config page from where you can upload your site. Once your web designer has finished designing the site and exported it as html files, it will need to be uploaded to the correct folder on the hosting server. They should tell you which one. Once the files have been uploaded to this folder, they will soon become visible to people who type your website link into the url bar.

Other info:
When you register a domain name, you are basically hiring it for a set period. Around £5 for .co.uk (2 years) and around £10 for .com (1 year). After this period, you'll get a reminder for renewal.

Phew, that post got longer than intended. I hope I haven't forgotten anything, but if you have any more questions just ask away. And if after all that, it still seems daunting.. ask the web designer if he can do it :)

Tim
 
Check exactly what your hosting can offer...

I went with 123 only to discover that pixelpost required MySql and they didn't even offer that as an upgrade option. Luckily, I discovered within days and got a full refund on my hosting. :)
 
Buying Domains:
One and One only charge £1.99 a year for .co.uk, I have used them for years and have never had a problem.


Hosting:
I use Brinkster.com, they have a good free package if thats all your after, they are also very cheap for paid hosting if you need to up your traffic allowance. I have used them for around 8 years with no problems at all.

One and one also supply very in depth hosting but I have never used them for that as I was with brinkster and have stuck with them.
 
i use ukreg for domains and mediatemple for my hosting
 
I've used me2uweb.com for years, and I've been very pleased with them :) I don't have the cheapest package, I have the next one up - Ultra Bronze as I have mysql databases for things like wordpress etc, and the prices are pretty decent too.
 
Hi,
keep your eyes open - there are some real 'rogues' out there. I sell hosting and used to sell domains - interest declared :-)

The cheap packages will not always give you what you need, but it's like going to the doctor or things like that, when you are starting out you don't know the questions to ask and how to interpret the answers and information you are getting back. So, take emails for instance, yes the size of emails you can receive is important, but so is the number you can send - almost all the cheapy packages limit you to how many emails you can send in a day, or hour and the rate you can send them - spam prevention, but they don't tell you that. They also limit the size of mailing list that you can hold on their server. They say things like 'unlimited' mysql databases - true, but what they don't tell you is that the number of connections you can have between your site and the database is limited, so it you have a popular site the number of concurrent users will be limited. Be especially careful of 123, and any that offer a domain for life or very cheap domain name, there are usually hefty charges if you decide to move away, one of my customers got really stung badly with that by one company, so much so they decided to change their business name . . .

Start off with someone that has a range of packages so you can upgrade later if necessary, PM me and I'll tell you whose I sell :-)
 
You should not need to pay more than a few pounds a year to register a domain name. The are many companies that will sell them (they all go to a regulated domain name wholesaler) I use a company called 1and1.

The domain seller may also sell you server space, or you can buy server space through some other company (e.g. your ISP) and then either transfer the domain to the ISP or just leave it where it is and point it in the right direction as I do (1and1 are very helpful sorting this techy stuff out).

I use a third company (clickPic) to host my on line album because I like their easy to use templates (check out link below), does not cost much per year.
 
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