Aside from great content and a reason to be online in the first place, there are a few more basic, integral elements to having a website. Don’t worry if any of this sounds a bit too complicated or tech-jargony, you can always get in touch with me if you have any questions.

A Domain Name

This is your website’s name, such as mywebsitesdomainname.com. This is very important, because you want it to be something humans can remember, so that you can promote it on your business cards or signage or advertising, but there’s more to it than that: Search engines love domain names. Try and keep it short and sweet, reflective of your company name or your site’s purpose. Clever domain names such as visitusontheweb.com might seem like a good idea, but yourcompanyname.com is probably a better way to go.

In order to get a domain name for your website you need to register it. I use aplus.net myself, and feel free to look into that yourself, or I can set this all up for you if you’d rather just sit back and let it all happen. Registering a domain name typically costs around $10 per year, and you usually get a discount if you register the name for multiple years.

Hosting

The next step is to get some server space where your website can actually sit. Since your site is basically made up of a bunch of files, and files require disk space, your website will need some disk space to snugly fit itself into. Hosting can be a bit more difficult to get set up than your domain name, and you can expect to pay around $100 / year to host your site. Again, I am glad to be of assistance in getting you set up with the host of your choice if you need it.

I provide basic web hosting services for those clients who don’t want to deal with hosting at all, and recommend MediaTemple to those who want to get a little more hands on. Be sure to let me know before you sign up for MediaTemple, as I can get you some great discounts that can significantly drop their price.

I can work with any host, though, as long as they meet certain minimum requirements from a tech standpoint, however I definitely don’t recommend GoDaddy for either hosting or domain name registration. Seriously, they’re really bad.

Anything Else?

Aside from those two basics, you’ll need a bunch of lines of code wrapped around your text and images – like drywall, nails and Atlas himself holding your website together. This is, of course, the most important part, because having the spiffiest domain name or the most solid host around isn’t going to help if you can’t get your content to display on the user’s browser.

Need help with that part? That I can definitely do, just let me know.