Google and your domain name registration

Hello everyone. I just happened to come across some very important information about domain name registrations and how google thinks of you, and I wanted to share this right away; I had no idea.

On my last post I recommended registering your domain name for a year. Off course this is still correct if you are just trying to learn website design and you are only using it for this purpose. If you are just starting a business, and you are not sure that a year from now you will still be in business, then this situation is ok too, but not if you are in it for the long-term or hope for google to index your site and take it seriously much faster.

The question was how many years did you register your domain name for, if the answer is only "one", then Google could hold that against you. Why? simply because most of the spammers out there have no choice but to register a domain name for a year. If they were given the option to register for one or two months, trust me, they would take it. So, basically by registering your domain name for two years or more, you are reiterating that you are serious and that you have long term plans for your website.

The above example is just one of the things to consider in order to improve your ranking with Google, but the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is much greater. Please be adviced that this is not to say that if you purchase your domain name for just one year, that you will not have good ranking with google, but rather something to consider. SEO is a hot subject amongst webmasters and I hope to post some basic SEO training tutorials in the near future.

Web design step two - Hosting

On my last post we went over the first step in web designing which is to obtain your domain name.

Before I start to work on a website, I like to have these two things in place; my domain name and my hosting service already connected, so that I can just worry about my design and run all the necessary tests online.

In basic terms a web hosting service is a way for you to give the world surfing the internet, access to your website via your domain name. This server is connected to the world wide web allowing anyone in the world who types your domain addess to access it. If you would like to read more on hosting services, read this article in Wikipedia which gives you a more technical definition, but we won't waste time here with that, we need to get your website up and running.

You are welcome to obtain your hosting with us. We charge just $10/monthly for our hosting service and provide you with full support. The most important thing that you will receive when you hire a hosting service is your account. This will entail for the most part a username, password, and an IP address. These 3 things should allow you to connect via ftp and upload your website. Remember from the chapter before I mentioned the DNS1 and DNS2, don't forget to also update those on your domain name, so that it is pointing to the correct hosting server.

In later training tutorials we will go over more specific technical things regarding hosting service, ftp, uploading etc. For now we want to keep things simple so that you can have your website up and running as quickly as possible. The next step will be to start designing your actual website. This is where the fun begins with endless tools and ways to create your website.

Up to this point make sure you have the following; a domain name and hosting service. Make sure the domain name is pointing to your hosting (you should have done this by updating the DNS1 & DNS2 on your domain name management panel). Next we will upload your first under-construction page to your site.

As always, if you have questions please leave me a comment, or if you would like me to go over something in more detail, please say so. The idea if for these training tutorials to be usedful for you.

Regards

Website design step one - getting a domain name

One of the most important things to consider in my opinion before building a website is the name it will carry. Good domain names are getting harder and harder to find; therefore it is critical to really spend some time thinking what you will call your site. I also recommend trying to find a .com versus any other extension. As you may know the .com is the most common extension and everyone recognizes it. Another thing I'de like to suggest, is not purchasing a domain name that includes your entire company's name if it's too long. For example, don't use this; www.unclechubbsplumbingandremodelinginc.com - Instead focus your attention on trying different combinations such as www.unclechubbs.com or www.ucplumbing.com or www.ucinc.com remember that the other side to this would be that you have a better chance of someone remembering the short version versus the longer one.

The first thing that you need to do is purchase a domain name.
It costs you less then $10 dollars for an entire year. Simply go to the go daddy website, chose your name.com, check out and your done. I usually register domain names for just one year, and if I see that my website or business has taken off, then I can renew it for 5 years and save a little bit of money. There are tons of websites out there that can sell you a domain name, I always use go daddy due to the ease of use of their domain management panel and because they are cheap! I have seen a website trying to sell me a domain name for $35 per year!

After you purchase your domain name, the next step will be to get hosting. This is my explanation of what hosting is so that the average person can relate to it. Consider your personal life, let's say you go out and buy a sofa, a dining room set, a coffee table, a desk, a refrigerator, a stove, a bookshelf etc. It's a good thing you bought all this, but where will you put it? you certainly need a place to put all this furniture right? you can't just keep it out on the streets. The answer is, that you need a house; "a safe place to put all your stuff". Without a home it really doesn't make much sense to buy all those things. Am I making sense? I hope so. So basically once you are done with your website and you have your domain name, you will need "a good home" to place your website so that everyone in the world can see it. Don't forget that 'just like a regular house or apartment, you must pay for monthly rent', hosting is no different. Because the cost of hosting is so cheap these days, you are usually asked to pay for the whole year in advance, and can cost you somewhere around $8 to $10 for a basic plan.

As a beginner it will be very important to have a domain name and the hosting setup. Having these two things setup will help you run all of your test live online so that you can really see and get a feel for how things work and how they come together. It was also helpful for me, because I could just ask family and friends to log in to my web address and give me instant feedback on my website, this way I could debug the site muchfaster.

Once you have access to your domain name management, the only thing that you are going to do really is to change the DNS servers. These will be pointing to your new hosting company. When you decide on a hosting company, they will provide you with two dns id's, usually DNS1 and DNS2. On your domain manager this is all you are really going to change.

Brief history of how I started

I decided to start things off with a brief history of how I got started in the world of computers, programming, graphic and website design. I believe this will depict the learning curve involved for those of you who have the drive, motivation, time, and energy to decipher things on your own.

I think the first time that I was exposed to a computer was back in 1993. I was in 9th grade high school and they had a lab with brand new Apples...man they were these big monster computers with the 5 1/4" Floppy disks which could only hold like...two letters and nothing else. Now a days you can carry your whole computer in your pocket!

In 1994 one of my friends introduced me to the PC, showing me how Windows 3.1 worked and how you could use it to chat and meet people all over the world. This was a very important moment in my life, I realized then, at only 16 years old, the power and impact that technology would be bringing on humanity for decades to come. I am still amazed today in 2009.

In the next few years to come, I used the computer on and off to do different things such as writing documents, phone conversation recording (I loved taking stuff apart), chatting, exploring the Internet etc. At that time the computer wasn't necessary in order to do your homework. Today it has become a necessary tool.

It wasn't until 1997 or 98 that I was compelled to get into website design. The reason was simple; I was playing guitar in a band and we needed a website and we understood it could help us get more gigs and hopefully more fans.

I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I do remember that I did a lot of research and tried many different tools and programs in order to build the site. One of the first things that I was up against was the domain name; how do you get a domain name; then how to build the site; and then how to post it on the internet for everyone else to see. I will go over all these things in detail in the next chapters. This is only a history of how I got started.

I remember my first domain being a .org, the reason was that the .com was not available so I bought the .org without knowing that a .org meant an organization, usually a non-profit organization. There was nothing cool about a rock band having a .org website address, trust me! but nevertheless we used it for a couple of years to promote ourselves.

I built my first website in Microsoft word simply because I realized you could do this. I realized later that this wasn't a really good tool to design websites. I noticed when my pages wouldn't work correctly, images weren't showing, and content was all over the place. I later tried other cheap programs which I don't even remember their names. There was also a time where I used front page which I remember being a decent program. It wasn't until about 2001 that my friend gave me a copy of Macromedia's Dreamweaver 4 and Flash 5. Now, these tools made a huge difference in terms of production time, capabilities, ease of use, and accessibility. I still use these tools today.

Showing the world my website wasn't as difficult as creating it, and it hasn't really changed much since, other than pricing has gotten a lot cheaper. I paid for hosting, downloaded a free ftp program and that was basically all I needed.

I attended and graduated from three different technical institutes in a 5 year span. It took a lot of hard work to learn all the in's and out's of web designing, development, layouts, graphics, audio, and so much more. It has taken me thousands of hours in front of a computer, reading, researching, exploring, testing, but you know, I love doing that, and I will continue to this for a long time, if not for the rest of my life.

Welcome message

Hello everyone and thank you for visiting our blog. We created this blog with the intention of sharing! Aside from offering professional web & graphic design services, we want to share tools, knowledge, information and anything else we run into on the Internet that we think can be useful for existing customers, future customers or anyone else traveling around here :)

We will be sharing a series of articles and video tutorials through our training blog for anyone who enjoys learning. We understand that our services are not for everyone, and that some people possess the drive and initiative to do things themselves.

The basics is what we will be covering at first. We're approached by many people who have the initiative to get into web or graphic design themselves but yet have no idea where to start, and often can't get too far by searching the Internet! why? because they don't know where to start! exactly.

We hope that you keep coming back for more, but more importantly we hope that you can benefit from the tools that we are about to start generating. Please don't forget to tell your friends about this place by clicking on the little envelope below, and if you happen to know someone who needs a website and does not have the time, skills or patience to develop their own, please send them our way to http://www.fearmydesign.com/

Sincerely,

Fear My Design Team