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.