Starting and maintaining a blog, an ecommerce site, or an online business is a marathon, not a sprint. After the initial steps, you’ll likely continue to edit and modify your site. Forever. At least it feels like it.
The good news, however, is that it’s a breeze to start your site. It can literally be done in under 15 minutes (not including the time it takes to search and choose a domain name.) You only need two things to start a website: a domain name and hosting.
There are countless options on the internet for obtaining these two things. I currently use GoDaddy for registering my domain names, and SiteGround for my hosting. Many hosting companies also provide domain name registration, so you can do everything in one place.
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Is This Free?
Nope. But it’s a small investment. You can buy a domain name for under a dollar/month and hosting for as low as a few dollars/month.
There are ways to run a free blog. But generally, if you want to monetize your site, you’ll have to pay. You CAN monetize some free sites, but there are usually restrictions on how you can do it. Also, most free hosting sites will not allow you to have a custom domain name. For example, using WordPress’s free plan, your domain name would be yoursite.wordpress.com instead of yoursite.com.
You can start out with a free site, then migrate it later. But I recommend you do yourself a favor, and just invest the small amount up front to get yourself ahead right out of the gate. You’ll have much more flexibility and freedom to make your site the way you want it.
So, let’s talk about each of those two items.
Choose A Domain Name
The domain name is the site address of your website. For example, allswritewiththeworld.com OR yoursite.org. It is NOT your actual site, it’s just the address that points to your site. What this means is that you can transfer your site from one hosting company to another, but keep your domain name the same. (You would just then need to point your domain name to your new site. More on that later.)
You can search for available domain names on any domain registrar. GoDaddy is the one I use, but there are plenty of others, like Epik and BlueHost. As mentioned earlier, many registrars also provide hosting.
It doesn’t cost anything to search for domain names, so head on over to one of those sites and look around. Usually, if the one you’re searching for isn’t available, it will suggest some alternatives.
Once you find your perfect domain name, you just need to set up an account to register it. OR choose your hosting service first and register your domain name with your hosting company.
Choose A Hosting Service
The hosting service is the company that contains the servers that will host your site. If you’re using WordPress to build and maintain your site, your hosting has the WP software, where you can use it.
I use and recommend SiteGround. Here, you can easily set up your WordPress site, register a domain name (free for the first year as of this writing), get a free SSL certificate (or, Secure Sockets Layer, the technology that secures an internet connection), a free email account, free daily backups, and awesome customer service. I was having issues transferring a site one time, and the folks there helped me through it with no problems.
SiteGround is quite affordable. As of this writing, it’s only $2.99/month for one website. You can always upgrade if you want to add more sites.
There are plenty of other hosting sites if you want to check out the alternatives. BlueHost, GoDaddy, and WordPress.com are just a few. I’ve only ever used SiteGround, and have been happy with them.
Once you’ve decided on a hosting provider, it’s simply a matter of registering your account and providing your payment information.
Once you’ve registered your domain name and set up a hosting account, you’re ready to build your website.
There you have it. Not so difficult. In another post, we’ll go through the next steps, like setting up SiteGround and WordPress.
Feel free to leave questions or comments below.
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