Choosing Hosting and Domain Name for Your WordPress Website [Part 1]
- Hosting and domain name
- Requirements
- Best hosting options
- Which are advised and why?
- Which alternatives are there?
- Domain name
- How to choose?
- Buy name or get a free one?
If someone says “I’ve just started a website, check it out” this sound like “Look, I just bought a can of Coke, and I’m drinking it”. Nobody is surprised by the fact that most people have their own websites. In 2015 this is some sort of a must.
But, do you know how to make this process, I mean website customizing, less time consuming and less of a hassle?
You may have thought of some website builders that offer free accounts and basic templates for starting a site. This is a good option if you need one right now. But, of course, it doesn't come without some drawbacks and limitations. Like a free domain (with the suffix of a site builder you choose. For example www.yoursite.webbuilder.com), ads (that can be turned off only after upgrading to a premium account), advanced customization features (that are also unavailable till upgrade), etc. In other words, you have to pay money to give your site a decent look. And it’s already becoming a bit of a hassle.
So what should you do? The answer is pretty clear - DIY (Do It Yourself). If you make the site all by yourself, without being limited by some restrictions of a specific website builder, this will be really great and give you more autonomy over your own site.
Now you may be asking yourself this question: “Where should I begin?” Follow this step-by-step course to the end of the fifth tutorial, and I promise, you’ll have a fully functional WordPress website.
In our tutorials, we are going to guide you through the bare essentials. To ease the process of website customization/setting up and not cram your heads with loads of info, we’ve divided the guide into five separate tutorials. Studying information from each of them should take no longer than an hour or so.
So, the first thing we’re going to talk about is the hosting for your future WordPress website.
HOSTING. It is probable you’ve already conducted some research and you are familiar with this term. In brief, hosting is a service that runs Internet servers, allowing individuals to deliver content to the Internet...blah, blah. In plain English, if you want your website to be seen by users of the Internet you need to place it on the servers of the hosting provider of your choice. Actually, this is much easier than you might imagine.
You may even have already made a list of hosting providers with suitable price options.
There are thousands of hosting companies out there, a vast majority of whom meet WordPress minimum requirements, and choosing one from the crowd can be a chore, WordPress works best when it’s in a rich hosting environment. When it comes to hosting your site PRICE is not always the first thing to which you need to pay attention.
So let’s see what the requirements are for WordPress that will help to make it run really smoothly. To run WordPress websites, your hosting needs a couple of things to run on its servers:
- PHP version 5.2.4 or greater (a programming language for web development that’s perfectly embedded with HTML);
- MySQL version 5.0 or greater (a database management system, all the information on your site is a part of a database).
Actually, if we take a look at these two parameters we’ll find out that almost every web host is compatible with WordPress.
Best Hosting Options
We’ve dealt with more hosting companies than you could imagine; in our opinion, the hosts below represent some of the best and brightest options in the hosting world. Here are three top hosting options for your WordPress site:
The chief advantage of this provider is WordPress auto-install. Actually, this provider is considered to be the best option for WordPress.You may not believe it but not a single unsatisfied customer was reported. Another great thing about Bluehost is a free domain name that comes with $3.99/mo hosting.
Inmotionhosting.com
Even though the price tag is a little bit higher than at Bluehost ($5.99 /mo and higher) there is a number of options to compensate for it. Hosting your site at Inmotionhosting you will get a free domain name, lifetime support, free advertising credits, an intuitive control panel, and a bunch of other goodies.
This hosting company offers unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space and has round-the-clock technical support. Basic monthly hosting costs around $5. 45-day Money Back Guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and 1-click script installs.
How to Buy Hosting at Inmotion
To make everything, even clearer we are going to create a test website, and host it at Inmotion. Since we are going to have only one site, we’ll choose Launch Plan which costs $5.99/mo on a 2-year contract, or $6.99 per month on a 1-year contract. The first thing you’re requested to do is to pick a domain name.
How to Choose a Domain Name?
Here are some tips on how to choose a domain name:
- Stick with “.com” – The .com TLD (top-level domain) is by far the most widely accepted extension for a domain name. If you are looking for a domain name for a business then it's even more important to choose a .com because of the credibility boost that a .com can bring.
- Keyword Rich – Choose a domain name that is full of keywords related to your website. If your site sells vitamins then try and choose a domain name that contains the word “vitamins” in the domain name.
- Avoid Slang – Stay away from slang spellings of words for the same reasons that you should stay away from numeral substitutions.
- Unique – The more unique a domain name is the easier it is to remember. Stay within the constraints of the other rules when searching for a unique domain name but if you can be clever and pull it off then finding a unique domain name can pay off handsomely for years to come.
- Sometimes you may find that the domain name you really wanted has already been taken. For example, suppose you chose the name vitaminshop.com but it was already taken. Look at close alternatives like vitamin-shop.com or thevitaminshop.com or the-vitamin-shop.com. Taking an existing name and inserting a hyphen (dash) can make all the difference. It also helps to break your name into individual words that will be read better by the search engines. If the majority of your customers are ‘local’ in the sense that you don’t export your products, then consider country extensions e.g. .us (America), .ca (Canada), .co.uk (United Kingdom) as possible alternatives, depending on where you live, of course, if the actual domain name is really important to you.
The test website we are going to create falls under the personal portfolio category, that’s why we’ve decided to give it a top-level domain .com. Our domain name will be: testexample4you.com
The domain name of your site depends on the topic of your website. It should convey its meaning and theme. If it’s about your cat, pick the domain mydearcat.com, if it’s a fan site of your favorite football club - call it the same – footballclubfan.com. The domain name is very important for any site. It has to be remembered easily, and should not be too long.
After you’ve chosen the name proceed to the checkout and pay for your plan.
After that fill in all blanks and click “Purchase Account”.
Please Note! You can buy a premium WordPress theme + 1-year Inmotion at a lower price. When choosing pricing options pick Template + Installation + 1 Year Hosting, and you are good to go!
That’s it guys. You have successfully completed the first segment of this tutorial. I hope everything has been explained clearly, but should you have any questions you can ask them either at our Facebook/Google Plus accounts or just post your question in the comments below.