What is web hosting and domain? Sometimes I forget that not everyone is down with the lingo or what to do when first starting out with their own website or blog. Even if you’ve hired someone to take care of all the this stuff for you, it’s good to have an idea of how things work. To have a website live on the internet, you need to purchase your domain name and web hosting. Throughout this article, I will explain what these terms mean and why you need them.
In simple terms, a domain name is the address of a website. (Example: www.wildfreedesign.com is my domain name). In the bigger picture of learning about websites, I like to use the analogy of a house. Your domain is like your house’s address. The same way you would tell people to go to 77 Garnett Drive to get to your home, you would tell them to go to www.MyNewBusiness.com to get to your website.
Pretty simple right? Picking your domain name (web address) is usually the first thing people do when starting their online business or blog. I prefer to use GoDaddy.com for purchasing my domains. Here are a few notes to keep in mind when searching for your perfect domain name:
Picking your domain name is a hard business. A lot of common names that you wouldn’t even think are taken, already are. Try to keep it simple, something catchy people can remember and that you can verbally tell people easily. My favourite tool when trying to decide on a domain name is to list 20 possible ones, use Thesaurus.com and then check if their available. This way you start out with a ton of name possibilities, instead of thinking of one idea and being disappointed when that ONE domain isn’t available. Go into your search with lots of options!
Back to the analogy of a website being like a house, your web hosting would be the actual space/land on which your house exists. You have your address (domain name) and your house would be the actual design of your website, but you need a space for your house and address to exist. Without land (web hosting) there would be no house (website) or address (domain name).
I won’t get into too much detail about how web hosting works, but I will leave you with a few points of information about web hosting.
The last piece of the puzzle to getting your business or blog online is the actual design (this would be your house structure and decor). If your familiar with my site, you know I highly recommend you use WordPress you build your website. Whether you have someone design the website for you or do it yourself, using WordPress allows you to manage your site yourself (update content and images etc).