Where do I host my website… and how much does it cost? Part 2

Okay, you want something more than a blog.

Fine… that’s great.

So, where are you going to go to get a web host?

Well, there are plenty of places on the internet where you can get free website hosting. I have an artist friend who has used nothing other than the free space that comes with his ISP (Internet Service Provider).

He has his own unique domain name www.peterwoolley.co.uk and is more than happy selling his watercolor artwork, books and painting courses with his active, dynamic and successful website.

As I recall he used the free web space that comes with his Yahoo account.

Another way to get free web hosting is to use a group hosting. Here, you are just one of many other people using a single website host. “How To Design Your First Website” uses exactly this kind of hosting with ‘Blogger’ at www.blogger.com

As I’ve said before ‘Blogger’ is great. It is well managed by Google. It is well designed and featured. It has almost everything you could want. It has only one fault. Just look at the path name…

http://yourfirstwebsite.blogspot.com

Blogs created with Blogger have ‘blogspot.com’ in their address.

Do you want your main website to have somebody else’s name in your web address?

I’m comfortable with this for “How To Design Your First Website” because I don’t want to use it for direct selling.

Also, I’m relaxed about having the website provider identity in the address because I have another domain http://www.your-first-website/… this is a unique domain name that no one else can use it… while it is registered to me.

I use each of the 2 websites alongside each other. Each website has its own individuality.

Each website could easily stand alone. It was a deliberate decision to introduce a blog that could happily run with my serious website.

It is your choice what you want from your website. Largely the subject will dictate the format. How you want to involve your website visitors will also influence what your website will need.

Best still… look at other websites that cover your subject and analyze them, break them down and simplify. When you know what you want to do for your own website you will easily cope with the webpage features you choose.

However, I still recommend that you learn starting your own free blog to get the feel with how to set up a basic but expandable single webpage website…

But, that is your choice.

In the next post, I shall tell you where http://www.your-first-website/ is hosted.

See you soon

Mike