Hosting Plans and Suggestions

You will need a registered domain name, and a web site hosting plan. The Domain name is your official web-site name, and the host is place you rent for your site/business on the web.

For your domain registration I suggest you go to GoDaddy.com" and get one there for $8/year, or less. Their prices are the lowest and going lower all the time.

There are many other Registrar/agent sites of course, and some hosts offer to take care of the domain registration for you. Be aware that then they have administrative access to your domain account, and if you have a falling out with your host, you will find it much harder to pick up and move to a different host. I found that out from experience. One of my domain names was held hostage for three weeks! Personally, I do NOT get my domain name registered at the same place where I host my site. Just in case!

Do yourself a favour and take time to check out a number of hosts, and to ask around before you sign up. Sometimes the person who wrote up the great words on a site describing what they have, is NOT the same person as the one who owns and runs it. The best reference is someone who has tried a host and knows if they are thoughtful and supportive. -- It's not the end of the world if you have to pick up and move your site to a new host, but it can sure feel like it!

I know. I've had to do this several times now. I shop very carefully for a web host for my sites.

I can remember when I couldn't afford hosting at all. It cost something like $300 per year, and up to $600, even $900 or more!

There are web hosting plans that only cost $10/year. I had several sites hosted at HostingRevolution.com for that price. That's only 50 mg of space, but for most small sites that is plenty. For my largest site I paid $40/year. (It took me five years to fill one up. I just needed to ask for an upgrade and pay just another $10/year for 100 mg more space).

So I'm saying that for less than $20 US, recurring annual fees, it is possible to have a professional web domain and hosting. If you learn how to maintain and grow your site on your own, those should be your only expenses!

That's $8 + $10 = $18 total for your start up year, and $18/year after that. Unless, of course, you want a more expensive host.

Once I know what exactly you are looking for in a host, I can recommend some hosts that would be suitable to your purposes.

Just this summer (June 2006) I have become a hosting seller myself. I'm small scale compared to others like HostGator, from whom I have sublet a generous 5 GB for my business. I especially hope to help out those who are struggling to learn to put up their first site, and need a good economical deal.

Naturally, if you can afford a bit more, you'll get better quality, and as you gradually learn more and more HTML you'll want to add guest books, forums, affiliate banners, etc., (some of those require CGI forms), and maybe shopping carts, too?

If your web host includes Fantastico - which is a whole bunch of these free services - that you can install with a click, then you merely add them as you are ready to handle them.

And yes! those are included in the hosting packages I offer. With the design or template sevice I'm offering, you can be selling your books or services. I would recommend that you join PayPal, and e-Gold, and then I could insert the coding for the buttons. When people want to pay you, they would just click the payment method of their choice, and any of these three free web payment plans would send you an email telling you of a sale! Naturally, then you would correspond with them and give them the instructions for completing the purchase.

If you sign up for Google's AdSense and provide me with your codes I can insert them into the template, and you'll be able to make money from your site that can more than cover your annual costs. They do want to check it out though before they accept your application, so you would have to obtain your domain and hosting, so you can give them the URL to see the template and sample pages first.

You'll see how this works if you decide you want to order this service from me.

You might be ready to place an order. I better tell you how, right? :) Let's jump to a new page for this topic.

Or, if you are ready to ask for my services, simply fill out the Request Form. As you answer those questions I'll get a snapshot of what your site looks like in your mind, and what you hope to accomplish with it. Follow the instructions there so we can evaluate whether we can work together or not.

Blessings & Thanks!
Ruth