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You are here: Home / blog / Website 101 & Hosting Tips

Website 101 & Hosting Tips

in blog, website on 03/01/22

After you have created your business, non-profit or community group, one of the top few things you are hopefully considering for your business is getting a website.

Let’s talk basic website essentialsGet a domain for your business and website

Hopefully you are enlisting in help, and more on that in a moment, to get this done and regardless, you need:

  • domain name – the website address
  • hosting – to make that domain live on the internet
  • website – where all the content goes

To help further this point, think of this in terms of your website is like your house…. your domain name is like the address of your home, your website is like your actual house structure and the city & post office is what provides you the address and delivers the mail for your address to your home.

Your domain address points to the hosting where the website resides. You need all 3 to make it work and if one of these pieces is missing, you aren’t present on the internet, or you can’t be found.

Your website

Hopefully you are getting help with the build, unless you are a website designer, so that you can have a professionally built, and professionally looking website.  I understand that you have a budget and you think that doing it yourself is cheaper, but we are talking about a business you just started and if you don’t have the means to outsource a website build at an average cost, then maybe you don’t have the means to build a business?  Think about that for a minute. And if you need help, contact me as I can help with that website build.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Think about that time you are spending building a website when you should be working on your business plan, networking about your business, spreading the word and sharing about your new business and etc. Not only that, but a year or so down the road when you look back at that website you built yourself and you are now taking your business more seriously….but your website doesn’t match the seriousness.

Now you are trying to fix that yourself, again wasting more time you could be spending ON your business versus IN it, or looking to finally outsource that gem. So, combine the time you spent plus now that cost and remember, you could have outsourced that from the beginning and had it done right the first time, and saved you stress and time from the beginning. Outsource!

Then there is the hosting…Be sure your website is secure

Your hosting

Folks seem to not understand hosting as much and I get that. GoDaddy, for example does a great job at sales and marketing. And I will say that most of the people I have come across have had GoDaddy before or currently.  So, I will be talking a bit more about them for that reason.  Now, don’t get me wrong, they have some great products and for the most part, they have great customer service…. that are native English speakers and appear to be in the US.

I remember when going through the plandemic, GoDaddy was back up and running with their folks working remotely from home in about a month.  Google Adwords, who outsources overseas, took 9 months. Yes, you read that right, the Search Engine Giant took 9 full months to be available to their PAYING customers and those service connections 2 years later, they still stink and the service is sub par, at best.  You do the math there and make your own assumptions, but you get what you pay for.

Back to hosting, the point there was that you need a hosting that you can trust.  Well what is there to trust you say – well, that your website doesn’t break, is always online and if there are any issues, that you can chat or call someone to help. When you chat or call that someone, that they know what they are doing and that you can understand them. So, while GoDaddy does have someone who speaks your language, natively, sometimes you get someone that understands the technical side of things and sometimes you don’t. Let’s not forget that they WILL upsell you every opportunity as well.

If your hosting is upselling you, most of the time folks believe them and feel that they need it, well, you don’t always.  Not only that, but some hosting companies nickel and dime you for everything, and GoDaddy is one of them.  You want hosting, you pay X. You want an SSL certificate, mind you that is required to be searchable, you pay Y. You want emails, yep, you guessed it, you pay Z. And the list goes on.

I started with GoDaddy too and my domain is still there, but my hosting is with Siteground. I have found them to be super affordable, they provide affiliate (so you tell someone about it and they join, they pay you, like the below link), they have amazing chat customer service that backs their instruction with links to their support documents but also help you with what you need.  I love their chat because I can do something else while they are looking at my account and I can save the message for further reference. And they don’t upcharge you for every little thing.  With Siteground, you get hosting, free emails (unlimited) and webmail or use the settings to import or even forward to another email, you get free SSL and again, their support is amazing. I have found that their Site Tools (the back end where you manage your account stuff) is pretty user friendly as well. I have been please for over 6 years.

Your domain

This one is pretty simple. You search for your preferred domain name and pay for it annually. You are likely paying under $20/year for a domain name. You can pay a little extra and get it private, but that’s up to you if you want and need that.  Why you need to hid your business address, not sure, but hey, everyone is different.

You don't need your website to go down, hire a professional

The drama of website & hosting

So, wrapping this up, if I had a dollar any time I have been contacted from folks about problems that they are having from their website or questions about their domain and hosting, I would be rich.  It’s not always something that makes sense, and that I understand, but if that is the case, WHY are you trying to do it yourself?  And when you keep adding more and more to it, you are making it worse… which makes it harder to unscrew, if you get my drift here.

So, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS, get help! Reach out to someone you know, like and trust and when they say, hey, you should do this or go with that…. DO IT!  There is a REASON!

I’d love to help you get started off right – with a domain, with the right hosting (see affiliate link above & below), and with a professional looking website that you can learn how to manage yourself or that I can help you manage with my maintenance plans. Let me know how I can help. Contact me today.

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About Kristen Day

Kristen is a small business owner and thus dedicated to other small business owners by helping them improve their online presence with having a professional and mobile responsive website, then implementing search engine optimization and pay per click advertising all of which are necessary 'evils' in the digital marketing sphere but enables small business owners the opportunity to compete with larger companies. When not in the digital arena, you can find her hanging with her girlfriends, husband, drinking a margarita or shooting competition (not in that order).

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