The Basics
In order to setup a website you need two distinctly different things:
- A domain name. This is what your guests will type into their browser to find your site. This is something like www.domain.com. These are purchased from a domain name registrar like GoDaddy.
- A website hosting account. That's where I come in. I do not register your domain name for you, it is not included in the price of hosting. I usually recommend using a third party such as www.godaddy.com to obtain your domain name first, and then sign up for the web hosting package here.
Why buy a domain name separately?
The short answer is that you want to have as much control over your domain name as possible. If you leave buying and registering the name up to your web host, you are dependant on that host from now on. To setup your domain name properly, the name has to be set to point the computer that you're website hosting account is on. You can do this easily with the information provided to you by the hosting company. It takes about 1 minute to do, literally.
A domain name should cost anywhere from $9 to $20 a year, depending on the type of domain name you get. Domains ending with .info or .name are cheaper than domains ending in .tw or .cc for example.
If you buy a domain from your hosting company, you are not usually able to log into a "domain account" to do this yourself. The hosting provider does it for you. So, what if you're not happy with your hosting provider's service and you now want to cancel your hosting account and go somewhere else? If their support is slow to begin with, you'll have to contact them and ask them to change the setup for you. And what kind of speed do you think they will put on that request?
Basically, you're safer if you buy your own domain name and manage it yourself. Once you do that one minute of work, you're done and there isn't anything else you will need to do unless you have to change you email address or contact information, etc. But that's not a big deal. If you use my service, I will usually be able to (at your request) log into your domain hosting account and do the setup for you if you are not comfortable doing it yourself.
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