Your First Web Site

Choosing Your Domain Name

What do all these sites have in common?

• www.galleryfurniture.com
• astros.com
• nike.com

Use your company name

• When people are looking for your company’s website the first thing they try is your company name followed by .com.

Variations of Company Name

• Only if a potential customer doesn’t find you at company.com will they look for variations such as company.net or company.org or company-name.com.
• Sometimes including a city or state an example would be “signcityhouston.com might be a good alternative.

When company.com Is Not Available

• Consider registering alternatives.
• Signcity.info was an available option for Sign City but most people don’t think of using the newer extensions such as .info, .biz or .pro when looking for a company’s website.
• Signcityhouston.com was also registered and both domain names direct you to the same website.

Good Domain Names Are:

• Easier to remember than a telephone number
• Easily associated with your products or services.
• Easy to type - difficult or long names frustrate novice surfers, after mistyping they will get an error message or someone else's web site...and may not try again.

The Long & Short of Names

• If your company name is multiple words then what?
• No spaces are allowed in domain names
• Run the words together galleryfurniture.com or hyphenate gallery-furniture.com
• Abbreviations – what is easier to remember?
  • southwesthoustonchamber.com
  • gswhcc.org
  • Hyphenation Pros & Cons
• There is no consensus on whether or not to use hyphens in a domain name. Some people hate them but others think they are easy to remember.
• If the name is available with and without hyphens consider registering both.

Back to Top

First Step to Registering Your Domain Name-Checking Domain Name Availability

• You can check domain name availability by going to the website of any domain registrar.
• Most registrars will suggest alternatives if the domain name you selected is not currently available.
• My currently recommended registrar to register a domain is namecheap.com for the best features for registration fee.

Domain Registration Costs

• $8.88 if you use my currently recommended registrar namecheap.com(I am not affiliated in any way other than as a happy customer.) Namecheap will register most TLD domains.

What is a TLD domain?

• TLD stands for Top Level Domain that is your .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .biz, .info and country specific domain such as .us and .uk

Special Case - .PRO domains

• Should I get a .pro domain? The new .pro domain is restricted to 3 licensed professions, medical doctors, attorneys and certified public accountants. A .pro site requires submission of documentation to establish that the individual or firm qualifies to register as a .pro. For more information see: www.registrypro.com/policies/eligibility.php

Back to Top

Domain’s Registered, Now What?

• Assess your site needs:
• What is the purpose of your website?
• How often will it change? Will it be a static or a dynamic site?
• Static means each page is coded individually and changes only when manually updated
• Dynamic usually refers to sites with contents generated as the page is called usually from a database – shopping carts are a common example.

What Else Does Your Domain Need?

• Mail server – how many email accounts?
• Amount of physical space on web server?
• Bandwidth – how much traffic do you expect/hope to get?
• Site Statistics
• Subdomains - logical independent sections of your site such as office.microsoft.com or msdn.mircrosoft.com

Back to Top

Hosting Yours Own Website - What is involved in hosting your own website?

• Server running Windows 2000 or some flavor of Unix and either Apache or Webshere
• Server hardware – min. varies depending on OS but at least 1mg ram
• Business class backbone to the internet – T3 minimum for a true business website
• Computer support personnel or both hardware and software.
• Security in place and kept constantly updated
• Personel to monitor 24/7 for connection, security and other issues
• Mail server – SMTP minimum POP or IMAP if you want to use it to receive email as well as send.

Does Server OS Matter?

• Most internet web servers run either on Windows (usually 2000 Advanced Server) or on some version of Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.).
• All platforms require server maintenance and updating to prevent security problems.
• The only reason server OS matters is because each platform supports different developmental tools.
• Cost of Commerical Web Hosting:
• Website hosting has one of the most variable costs in any industry. It is possible to get domain hosting as cheap as $4 a month or as expensive as $5,000 per month.
• For a reliable small business web host expect to pay between $100 to $600 per year depending on what your site’s requirements are.

Back to Top

How to Choose a Domain Host

• Recommendations from existing users of a domain host.
• Use criteria such as:
• How long the host has been in business,
• Data Center – computers, monitoring 24/7,
• load balancing,
• bandwidth capacity,
• redundant connections to internet backbone,
• physical security of the data center,
• Guaranteed up time,
• Customer support – phone, email tickets, response time, knowledgeable support staff
• Ability to change hosting plans or add features such as databases

Back to Top