I've been thinking about making a proper website for awhile now, but I'm not a huge spender, the thought of buying something I really know nothing about put me off a little, but I thought what the heck, I learn best when I'm thrown in the deep end.
Buying some hosting and a domain name.
This is what I just did, well a day ago. I went looking for hosting packages and it was tough, there are so many out there it's almost painful, it certainly did my head in. In the end I picked one from the tabs I had open which was Hostgator, seemed to have a good rep with all that I had read in searching, so I went with it.
I purchased the baby plan, shared server I think, which cost me about a 120 bucks for a years hosting plus 15 bucks for a domain name for a year.
I could have bought the domain name cheaper somewhere else and pointed it to the server (or something like that).
Now all I have to do is wait for my domain name to be propagated (activated I guess) across the web and I'll be ready to do a whole lot more reading. You have to wait a couple days before you can even start working on or even seeing your new website, well you could work on the site, but it's a little hard not seeing what your doing.
Right now, the idea of the whole thing I have and judging by the options available to me in my hosting control panel it shouldn't be to different from using blogger, though it looks like it'll be a whole lot easier to control and manage. They have many packages that you can install, including Wordpress, which hopefully I'll use to learn it all, not to different from blogger.
I'll keep y'all updated on the experience, I know I have a lot of blogging friends that may find this info useful.
So you took the plunge!?! Something that I have been wanting to do for the past 6 months. Eventually I will be doing the same. Thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteYep, I just put myself into a world of pain, so much to learn, so little time.
ReplyDeleteThough from the little experience I've had I can really see the benefits to having you own domain name and hosting.
Having the unlimited bandwidth and space blogger provides is a huge plus.
Hopefully at some point I'll be able to upgrade to a dedicated server, then I'll be able to offer so much more.
Glad to see you're getting your own website. I enjoy your blog a lot now, so cant wait for the site. Just to let you know, I've been working on mine for awhile now. I used a hosting company called InMotion Hosting, and they've been awesome. They have everything you could possibly need. So if you ever have problems with the one you chose, give them a try. Also, to buidl my site i bought a program called Web Easy Pro for about $60. It's been really good so far. If you ever get stuck or need some help, don't hesitate to let me know! :)
ReplyDeleteChris