Today I’m bringing up one of the topics that comes up rather frequently and causes lots of confusion – domain name registration & hosting.

Domain Names
Your domain name is one of the first things you’ll want to look at when starting up your website. Essentially it is the unique address that your website can be found at, for example mine is nicolatweed.co.za. Another name for it is your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) but that’s just geek talk that you don’t really need to know. A domain name ends in .com, .co.uk, .co.za etc

Hosting
We can look at hosting like this… if the domain name is the address of your house, hosting is your house and your website is the decor, furniture and appliances inside your house. Every domain name needs to have hosting as this is where all the files that make your website work are kept. Hosting is usually something that you pay on a monthly basis and luckily if you’re only running a small business/blog then it’s pretty much next to nothing. The great thing is you don’t have to buy your domain name and hosting from the same companies, so if you do find one cheaper somewhere else then you can buy them separately.

Keeping Note
Make sure that when you buy your domain name & hosting you make a note of all the login details as these will be important to your designer. The login details you receive may include your hosting login details, your backend login to WordPress and your FTP (File Transfer Protocol) login details. There’s quite a lot to remember so I’m working on a free little downloadable printout you can use to record all your usernames and passwords. Be sure to check in tomorrow for your freebie.