Other than “dont’ use Godaddy”, what do I need to know? I’ve never owned a domain or had a website of my own before.
- Domain registration/host recommendations?
- Web hosting recommendations? Should I mix #1 and #2?
- Website template creation suggestions? Have fairly simple needs like service offerings and contact forms but want something without rotating construction cones.
- What else should I consider? Security? e-mail?
- Am open to all-in-one for the above, just would like to understand tradeoffs, what to look for/avoid.
TIA
Sometimes, brand new domains get blocked by browsers, dns, etc. expireddomains.net is an index of domains available for purchase with some history. No idea about creating a website.
Honestly GoDaddy is not a bad choice, if you’re willing to pay extra. I set my mom’s website up on GoDaddy because it’s solid, pretty idiot proof, and she can do it all herself with a staging and a prod site and everything. There are cheaper options of course, but it’s hard to be both cheap and good for beginners.
If you’re less confident with this kind of stuff and are worried about being overwhelmed, then GoDaddy can be a good solution.
- Personally I brought a .site domain from namecheep for $2 a year
- Self hosting is cheepest but may require making a call to your service provider or using a dynamic DNS service. Personally I use vultr, though I’ve heard linode, Azure, google cloud and AWS are all great alternatives.
- WordPress is a good option for setting up a website with a ton of plugins and installs available, just make sure to keep your plugins up to date
- Make sure to secure your ssh with keyfiles instead of passwords, additionally I followed everything in this guide
You can rent a cheap WordPress site, Mail, and Domain for about €2 a month at Hetzner. It’s what I use myself.
I would avoid the .us domain unless you have a good spam filter. If you register with .us, you get put on a public list, and you get calls from people begging you to hire them to design your website.
You get that with virtually any domain/registrar these days if your contact details are public for any amount of time.
A lot of domain registrars nowadays have a privacy-protection feature which will fill the public WHOIS entry with the registrar’s own geographical address and a randomly-generated email address which forwards to you. It’s easy enough to set up a filter sending any email you get via that forwarder straight to spam, as in all probability you’ll never get any email of value from someone who looked up your WHOIS to contact you.
