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
What’s the type of business? Are you just needing a contact page, or is it an online store?
I recently went with square space and I’ve been pretty impressed with it, but it wasn’t cheap. Google around for signup codes.
For domain registration, check out porkbun or namecheap. Email you can use proton or Google workspaces.
You should als mention the country. Helps if you’re a business and not just looking for the cheapest. And maybe get a all-in-one solution if you don’t want to set up and maintain mail yourself.
hetzner.de uberspace.de all-inkl.com netcup.de inwx.de are some I use or used.
- porkbun. Real solid and no-nonsense. If privacy is your main concern, maybe check out njal.la.
- Depends. If what you said is all that you need you don’t really need a web hosting service. Static site sounds to be enough.
- Cloudflare Pages + something like Hugo(highly recommend, if you are comfortable with using command line tools) will be basically free and solid.
- Depends. Ask freely here!
If you create accounts on various sites with an email address on your new domain keep a list of those. If decide to let the domain expire you need to close the accounts beforehand, otherwise someone else can get access if they purchase the domain.
Also you will likely be playing for the domain forever, so just register/renew it for 10 years, maybe you’ll also get a discount.
While I don’t want to say this is a perfect solution, it is a free solution, and one id checkout early, that said I’d still recommend shopping around to see what best meets your needs.
You could get a Gmail account for the business/ website and then register for a free WordPress site. WordPress is both software you can download for self hosting and a website service where they take care of everything (for free or a price. The free version may end up with the website having ads served to viewers and only has limited upload).
As for design, there are a few free as well as paid templates. They can also get your site a domain like yourbusiness.com , but you can get a free subdomain at WordPress like yourbusiness.wordpress.com
If you wanted to go complex, you could self host or hire a virtual computer to host from a cloud provider, but things like making sure software is up to date and security patches applies are up to you. You might already have a server / network attached storage device which could be the server and get the domain linking to it and have your router forward incoming traffic to it, but it depends on how hands on you want to be.
