Don’t rush into getting a website ask yourself do I have time to update the site or pay some to update it ? What do I want my site to do for example exposure for a business, an information site; e-commerce site selling products.
Choosing a domain name
Some basic guide lines are choosing a domain name this can be difficult as most of the good ones are taken. You can still find some good names but they will be three words or more registering your domain name usually costs fewer than 20.00 dollars for 2 years. You can buy a domain name there’s no real formula to figure out what a domain name is worth they sell for a few hundred to millions of dollars It boils down to what your budget is and what name you are looking for. You want a name that’s easy to remember I would avoid hyphens and underscores. Single word names go for the most because that is what someone is likely to type in their browser. Dot com names go for more then dot org. I looked up spocket.com it was taken bestsprockets.com was available for $9.99 on go daddy.com as of this writing you want to have your key work in your domain name.
Finding a hosting company
Hosting a website once you have a name you want to shop for a host for your website there are a lot of hosting companies so you want to choose one that will meet your needs. These are some things to look for in a hosting company 24 hour support. Stay away from hosting companies that t host adult sites and gaming unless that is what you are looking for. Bandwidth if your site is new you may not need a lot of bandwidth to start as new sites take time to build up traffic stay get a least 1-4 gigabytes your idea is to grow most hosting companies have different tiers which offer different things so see what the next level costs would be.
Uptime you want a host that is reliable with a 99.99% uptime do some research read reviews about the hosts you are thinking of going with. You want a host that will offer scripts like cgi php etc. You will want to know how many SQL data bases you can have these necessary for an eCommerce site to have a shopping cart store information have a forum . While you can use simpler methods to start such as taking PayPal payments which are just cut and paste code you want to think about the future. I left price for last while you want a good price you get what you pay for a basic site usually starts in the $5.00 a month range but read what you are getting for that price there maybe limited customer support. A good hosting company has been around awhile and may cost 10-15 to start if it has all of the above mentioned. You pay to host by the year so choose wisely
Designing your site
Most hosts will have templates you can use to design your site if you don’t have any experience with web design these can be quite easy to use but don’t offer much in the way of self expression.