Domain Names and Hosting

Now we have completed the course on building a website using WordPress. We now need to look at publishing the website to the internet.


In order to complete this we will need two things firstly we need to register a domain name and then find a hosting company for the website. As the preceding course has dealt with creating a website in WordPress we should perhaps look for a hosting company that specialises in WordPress hosting. Although we can actually buy a domain name from any domain name registering company, it is perhaps a good idea to find a company that will both host and register a domain name.

Why do I need a domain name?

All websites need something unique to identify them, this is its domain name in the example  www.bbc.co.uk. bbc.co.uk is the unique domain name no other website can have this name it is registered to the BBC. The www part of the domain name is a reference to the computer that hosts the website files.
So if you are about to register a domain name the registering site will check to see if that name is already registered in any form for example www.domainname.co.uk , www.domainname.com , www.domainname.org. After the check you will be advised on all formats the name is available in, NOTE localised names example .uk for England, .tr for Turkey will normally cost less to register and will be given priority in localised searches in Google.

Hosting

Although there are many hosting companies available on the internet, a Google search for “WordPress hosting” should narrow the search for you. Before you decide on a hosting company something’s should be considered;

• Uptime; look for a company  with at least a 99% guaranteed uptime.
• Bandwidth; if possible look for unlimited bandwidth, your site may start small but as it grows hopefully you will need bandwidth to accommodate all your visitors.
• Web space; again if possible look for unlimited web space especially if your site will contain videos and lots of images. Although 5gb of web space will hold a large website.