A question that I get from coaches a lot is what it takes to create a website and how to go about it. There is quite a little process that I have narrowed down to 4 steps that I will cover over the next couple of weeks.
First and foremost you need to choose a domain name and then register it. For those that might not know your website address is more commonly referred to as your domain name. This is probably one of the most important things to come up with before you ever start down the path of building a website. You need to come up with the domain name that you are going to use and check to see if it is available.
Coming up with a domain name is rather tough these days as there are over 97 million registered .com domain names! This is why more than likely your first choice probably isn’t going to be available for you, at least not as a .com. It might be available as a .net, .org, .info, or .biz because the number of registered domains goes down rather significantly as you move down the list. The good ones though usually will buy both the .com and .net names at the same time when an individual first registers their domain.
I won’t give any suggestions on who to register your domain with as the company that most people are familiar with is Go Daddy but really they do a good job of charging you more while also trying to get you to buy other UNNECESSARY products. I suggest trying to use someone else like Name Cheap, Name.com, or Domain Discover. You don’t need anything else from any of these companies except to register and monitor your domain.
Now one final bit of advice is that when you purchase your domain you keep track of it as it does expire in 1,2,4, or any other number of years that you purchased it for. You will get a reminder from the company that you bought it from so long as you used a good email address that you regularly check. So I do suggest that you enter some basic info into a document or spreadsheet so you can have it in case you don’t see the reminder. I would include your domain name that you purchased, the email address that you used to create your account, and most importantly the EXPIRATION DATE that which your domain will expire. I can not tell you how many times I have heard horror stories from people who lost their domain name because they totally forgot when it was going to expire!
Good luck with picking a domain name. The next post will cover what type of web platform to use for your website.