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how do I get my own website?

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The question that we get all the time is how do I get my own website. The answer to this question is at a minimum you need two things:

Two minimum things you need to get your own website

  • The first thing you need is a domain name. You can purchase one easily from places like GoDaddy or NameCheap. If the domain is not already taken, you can get for between $1 - $24 for the year
  • The second thing you need is web hosting. You need to pay for a service to host your website so everyone can see it

Here is how these two components work. Your domain name is like the deed to a house. When you own the domain name, you own that brand on the Internet. No one can claim that domain unless you let it expire and it is purchased by someone else. The good news is that you will recieve notifications when your domain is set to expire and you can renew it. You can also purchase domain names on a longer term basis such as 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, etc.

This first step means that you have what you need to start the process to get your own website. You own the domain name and now you can request hosting for it.

The next step is that you will need a web hosting account. You will need to configure your web hosting to work with the hosting account. The easiest way to do that is to update the DNS settings. Your website provider will provide you with the settings you need to make sure the configuration is correct.

If your web hosting service expires you still own the domain name so it is not as important as the renewing of the domain name. If you lose the domain name, that is harder to recover and will severe cost you business.

An example is if you lose your domain and then someone else buys it. They can set up a website on your domain and all of those customers that you worked to build your brand for are now going to the same website that you do not own. DO NOT EVER LET THIS HAPPEN.

Once you have these two items in place which is the minimum for your website, you can now look at buidling your website for the purposes that you created it for.

The recommendation for a beginning website is to use a system called Wordpress. It has widespread support and will make it easier for you to either build your website or find someone that will build it for you. You can ask any developer if they know how to build a Wordpress site and 99% of developers that we have worked with have.

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