Buying a website

[Mr-Paul]

So, I'm coming into the last year of my journalism degree and was thinking that I need to buy a website with my name (a .com one) to put my blog/portfolio on before I become famous :p

 

I have no idea, however, what I need to do, what site to buy the name/hosting off, how much storage space I'd need, how much I should be paying... all the technical shit. I have a very basic knowledge of hosting/domain names from what I've done at uni but in that case they did all the setup through bluehost.

 

All I want to do initially is install something like wordpress onto it.

 

Someone help me please?

[Shorty]

So when you say buying a website, you're really talking about buying some hosting space and a domain name. The website you're going to make yourself (albeit using wordpress)

 

In which case your best bet is just to shop around, at work we often get our domains from http://fasthosts.co.uk or http://godaddy.com - both also offer good starter hosting packages. It's always worth googling for godaddy coupon codes, sometimes you can get a year's hosting for just a few £s, or a domain name thrown in free with a hosting package.

[Ten10]

I personally feel 123 reg for .co.uk domains godaddy for .com domains.

 

http://www.tsohost.co.uk for webhosting.

 

If you want to run a site on a shoe string a 123 reg .co.uk domain name with hosting from freehostia.com will let you run a site with a yearly cost of £2.99 excl vat.

[Charlie]

I personally feel 123 reg for .co.uk domains godaddy for .com domains.

 

http://www.tsohost.co.uk for webhosting.

 

That's exactly what I do.

 

That does however require a bit of extra work as you need to change name servers on your domain to make it work with your hosting account.

[Mr-Paul]

Cheers guys.

 

I see lots of sites offering Windows or Linux hosting. What's the difference/what do I need/which is best?

[Charlie]

Linux is better at supporting PHP/mySQL which is what you'll need for Wordpress so get that.

[EEVILMURRAY]

Linux is better at supporting PHP/mySQL which is what you'll need for Wordpress so get that.

I'm kinda in the same boat as mr-paul, except I graduated years ago and am wanting to showcase myself.

 

How long would something basic on Wordpress take to make/cost with all the hosting fees?

[Shorty]

Hosting is in monthly/yearly rates you can see in the links above, the most basic packages should do for now as long as they offer a database. You don't need to pay anything extra to use Wordpress, and some hosting companies offer a one-click install of such software.

[Ten10]

I'm kinda in the same boat as mr-paul, except I graduated years ago and am wanting to showcase myself.

 

How long would something basic on Wordpress take to make/cost with all the hosting fees?

 

It really depends on your budget. If I didn't have much to invest I would go for a .co.uk domain from 123 reg, 2 years costs £5.98 which goes up to £7 including vat. Freehostia offers 250MB of hosting for free with no ads: http://www.freehostia.com/index2.html

 

This will allow you to run wordpress. If you are going for a portfolio site an off the shelf wordpress portfolio template will do. You could then either upload your images directly into wordpress or use a Flickr plugin et al to bring your images into the site.

 

Alternatively you could go for the .com / .co.uk with hosting from tsohost which will give you more growing room in the future. The voucher code TENPERCENT is probably still valid. 10% off hosting costs for life.

 

Currently for my own business I'm using the 123 reg and freehostia. I'll be moving back to Tsohost near launch. Good times

 

If you need help send a PM.

[Mr-Paul]

Right, I've been looking at this and I can get a year of a .com on Godaddy for £5.16, then the Lite hosting on tsohost for £13.49. Will this hosting provide enough storage for what I want?

 

Also, should I pay 4.44 extra to make my domain private? And once I have set these up, because they are on different sites, what do I do about this name servers thing?

 

Wait a sec, if I get the domain through tsohost (7.79) ID protection is only an extra pound. Is this a better way to go?

[Ten10]

It should be more than enough. Wordpress takes up about 11MB installed without any plugins. To get the domain to talk to the server you update the names servers on the domain hosted at godaddy. So you would put something like ns1.tsohost.co.uk and n2s.tsohost.co.uk where specified in the control panel of GD.

 

It's up to you if you want to make the domain private. The information that you enter for the domain can be found via whois info. You can also go with getting both through one provider. Usually you wouldn't want to give too much power to just one company in terms of your website especially if they screw things up but tsohost are awesome and I get on well with their support staff.

[EEVILMURRAY]

It really depends on your budget. If I didn't have much to invest I would go for a .co.uk domain from 123 reg, 2 years costs £5.98 which goes up to £7 including vat. Freehostia offers 250MB of hosting for free with no ads: http://www.freehostia.com/index2.html

 

This will allow you to run wordpress. If you are going for a portfolio site an off the shelf wordpress portfolio template will do. You could then either upload your images directly into wordpress or use a Flickr plugin et al to bring your images into the site.

 

Alternatively you could go for the .com / .co.uk with hosting from tsohost which will give you more growing room in the future. The voucher code TENPERCENT is probably still valid. 10% off hosting costs for life.

 

Currently for my own business I'm using the 123 reg and freehostia. I'll be moving back to Tsohost near launch. Good times

 

If you need help send a PM.

Just looking at the freehostia thing, looking at how (when) I get a domain name how I can transfer/attach[?] it. You get a choice to create a new one for $10 or use an existing domain, but it gives the examples dns1.freehostia.com and dns2.freehostia.com

Does this mean they have to be freehostia ones?

[Ike]

Just looking at the freehostia thing, looking at how (when) I get a domain name how I can transfer/attach[?] it. You get a choice to create a new one for $10 or use an existing domain, but it gives the examples dns1.freehostia.com and dns2.freehostia.com

Does this mean they have to be freehostia ones?

 

Nah, those are just examples. Once you buy your domain there will be an option to set your DNS servers, so you set that to what your hosts address is. If your hosting Freehostia it'll be like: dns1.freehostia.com, Godaddy will be dns1.godaddy.com. You can have your domain and hosting on different with different companies.