So, you’ve decided to get started creating your website! Congratulations!
The first thing you need to do (regardless of who’s designing your site) is to sign up for a hosting account and register your domain name. Usually when you sign up with a host, you can knock out both processes in one sitting.
For most business websites I recommend aSmallOrange.com – their exceptionally low-priced “Tiny” shared hosting package is usually sufficient for a basic WordPress website. If space gets tight, you can always upgrade to the “Small” package which has a lot more space for only $15 more per year. The annual fees for Tiny are $35.00 plus $14.55 per domain. I also usually recommend purchasing the ID protection for each domain, which adds an extra $7.00 per domain onto the annual cost. Why is ID Protection important?
Feel free to head on over to aSmallOrange.com yourself, or you can let me do it for you. Regardless, I’ll need your login information in order to begin work on your site.
Not sure what domain name you want?
At some point you’ll need to do some research into what domain name you want to buy. You can use aSmallOrange.com or any domain purchasing website (like GoDaddy or NameCheap) to find out whether the domains you’re considering are even available. You may need to include the city or state name if your business name is not very unique, or switch to an alternate ending, like .net or .org. For simplicity and memorability’s sake, I usually don’t recommend including hyphens or underscores in your domain name. (Let me know if you want some help brainstorming domain name ideas.)