This article is for the beginners out there that want to build our first website and are confused by all the tech jargon that goes along with that process.
If that sounds like you stick around because we’re gonna go through the basics of how domain registration and website hosting work.
Then we’ll discuss what the various web hosting package types mean and the pros and cons of each and hopefully by the end you’ll have a better understanding of how to choose the right one for your situation.
So let’s start with how websites work and I created a really simple guide here to go over the process of domain registration and website hosting for this example.
I picked two of the big companies out there godaddy.com and Niagahoster.
I use both of them personally and GoDaddy is most popular for domains but all of these companies generally offer all services so GoDaddy has hosting domains website builders and Niagahoster does the same exact thing.
I haven’t had a good experience with GoDaddy hosting which is why I’ve stayed away from them from a hosting perspective but I’ve had no problems with them just for a domain registration
So when you register your domain with GoDaddy you’re gonna get access to these DNS settings for each domain that you register and then when you sign up with a hosting company like Niagahoster they’re gonna send you their DNS servers so you sign up with your Niagahoster account and they’re gonna send you likely to DNS servers.
All you have to do is go into your GoDaddy settings and plugin your Niagahoster DNS servers that are literally all you need to get set up with your website and the DNS server its function is to translate your domain into an IP address so all it does is when you as the visitor go to a website you know you open up your browser and type in a domain name it’s going to send that domain name to a DNS server where it maps it to the IP address of your web host.
That’s where it gets all the files from so, that’s how the website is downloaded. Hopefully, that wasn’t too confusing for you and I hope that this guide is simple enough to understand but really all you need to remember is that when you register your domain wherever you register the domain you should have access to DNS settings.
Whatever you put within those DNS settings that are going to define where your website is hosted now before we go into the hosting packages we have to figure out what your goal is you might be one to do one of many things so the first questions that you’re gonna want to ask yourself.
Do you want to create one website only or if we project into the future?
Mean two or three or does it mean maybe 10 or 20 and then you have to think about the software that you’re gonna use to build the website are you building from scratch with HTML do you want to use a content management system like WordPress.
Are you just going to use templates or a builder offered by the web hosting?
A company like Niagahoster or GoDaddy or are you planning on doing custom development and maybe even code with a higher-level language like PHP or JavaScript and last but not least consider the traffic of the website so if you’re just starting out a website it’s not gonna have high traffic.
It’s gonna take a while to build up the traffic and then even for established websites they might be low traffic if they’re local.
then on the other end of the spectrum you might have a global oriented website based around a hobby or a general interest that applies to people worldwide and in those cases once you get to a point of high traffic your web hosting options are gonna change and I have to point this out
You’ll see a lot of people that leave bad reviews for cheaper web hosting companies.
There are people that don’t consider the beginners experience you know you can always upgrade.
There’s nothing wrong with starting with a cheaper package and upgrading down the road when you start getting more traffic.
If you still have any doubt you can read review niagahoster on the net.
