Registering a domain name? I know nothing.

Chop Logic

Hey, so I took a web design class this semester and designed a website. I have all the html written, I just need a site to host it.

I was just going to contact godaddy and register it with them, but I figured a bunch of people have experience with this on here so maybe someone could recommend something or let me know what to do/ what not to do.

It's just text and images, I may get a video or two up there at some point. It's a portfolio site (I'm an artist), not a blog or anything like that.

Thanks.

StrifeRaZoR

Well, GoDaddy is pretty good when it comes to registering a domain name. The domain name itself is pretty cheap, but the hosting space and abilities of the host is the expensive part. I believe I was paying roughly $30 per year for a .com and 20gb of storage, 200 email accounts, and 20 sub-domains on a Linux server at GoDaddy.

Basically, here's the steps you need to take:

1. Find a solid .com name for your site and apply at GoDaddy.
2. Should take less than 3 or 4 days for it to get approved if it's still open. After it is approved, you can choose a hosting option. Since you'll be doing videos and images, you may need to shop around for size.
3. After you purchase your hosting package, it's pretty instant. You can start uploading to your FTP and doing pretty much whatever you want.

The GoDaddy FTP acts just like a regular FTP. You can use Internet Explorer, Firefox, or a 3rd party FTP client like CuteFTP or Filezilla to upload to the host. You can set up users, permissions, all that jazz. It uses basic FTP structure. index.html should be at the base of your FTP, and then you can go from there with subfolders and other pages.

Improvolone

I've heard mixed things about GoDaddy and generally good (and affordable!) things about HostGator.

Jasconius

I've used Godaddy for years and have had not a single complaint.

*edit*

Oh, website hosting? Yeah no. Godaddy is a bad web host.

But for just domain names they are fine.

Fletcher

Yeah i'd recommend pretty much anything other than godaddy for hosting, and when it come to domain names they often make it difficult to wrest control of the name back from them

I have been with godaddy for a year and a half now, and I have had constant promises from them that they are "working on improving their services" but absolutely no progress has been made in reliability or security.

My site is down for about an hour every day and they refuse to explain why, and I have been hacked numerous times due to flaws in their hosting systems. I'm not a security wizard or anything, but I definitely protected my site, and it was their supposedly secure hosting servers that caused my site to be targeted (three times, the last of which can be read about here).

Personally I'd recommend looking around for things like "top ten webhosts" lists, then comparing several lists to see which sites are repeatedly recommended

Improvolone

http://lifehacker.com/5545568/five-best-personal-web-hosts

KidDynamite

I'm curious on a good hosting as well. I love hearing actual user reviews, instead of the "GoDaddy cured me of cancer" reviews from their site.

Dreamhost? Anyone used them?

MrDelish

I work at Bluehost and we're pretty good. I'd say Dreamhost is likely about the same as us reliability-wise except with some more system resources per account since their price is higher, though I've not heard anyone say "I'm leaving/coming from Dreamhost" like I've heard endless amounts of people say "I'm leaving GoDaddy and you guys are a million times better."

L Ron Howard

What I've done for my personal web development experience is made my own server.
I went out and spent $250 on a cheap pre-made e-machines (I know, laugh it up). I then registered my own domain through GoDaddy, and followed about a billion documents that are all over the internet on how to do set up my firewalls and everything so that the outside world can see it.

Why not consider doing something like that?

DeathPrawn

For domain registration, I'm a big fan of Hover (http://www.hover.com). Their standard dot-com domains are $15 instead of the standard $10-ish that GoDaddy and everyone else charges, but that includes privacy registration, good customer service, and a domain settings UI that doesn't make you want to kill yourself.

For hosting, I personally use Hole In The Wall Hosting (http://www.holeinthewallhosting.com). They're dirt cheap (I pay $10/year. Not per month, per YEAR.) and their customer service is fantastic (every time I've contacted them, I've gotten a response back from a real human being within an hour). I don't know how well they'd be able to handle getting major amounts of traffic, but for small projects they're fantastic. I'm running four or five smaller sites off of my account, including both my personal portfolio site and sites I'm hosting for clients. If you're interested, I have a referral link that gives you their basic plan for $10 instead of $20: http://www.holeinthewallhosting.com/i.php?l=56499422009061216478590731 (hate to be that guy posting a referral link, but it literally is 50% off).

vadoff

DeathPrawn wrote: »

For domain registration, I'm a big fan of Hover (http://www.hover.com). Their standard dot-com domains are $15 instead of the standard $10-ish that GoDaddy and everyone else charges, but that includes privacy registration, good customer service, and a domain settings UI that doesn't make you want to kill yourself.

For hosting, I personally use Hole In The Wall Hosting (http://www.holeinthewallhosting.com). They're dirt cheap (I pay $10/year. Not per month, per YEAR.) and their customer service is fantastic (every time I've contacted them, I've gotten a response back from a real human being within an hour). I don't know how well they'd be able to handle getting major amounts of traffic, but for small projects they're fantastic. I'm running four or five smaller sites off of my account, including both my personal portfolio site and sites I'm hosting for clients. If you're interested, I have a referral link that gives you their basic plan for $10 instead of $20: http://www.holeinthewallhosting.com/i.php?l=56499422009061216478590731 (hate to be that guy posting a referral link, but it literally is 50% off).

Hell no.

I paid for 1 year at holeinthewall, yet I was charged without any email notification whatsoever prior to an autorenew, and without any email notification afterwards that I was charged. I would never have even caught it unless I happened to be reviewing my bank statements that day. After contacting the owner, she told me off, and said that I should have known what I was signing up for and refused to refund me. How unbelievably shady!

Pass on this hosting, or you'll surely regret it like I did.