In todays business world, no matter what you’re doing, people generally expect to be able to find you on the web. If you’re not on the web, you dont exist – at least as far as the majority who have now given up trawling the Yellow Pages are concerned. In future, this trend is only going to grow, with generation Y becoming an increasingly powerful force in the market and Baby Boomers’ taking to the web in ever greater numbers.
And so, with this in mind, when should you start thinking about your website and what should you be looking for in a web designer? In the first of this two part article we’ll look at the basics of establishing a website – domain registration and hosting. In our next newsletter we’ll help you through the minefield of web design.
Whats in a Domain Name?
Your domain name, part of a websites’ URL is the address and how people will get to your website. Whilst domain names are unique, for each a number of different TLD’s or Top Level Domains is available – this is the last part of the URL – for most Australia-based websites ‘.com.au’. Others include .com .org. .net etc etc
Where possible we recommend people starting new businesses make searching for a domain name the first consideration. There’s nothing worse than having registered your business, perhaps had a logo or other branding concepts developed and in some instances even registered a trademark only to find that neither your business name nor even anything remotely resembling it is available.
Luckily for our Australia based clients .com.au TLD’s are only issued to businesses with an ABN and which are closely or exactly related to their business whereas with .com TLD’s, no such protection exists resulting in domain name speculation. We know of a few businesses who have had to fork out hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a domain name similar to or the same as their business name.
As such, if you intend to trade or advertise on the web, it pays to ensure a suitable domain name is available BEFORE starting your business.
If you would like advice or assistance with searching for or registering a domain name, Propeller can help. You can even perform the search and register it yourself.
Finding a good Host
Once you’ve got your domain name, you will need a hosting account for your website and email. Hosting accounts vary massively in specification, traffic allowance, the number of email accounts, the software you can run on them and so on.
Once you have the hosting account, you’ll need to configure your domain name’s DNS so that it knows where to find your hosting account and thus your website. You’ll also need to set up the email accounts you want to use with your domain name i.e. info@propellerglobal.com.
The biggest mistake we find many customers make is being trapped into packages which appear to offer good value, some offering ‘instant websites’ or ‘free domain names’, for example. Generally these offers are designed to lock you into a hosting package which may not offer such good value after all and in a lot of cases you never actually own the domain name and if you choose to take your hosting elsewhere, the registrar will charge royally to release the domain name. Additionally, such ‘instant websites’ offered are likely to be common templates, poorly coded and pretty average in the design department.
In other cases, organisations get stuck with hosting packages that offer a very limited number of email accounts or with very small traffic allowances – and excessive fees for exceeding these allowances.
Another mistake we’ve found clients make is in registering domain names only to find themselves having to configure DNS and manage hosting and email accounts – a daunting task for the non tech-savvy.
Good web designers should be able to provide hosting or at least offer advice as to which hosting packages are suitable for your requirements and your planned website.
Propeller are an iCann registered domain name reseller and hosting provider. We can search for and register your preferred domain name, set up your hosting and manage the email accounts and DNS configuration for you – all included in our fixed pricing schedule.
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