Our Domain Registration and Web Hosting Guide for Clients

Posted by Jay Harley on December 16, 2009 * Comments(0)

Registering a Domain Name

The first thing you will want to do is to setup a domain name — this will be your URL, or www.yourcompany.com address where everyone can find you.  There are various domain name extensions, such as ‘.com’, ‘.net’,’.us’, ‘.org’, and others, such as an individual country extension ‘.uk’, which generally have to be purchased by a resident of the country corresponding to the extension.

We suggest that for-profit companies purchase a .com and/or a .net domain name.  For non-profit companies, we suggest “.org” addresses.

A domain name is purchased at a registrar, or a company which handles the registration of that domain name.  You can own a domain name for a period of time, such as (minimum) 1 year, or 10 years, for example.

Our Recommendation: GoDaddy Registrar

Our recommended registrar is GoDaddy.com, as they have very affordable prices, as well as good domain management through their website.  They are also very good at sending updates when your domain name is about to expire.

Partner Special: Click on this link for a sale rate of $7.49 per year for “.com” domains.

Web Hosting

The web host is the company which maintains the computers (called web servers) on which your website files reside.  When a user types in www.yourcompanyname.com into a browser, that browser is directed to your web host’s servers, where your website files are subsequently served, or sent, over the Internet, to that user’s computer.

Important Qualities of a Web Host

  • Uptime — This refers to a record of the websites they host being on-line continuously.  Uptime is the opposite of downtime, when a company’s servers (and therefore your website) may not be accessible.  Therefore a company should have 99% (or greater) uptime.
  • Support Availability — It is important to be able to reach the web host via telephone.  If, for example, your site is inaccessible for any reason, of there are problems of any nature, the web host must be contacted immediately, and telephone is of course the best way.
  • Accessibility – The web host’s servers (especially their database server) should be very responsive, serving pages almost instantaneously upon request.
  • Features & Server-Side Languages — The web host’s features should complement that of the development team’s preferred tools.  As a team we like to use the scripting language PHP (version 5) and the MySQL database. We are also fond of the cPanel interface for managing websites which is provided by many hosts.
  • Unlimited Email Accounts & Multiple domains — Any good web host nowadays should offer you unlimited email accounts (ex: jane@yourcompany.com), as well as the ability of handle multiple domains and sub-domains, from the same hosting account.  So if you want to host both yourdomain1.com and yourdomain2.com on the same hosting account, you should be able to do so.
  • Storage Space — Many web hosts now offer unlimited hosting space for websites.  We always look for, at least 10GB of storage space with hosting accounts to allow for sound files, video, and offering downloads to users.

For web applications that will require a great deal of custom server-side processing scripts in languages such as Java, Perl, C,  etc, as well as command-line access, we recommend setting up a virtual dedicated server (a.k.a virtual private server), or a dedicated server.  This should allow for root access and the ability to install custom scripts, application servers, or other technology.

Our Recommendation: Blue Host (U.S. & North America), 1 & 1 (International) and GoDaddy

For U.S. and North American-based start-up websites and small businesses, we recommend Blue Host.  Their hosting packages are very affordable, and we have had only good experiences with calling live support, and the responsiveness of the servers.

Sign up with Blue Host Here.

For International Customers (Europe, Asia, etc) we recommend 1 & 1 Hosting.

For companies that are creating social-networking applications or larger projects which will require automated processes and server-side API integration, we recommend a virtual dedicated server package (VDS) from GoDaddy. While being known for their domain registration services (see above), we find their VDS packages are also quite good.  We prefer the Linux (Ubuntu) OS:

Sign up for a VDS package here

Connecting the Domain Name to the Web Host:

Once you have setup both the domain name and the hosting account, you will need to ‘point’ this domain name to the host.  If you are using GoDaddy as your registrar, and BlueHost as your web host, then you would need to follow GoDaddy’s procedure (instructions here), in order to point your Name Servers to BlueHost.  We can of course do this for you if you send us the “welcome” emails that you have received from your registrar and your hosts.

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Jay Harley is the CEO and web architect of Heaven Interactive. As a technologist, Jay specializes in creating business productivity software and offering clients high-level media consulting services. Before founding Heaven Interactive, Jay led a double life as a web consultant and MFA New Media instructor at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. At AAU, he enthusiastically developed several courses in web application design and scripting, and enjoyed daily interaction with design students, offering guidance, support, and camaraderie as a media professional. Jay is now squarely focused on providing Web 3.0 solutions to businesses in the form of collaboration and presentation software, by utilizing the power of the "Web as a Platform."



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