Ready to have your own little property on the web, namely a website to call your own? Well, a number of options are available to you. Most first-time website owners prefer not to dish out any of their own money before being confident that it will not go to waste.

Blogging Platform Websites

You can hop on over to any one of the blogging platforms like WordPress, Live Journal or BlogSpot and get a ‘website’ of your own. The main downside, however, to that would be that the amount of control you have over the operations of your website are very ‘aesthetic’ to say the least.

Other Websites That Provide Free Hosting

Other sites like Yola.com and Weebly.com offer a greater range of features that are under your control. However, most will still not allow you to maintain your own domain name as this requires extra expenses on behalf of the free hosting company. Building a business website on one of these free platforms is a very bad idea as they yell ‘not trustworthy’ right from the first impression to prospective clients. Potential clients would not want to engage in the services of a business that is not financially stable to provide a clean and professional self-hosted website as the entry point for the web to their business. Your company’s website is an extremely crucial part of your marketing strategy and it better be in top condition.

At the end of the day, free web hosting and domains like those at the above listed sites are not the best route at all if you need a website that shows off your business or services to others in a professional and adept manner. Furthermore, no matter how much you develop your site by adding your personal touch and web content, customizing it with exclusive themes, etc, it still doesn’t actually belong to you. The domain name will always be xxx.wordpress.com or xxx.blogspot.com. If you want to create a good impression on your potential readers, that’s definitely a no-no.

It can be worth the effort to look into purchasing your own private domain name and hosting package with well-known hosting companies like HostGatoror HostMonster.

Buying a Domain Name

Buying your own domain name can be a huge step towards developing a website for yourself, your company, or any other purpose. It is wisest to opt for a personal domain name rather than a free one from other ISP providers.

Why Get Your Own Domain Name

Here are some prime reasons:

• Easier and more convenient for people to locate you ( It’s easier to remember xzyinsurance.com than xxx.yolasite.com)
• It reflects a more professional business attitude
• The name is yours to keep for several years to come
• You can move your domain name to any other ISP for hosting whenever you want
• It is easier to get listed with and rank high in search engines

It is a better idea not to obtain a free ISP domain name as your web address will then evolve each time the ISP is changed. Furthermore, you risk having your web site completely deleted if you don’t remember to log in once every ninety days at least. With such websites, some of the top search engines overlook your site and do not list it at all.

Choose a Reputable Domain Name Seller

Not all domain name companies are created alike. Make sure to opt for popular companies like GoDaddyand NameCheap. That way you can rest assured that you’re being offered competitive rates at par with market rates. The quality of customer service with renowned companies like these is always reliable and top quality. You can be sure to have minimal down time. Extra features like site back up and automatic re-store if hosting system fails come with the package without you having to ask.

Make your website dreams a success with a personal domain name and the backing of a well-known domain company such as GoDaddyor NameCheap.

Hosting

Once you’ve figured out what your website hosting requirements will be, you should make a list of all the features the hosting plan should include as well as the type of hosting. Now, the challenge is picking the right hosting company for the job. There are literally millions of choices out there. And if you get stuck with the wrong choice, your website dreams can turn into disaster within a few short weeks.

The first step is to conduct a search for ‘web hosting’ on a search engine. The wide number of options this yields will confuse you even more. You might want to search for a hosting company that specializes in the type of hosting you require, such as hosting for dedicated servers. Colleagues, forums, and friends in the field can be really good sources of advice, recommendation, and information.

As you narrow down the list, evaluate every option against your criteria, list of features, and budget. A very important task in this process is verifying whether or not the companies you’re hoping to buy from are trustworthy and reliable. You can do this by researching the company’s reputation, reading reviews from its past customers, and even calling for a consultation with the company.

Some Established Hosting Companies

Certain companies are always at the top of their game, whatever field it may be. The following 3 companies are the big players in the field of hosting. Each one of them are award-winning services with a long and established reputation in the business. Their quality of customer service is outstanding. And they’ve got hundreds of testimonials to prove it.

• HostGator
• HostMonster
• HostPapa

We wish you luck in finding your dream hosting company. By the time you’ve worked through the several questions highlighted in this article, you’ll have a good idea of which hosting company suits you best. Try to sign up for a trial period at first, if you can.

Installing and Setting Up WordPress

Once you’ve purchased your own domain name and hosting, you’ll need a content management platform such as WordPress where you can easily edit and update your website’s content from. You can install WordPress manually using the long-winded instructions kindly provided by WordPress on here. 

One-Click Installation of WordPress

The easier and quicker method of doing this is through Fantastico, which is a library of commercial scripts used for automated installation of web applications onto websites.

Fantastico is a part of most hosting packages, especially those from hosting providers like HostGator. You’ll have WP up and running within minutes with this. Follow the steps below to complete this process:

1. Log onto the cPanel account on your site and click on the icon reading ‘Fantastico.’ On this interface, scroll to the Blogs part and click on ‘WordPress.’
2. Check the information appearing on your screen for the version you’re about to install. If it is up-to-date, select ‘Ne Installation.’
3. This takes you to the first step of 3 in the 1-click install process. Here, you will choose the folder you wish to save WordPress to and other blog details. Make choices about installation location, admin access data, base configurations, and e-mail account configurations next following the directions provided on-screen.
4. When you’ve filled all that out, click ‘Install WordPress’ at bottom of screen.
5. Verify correctness of information provided and click ‘Finish Installation.’ A fresh new database will be created for you by Fantastico where all necessary files relevant to WP will be stored.
6. When you have completed, a confirmatory notice with all installation details will be sent to your e-mail.

You can see how automated and well-instructed the process of installing WordPress can be when using Fantastico. If you’re new to web navigation, Fantastico is definitely the route to take to avoid messing up your WP installation.

Website Tracking and Statistics Tools

Webmasters are known to track their web traffic and other relevant statistics like a hawk. After all, those figures show how well your website is doing in achieving its original purpose. Is it attracting enough new targets?  If not, why? Monitoring your website’s statistics is a crucial part of any successful website’s journey.

Common Website Tracking Tools

When you start out with web stats monitoring, you might want to test the waters with free tools available online such as StatCounter and Google Analytics. Using such tools, you can ghost track your website’s statistics using a hit counter that is quite simple to configure and other real-time details. The analytics engines work by inserting a small code section onto your webpage that will analyze and monitor all of the website’s visitors in real time.

Getting Extra Features: Paid Web Tracking Tools

Knowing how your site is performing is crucial. This allows you to get a good idea of what works, what doesn’t and what “trends” will attract readers to your website each day. The only way you can hit the bull’s eye with this task is having an excellent statistics package configured in the back. It can, however, be extremely tricky to figure out which package is most suitable for your site. If your website is important to your business, you will want to invest in a paid tracking service. We’ve described some excellent paid web tracking services below:

1. Get Clicky

Recommended by thousands of happy users out there, Get Clicky should be your first option when seeking a paid web tracking tool. Being much simpler than the complicated Google Analytics interface, Get Clicky tracks all outbound links, downloads, video analytics, Flash and Java Script events, and every single visitors’ details. It also provides you with much deeper information about every guest you get. The numerous extra features of Get Clicky make it totally worth the extra few dollars each month.

2. AWStats

This is a service that is often pre-installed in web hosting packages. It can also be downloaded for personal use with your individual server. It’s a fantastic detective for those nasty bandwidth thieves, monitors anyone hot-linking files out of your site, and goes into much more depth with regards to the referrer site’s details.

Hit the ground running right from day one with a successful site using a proper paid web tracking package. As your website grows, you will want to invest in extra tracking features.