Buying a domain name and web hosting is a very simple process however, with all the competition out there at the moment it can be very confusing and time consuming. There are a couple things you have to ask yourself before you buy:

• “Have you chosen an available domain name?”
• “Will the website contain lots of hosted content including images/video/audio?”
• “How many people are you expecting to visit your website?”

A Brief Intro:

If you are starting your own website for yourself, your blog or business, you need a name. The amount of people that don’t even think to check whether their domain is available is incredible. One way to check is by going to WHO.IS and seeing if anyone else already has ownership of the name you want. If you are creating a small website with pictures and expect a small amount of visitors, you don’t need to buy an expensive hosting package. Remember, you can host large video files for free on websites such as Vimeo or YouTube. If videos from video hosting sites are ‘embedded’ onto your website, they won’t hog your bandwidth. If it’s expected that only a few hundred people will visit your site every month, you won’t require a large hosting package either, the cheaper affordable packages will do the job just fine.

I highly recommend TSOHOST to purchase domain names and web hosting from because of the price, personal customer service. I used to recommend HostGator because they were well known in the US and had ‘chat support’ but since TSOHOST have upgraded their user interface and got bigger over the years, I am convinced that this company is the one I’ll always recommend from now on. They always deliver, more so than the big players. I have been with several hosting companies now and TSOHSOT have never let me down.

10 Steps to get you live online:

1. Click here to visit TSOHOST
2. Click the ‘Web Hosting’ tab up the top of their website.
3. Click ‘Order’ on either the ‘Lite, Standard or Pro’ package depending on your requirements. Lite or Standard are usually sufficient for most websites/blogs, you can always upgrade later.
4. Again, click ‘Order Now’ on the shopping cart page.
5. Check the Radio box ‘This is a brand new domain, please register it for me’, then enter in your URL for your website/blog and “Click to Continue > >”
6. If the status is ‘Domain Available’, tick the check box and “Click to Continue > >”
7. Choose your billing cycle, ignore the addons and ‘Update Cart’
8. You can select ID Protection for £1 that prevents your contact details from being displayed on the WHOIS directory. This applies to all .com/.net/.org domains. To continue, ‘Update Cart’
9. Type “TENPERCENT” into the promotional code box and click “Validate Code > >” to receive a 10% recurring discount. If you are buying a Pro package use the code “OCT-FORUM2-SPECIAL” for a £35 discount.
10. Click “Checkout” fill in your details and click “Complete Order”

Fin! You’re now online with your own piece of real estate on the internet. So what next? You may now want to install a blog or website content management system onto your new hosting to get you up and running quickly and easily. I’ll write an update on how to do this shortly using TSOHOST. Please subscribe for future updates. However, if you’d like free 1 on 1 tuition, please contact me for a limited time only.