What You Need to Know Before You Get a Website

If you're thinking of having a website, STOP.

Just think of starting a business. First you need a business name. Then you need to rent land for where you are going to build your store. Then you need to tell people where your business is.

For the next step you can hire an architect to design your store and then have a construction crew build it. Or you could get a prefab structure, put it up very simply, and then have someone do some painting and buy furniture.

This is what you have to know when you want a website:

You have to get a domain name. (A domain name is like a business name but does not need to be the name of your business.) It could be www.mysiteisbetterthanyoursite.com or anything — www.moreshoes.com

First you have to buy the name. You can buy it from Go Daddy.

Go Daddy is well-known because of all the money the company spends for Superbowl ads. And Go Daddy rates are cheaper than a lot of places.

But I've never had a good experience with Go Daddy. I've never had an experience where someone who uses Go Daddy hasn't had problems.

At Miller Mosaic we buy our domain names from Register.com

So you've bought your domain name.

Now you have to figure out where your website is going to live (where you're renting space).

You have two options:

You can go with a web hosting company.
You can go with a person — designer or whatever — who says "I will host your website."

I do not recommend the second option — hosting with an individual.

Here's the reason why:

If you go with a big company, if it is a good company you have 24/7 support. And, yes, if you violate the terms of service the company might shut you down. But that's a minor consideration as long as you stay within the rules.

However, if you go with just a person, suddenly human emotions enter in. Something happens and the person may hold your site hostage. You don't want that to happen.

So you rent your website space from a web hosting company.

The next step is you have to tell people where your business is.

What this means in website terms: You have to go to where you bought the domain name — Go Daddy or Register.com or something else. And there's a spot where you have to point your domain name to your new web hosting company.

Then once the name is pointed to where the site will be hosted, you build your website on the host server of your web hosting company.

You could hire a web designer/web developer to design an entire website from scratch. But that could take months and months and lots of money.

Or you could use what Miller Mosaic recommends — use WordPress, which is a Content Management System.

This is like buying a prefab structure. It goes up really quickly and you know everything works. You could put it up yourself or hire someone to do it.

Then it needs a little touchup work — some furniture and to paint the outside storefront. You can get someone to do that custom — what's called a custom theme if you want to pay for it. Or you can get an already made theme and customize it from that. Either you do it or someone else does it.

These are the steps:

Buy the domain name.
Buy the host server — actually you are renting space from a web hosting company.
Point the domain name to the host server.
Create the website in whichever manner you choose.

That's it. So don't get confused by technical jargon or anything else.

Know what you are getting into before you hire anyone to build your website.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic LLC. Get the free information "8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes" and "Social Media Marketing Does Not Magically Work; You Have to Work It" at www.facebook.com/millermosaicsocialmedia