Websites for Indie Authors – Where to Start, Part 2
Last time I introduced you to some of the more common terminology you’re going to confront when you start moving toward building a website. This time, we’re going to talk getting a domain name and selecting a hosting service.
Getting Your Domain Name
Getting a domain name is almost absurdly easy. One of the fastest routes is through one of the countless domain name registrars. These are companies that act as a kind of middleman between private citizens/businesses and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN does a lot of things, which you can read about here, but for our purposes they’re in control of making sure domain names work globally. Domain name registrars do the bureaucratic heavy lifting of keeping track of who controls what domain names and for how long, while ICANN deals with global coordination.
There are lots and lots of domain registrar services out there to choose from and hosting services have jumped into the game of providing domain names as well. In my opinion, you’re best served by buying (well, renting) your domain name through a well-established registrar, such as GoDaddy, independent of your hosting service. There are two reasons for this.
First, I’m normally an advocate of anything that streamlines technical processes, but hosting services do occasionally go out of business and you don’t want your domain name getting caught up in their problems. You can always load your website onto the servers of a new hosting service, if you have your domain name registered independently. Second, hosting services have no incentive to offer you a discount on registering a domain name. Registrars regularly offer discounts on registering a domain name and will sometimes offer significant discounts if you register a domain name for more than one year.
Selecting a Domain Name
This is where the process gets a little trickier. Selecting a domain name isn’t just about finding an available domain name. Unless the name of your book happens to be Ladies Panties, for example, the domain name ladiespanties.com probably isn’t going to be helpful to you, even if it is available. This is something you spend some serious time thinking about (more than I did when I picked my domain name oh so many years ago), because it goes to branding.
Are you setting up a website for you book, series of books, or for yourself? If your setting up a site for you book, the domain name needs to be the title or something pretty close. If you’re setting a site up for a series, the domain name should probably be the series name or the name of the central character. If you’re setting up a website for yourself, it should probably be your own name. Of course, those domain names may already be taken, so work up 3 or 4 alternatives/variation that you can search for, just in case someone else has your top choice.
If someone else already has your top choice and if you’re willing to spend some time/extra money, you can always try to negotiate with that person for control of the domain name. Personally, I think it’s faster and more expedient to simply choose a different name, but it is an option you can explore if only one domain can really work for you.
Hosting Services
There are a lot of things that go into choosing a hosting service, but there are a few key issues to consider.
Cost/Storage/Usage Caps
Hosting services range from the free to the pricey. The most expensive services are typically called unlimited packages or something very close to that. Getting an unlimited package typically means you get no cap on bandwidth usage and storage or caps with limits that are so high you’re unlikely to ever crack them. (Bandwidth, in this context, means the total amount of data that can be transferred/used by people accessing your site over a given period of time, usually a month.) Free hosting services generally place much more stringent caps on both storage provided and bandwidth allocated, but those caps are deceptive. The hosting service 000webhost.com, for example, offers 1500MB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth as the caps on its free hosting. Very, very few websites are likely to need more space or require more bandwidth than that, especially in the beginning. Free hosting services often offer paid versions that lift restrictions on bandwidth and storage, so you aren’t required to find a new hosting service if you find your site getting too popular for free hosting.
PHP and SQL Database Versions
I talked about what PHP and SQL are last time, so I talk about why they matter here. Not every hosting service supports both PHP and SQL, so that’s the first thing you’ll want to check on in the features list. If the service doesn’t support them, move on. Too many things you’re likely to want will depend on your hosting service supporting PHP scripts and SQL databases/management systems. If the service does support PHP and SQL, the next thing you’ll want to look at is which versions they support. The people who develop PHP scripts and applications that use SQL databases/management systems tend to build them and update them based on the latest stable version. At present, PHP is on version 5.4.13 or thereabout. MySQL, probably the most common SQL management system, is on version 5.6.1. Anything as far back as MySQL 5.1 is probably adequate for most websites, but the more recent the release version the fewer problems you’re likely to experience.
Uptime
Uptime is one of those terms that hosting services proudly trot out as they claim 99% uptime or 99.9% uptime. What they’re really saying here is that your website is likely to be available the vast majority of the time. Good hosting services tend to store files redundantly, so that even if one or even several of their servers fail, people can still access your website and, hence, you get very little downtime. If uptime is of critical importance to you, Netcraft provides a list of the most reliable hosting services.
Control Panel
Control panels come in a couple of flavors, but one of the most common control panels is known simply as cPanel. It’s an icon based control panel and you can get a live demo of it here. Just click on the CPANEL DEMO button under Domain Owners to see what you’re likely to encounter in the back end of your hosting service.
There are a variety of other concerns that may affect which hosting service you choose, from one click install features like Fantastico to email autoresponder support, but those considerations hinge on your intended use of the site. For now, to help you at least narrow your search, here is a recent Top 10 list of Free Hosting Services from Smart Media Tips and a Top 10 list of Paid Hosting Services from TopTenReviews.
