Your domain name is probably the most important part of your business. It is what customers/users will be typing into their address bar as they search for your website. In the past, we were limited to .com and .co.uk domain names, but now, a whole new selection have been made available. Securing a domain is very straightforward and inexpensive nowadays. To get your domain, navigate to a domain purchasing website. Throughout this book, we will be creating a website through GoDaddy as they offer reasonable pricing and managing additional services such as increasing server space and creating professional email addresses are straightforward.
Domain Websites
GoDaddy – www.godaddy.com
Names - http://www.names.co.uk/domain-names
123-reg - https://www.123-reg.co.uk/domain-names/
BuyDomains - http://www.buydomains.com/
NameCheap - https://www.namecheap.com/
List of all domain extensions available at GoDaddy - http://www.dnselect.com/list-of-all-domain-extensions-available-at-godaddy/
Enter your business name or preferred web address here and click ‘Search Domain’. The shorter your domain name and more popular the keyword means the more expensive the domain name will be. The .com domains tend to be the most expensive, but a .co.uk domain can be very reasonable.
When you find the domain you’re looking for, click the select option to add it to your cart. On the following page, you will choose the extras you want. The make it private and website builder extras are irrelevant at the moment so just leave these as ‘No thanks’.
To set up hosting on your website so that visitors can actually access your web address, select Economy from the Linux Web Hosting option.
To set up a professional email for your website such as hello@empatus.com or info@mybusiness.co.uk through GoDaddy, select the email essentials package from the dropdown as shown below. This will cost £2.99 per month as it is hosted with Microsoft Exchange. Alternatively, you can set up your own free email addresses through the cPanel.
Press continue to cart and you will see a summary of your products, the price may be overwhelming at first as it calculates it as a one off payment. If you would prefer to pay monthly for your website then change the options from 12 months to 1 month. This does work out to be more expensive in the long run but if you do not want to commit to a website for a long period of time, it’s definitely worth it to pay monthly, as you can cancel your services at any time.
The total cost to set up emaptus is only £18.88. The domain name is now registered for a year and the email essentials and economy hosting will be charged for each month. This is the final and only cost unless you to choose to purchase premium themes or plugins, or have to upgrade your server space to handle more visitors. Click ‘Proceed to Checkout’ and continue to enter your payment details.