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How-To Kick Start your own website

October 10th, 2008 · 17 Comments

Lot of people call me up asking me that they want a website done but are clueless how to go about it… So here are my 2 bits

  • Domain Name

    Do you know what you want your website to be called? Figure it out first and then check if that name is present or not. Most of the domains are gone so it mite take a while before you finalize the domain name you want.Go for a .COM domain if not then a .IN but choice is your there are lot of exotic domain extensions available like .ME, .Asia, .CH and so on for every country in this world.

    It would cost any where between 10USD for a .COM to 15USD for a .IN to 100+USD for the exotic domain extensions.

    You can register your domains at  one of the million websites offering you the service but i prefer indialinks or godaddy or yahoo domains.

    To know about all the top level extensions available Click here or here

  • Hosting

    Once you register a domain name comes the task of giving it a home or host it on one of the millions of websites which offer these services. Again every hosting company will also allow you to buy your domain and most of the times for FREE if you host it with them.

    You have two types of hosting Windows Server and Linux Server. You will have to go for Linux which is cheap (since linux servers have all open source software where as Windows servers need all licensed software)

    Hosting can cost you from 6USD/Month to NNNUSD/Month. Every hosting company has a return money back policy if you are not satisfied.

Once  you are done with buying your Domain name and hosting it you are good to go!

One piece of advice host your mail@domain with Google. Its free, gives you 6GB space, its fantastic and has the same GMail interface. [Click here]

Some companies which offer the above services

Have i missed anything here? If you are using any hosting service and happy with it Please comment about it along with the link. Thanks

Click here for all the free Open Source Software for your website.

Cheers!

Tags: How To's · Tech · Website

17 responses so far ↓

  • 1 ahmed // Oct 10, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    next would be suggestions for a good cms solution

  • 2 Nishit // Oct 10, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    When it comes to hosting I always prefer to host with a co. that provides cPanel. cPanel is one of the best control panel. Its so easy to manage your site if you have that installed. One more thing that I look out for with my hosting is SSH access. Its of gr8 use if you prefer to do everything from command line.
    If you are setting up the website for the first time, buy the smallest package available and gradually upgrade as per your usage of diskspace and bandwidth.
    As of now I have taken a tiny package with ASmallOrange.com for $25/year which provides cPanel and SSH access.

  • 3 Abhishek Thakkar // Oct 10, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    a) I’d have put in more reviews of hosting places, like dreamhost , bluehost which are personal blog friendly compared to amazon servers for a full fledged website, to something like nearlyfreespeech.net where you pay as you use

    b) I’d also have put in a link to opensourcecms.com to checkout the various CMS’s and given a list of popular basic ones

  • 4 Loknath Swain // Oct 10, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    Kunal, your post is quite informative. But it can be more useful if you elaborate more on OpenSource related subjects. Many do not know about OpenSource. You can educate them.

  • 5 Moraji // Oct 10, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    Kool…to make everyone get into web world.

  • 6 Sreelaj John // Oct 10, 2008 at 7:53 pm

    I would like to add something to the domain-name selection. As a startup, with minimal hits and references, one cannot possibly assume a fair search engine ranking for your website. My suggestion is to go for a “weired name”. Preferably something that does not exist in the dictionary. The chances of getting a .com address is better in this case, plus you will have your website listed in the search engine in a few days.

  • 7 Manan // Oct 11, 2008 at 1:29 am

    Someone asked about CMS.

    Drupal: NO. It sucks and is the worst at sucking too.
    Wordpress: Yes. (Amazing SEO capabilities and yes I know of a company that charges 1L for a website and uses WordPress as their back-end.)
    Joomla: Hmmm OK.

    I would suggest starters and people who do not have a technical team in place to use Cpanel, even if you have a technical team, use Cpanel. it will help them and they will bless you for it.

  • 8 Reeteshinator // Oct 12, 2008 at 3:13 am

    Thanks for the nice info.

    x10hosting provides free and premium hosting.. well if its free, its less than 30USD right? have been hosting my college magazine on there.

    And have to say, it has been quite un-predictable , Every 12th is the time when we publish the newsletters to make people come and see, and on one 11th the servers went down.

    Other than a few small hitches, its pretty good! I mean its like a complete hosting place, has no ads either.

    Other than that, have been doing some offline experiments lately, thanks to your dreamhost space, it will get some online experience soon too 😀

  • 9 chhavi // Oct 12, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    I use Dreamhost and I’m pretty happy with it. I get my domain names from Indialinks.com or answerable.com – best value for money. I used to host with crazyhostguy.com but there were too many outages 😉

  • 10 Aditya Sengupta // Oct 13, 2008 at 8:31 pm

    My domain I bought through Google Apps. Pretty convenient since it sets up everything for you. I chose eNom over GoDaddy, which probably was a good thing since eNom’s domain manager has a nice, powerful interface and is easy to get to.

    As far as hosting goes, I use and recommend Expertrio- cPanel, Fantastico, great support, the works. CMS- WordPress, with a very customized theme. That’s the great thing about WordPress- you can use it as a regular Joe, or you can customize it to the hilt if you can deal with some PHP and JavaScript.

  • 11 Gaurav // Oct 13, 2008 at 11:14 pm

    Kunal,

    This is a great starting point for beginners. Here are a few additions.

    Tip 1: You can get .com domains on GoDaddy for as low as $6.95. To get this price, you’ll have to search for ‘Godaddy promo code’ on google and use the best code applicable to your order. This also works for renewals. A couple of dollars here or there don’t matter much when buying a domain name, but it makes a lot of difference when you have about 100 domains.

    Tip 2: If you know that you want to use and keep the domain, then try to buy it for multiple years in advance (say 2-3 yrs.) It is ‘rumored’ that your site’s credibility increases for Google and other SEs.

    Tip 3: Cheap hosting is good, but you must research on the provider if you don’t want to end up having frequent downtimes or lack of support from the provider. A good starting point to research for any hosting provider is webhostingtalk.com. They have a lot of reviews.

    Gaurav

  • 12 Ankit Jindal // Oct 19, 2008 at 2:41 am

    If you are looking for cheap, value for money hosting then 2gbhosting is good option.

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  • 14 Juzar // Nov 22, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    hey Kunal, thanks for the wonderful info. I however, have a few questions of my own :

    1) For a .in domain & hosting from indialinks, are the servers in India? Would the speed differ if I take a .com domain?

    2) Do we get database space in any basic package offered by the above or is it always charged extra?

    3) I yet don’t know about plugins and stuff, but can I yet host my .NET developed website on a linux server (I guess still not)…or a java developed site on a Windows server(I am sure there is a plugin to IIS, don’t know the names) ?

    Answers to the above would help a great deal.
    Thanks again.

  • 15 Kunal // Nov 22, 2008 at 8:14 pm

    Hi Juzar,
    Its not necessary to buy domain and hosting from the same company.

    If your target audience is going to be from India then it will make some difference in serving the pages… Frankly speaking it wouldnt matter if your site is going to serve a small audience base

    Database is not included in the basic packages. But there are hosting companies like Dreamhost.com where there is only one package and the Database is a part of it.

    .Net apps on linux nah 🙂 Java will though work on linux. you will have to find someone who will have Windows hosting. They are expensive though…

    Let me know if this helped…

    Cheers

  • 16 AJIT GUPTA // Mar 12, 2009 at 12:32 pm

    I am really thankful to you pertaining to the information you have provided for the domain name registration to the web hosting details. As you have written so clearly and beautifully that as a beginner I didn’t have to stress myself to understand the stuff. Once again THANK YOU.

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