With everything ready, it’s time to pay for two things at least: one, a host or WordPress plan; and two, a domain (your website’s URL)
Choosing a Host
This is very simple: imagine you’re going to rent a floor in a building to run your magazine.
That floor is going to have a nice entrance, desktops, workers and a huge printing machine.
A “host” would be the building, and the space you rent would be that floor where your magazine is going to function.
So! When choosing a host, you are to consider, mainly:
- how much will they charge for “x” amount of space?
- does your floor shares the “power-line” with another floor? This is merely illustrative for you to comprehend the difference between a dedicated server – which is highly expensive and for huge websites- and the other options, which differ from host to host.
- how is the support? If the power runs out, will anyone help you?
You’ll always hire a host, even when you develop a website with places such as WordPress. For example, even if you open a “free blog” at WordPress.com, you’ll be choosing a host: the company “Auttomatic.”
Once you’ve rented your host:
- If you’ve chosen to have a blog at WordPress.com, you can begin for free and then see the plans available. In any case, you don’t need to install anything.
- If you’ve chosen another option, you’ll need to install WordPress.
Finally, download and install a plugin to set your website in “Coming Soon” Mode.
Choosing a Domain
A domain is the URL, the internet address. It has two parts: the name and the extension (also known as “TLD.”) For instance, my domain is “laly.blog”, whereas “laly” is the name and “blog” the extension.
If you choose to begin with a free blog at WordPress.com, you’ll be able to choose only the name. If I were to choose one with mine, the result would be “laly.wordpress.com.”
Of course, you can purchase a domain later, and assign the new address. This doesn’t affect the content of your website which is storage in your “floor.”
At any host, you’ll be able to register a domain. If you don’t find the domain you want, you can seek for it in another places and then “link” (sort of speak) your domain to your floor.
