Many people think the domain name is the easiest issue of a web design project. You should think about your domain name and consider the following points.

Think Directories…

You probably want to advertise your business online and offline. A typical offline directory is the phone book or the yellow pages. If your company is called “Web Design CreatWeb” for example, you have a slight disadvantage because many directories list their entries by alphabet. Therefore, your entry won’t appear until the person looking for web design company has scrolled down to the letter “W“. Try to find a domain name / business name that starts with a letter that is at the start of the alphabet, this might give you an advantage with alphabetical directories – or simply add “A1-companyname” to the domain name – if the domain name is already taken for example.

Think Competitors…

If you are in the UK, make sure that the domain name you have chosen has not already been used in a very similar way. For example, if you intend to register www.edinburgh-chocolates.co.uk, you should check, if someone has not already registered www.edinburghchocolates.co.uk.

Think Readability…

If you want to register a domain name which consists of 2 or more words, you should register both versions – the words separated by a dash and the words all written together. This will avoid confusion and you make sure that no other business can register almost the same domain name. If your domain name is very long and consists of several words, it’s advisable to use the dash version as the main domain name you use for email addresses and advertising. The reason for this is that the name where the words are separated with dashes is a lot easier to read. Look at the following examples:

• www.creatweb-web-design.co.uk
• www.creatwebwebdesign.co.uk

If you have the first option printed on a car, people driving behind or past you will have a chance to read the name and hopefully remember it. The second option does not allow the brain to “stop” where a word normally ends. It’s awkward and people won’t remember the domain name as easily as the one with the dashes.

Domain names are not expensive! A .co.uk domain is only about £3.50 per year, a .com domain name costs about £10-£12 per year. We can register domain names for you if you wish.

You should also consider registering not only the .co.uk domain name, but also the .com and/or .net domain name. There are many other options available, such as .org, .org.uk, but they are meant for organisations, not for businesses. Registration of foreign domain names can be tricky, since some countries (such as Germany) require the technical contact for the domain name to be resident in Germany.

Think Spelling…

Try to find a short domain name which is easy to spell and easy to remember. This saves your clients having to type a very long domain name and the likelyhood to mis-spell the domain name is decreased too. If you decide to register a domain name which uses spelling which is different to what a client would expect, try to register the correct spelling as well. For example, for CreatWeb, we registered the following two names:

• www.creatweb.co.uk
• www.createweb.co.uk

Some people think that the words used in a domain name are important for search engines. Google or any other search engine have never really confirmed any such thing and if you are looking for a book store, such as Amazon, the domain name www.amazon.com does not contain the word “books” in the domain name at all.

Think Registrars…

Try not to register your domain name with the same company that looks after your web hosting. If you are unhappy with your web hosting support, you can simply get hosting elsewhere and point your domain name to the new host.

When you select a registrar, make sure you keep a note of the login details – username and password for your domain name. Please check if you are allowed to make changes to the Domain Name Server (DNS) settings. A good registrar will give you a comprehensive control panel that allows you to set up web forwarding, email forwarding, domain name locking, and DNS changes for example. There are registrars out there who will charge for simple changes like this. Try to avoid them. In general, moving a domain name from one registrar to another should be straightforward, but it never is. So make sure at the start you chose one that allows you or your web designer to look after your domain name. A good registar is 123-reg for example. They give you access to a comprehensive control panel and their support is pretty good too.

You have made up your mind that you will buy a domain name (or several) and take out web hosting from a web hosting provider.

First some considerations about the domain name(s)

Domain names do not have anything to do with web hosting and can be registered independently from the web hosting package. There are advantages if you have domain name and web hosting separate. For example, if the web hosting company you selected fails to provide a good service, all you need to do is find a better web hosting company and change the domain name settings. If you have domain name and web hosting with the same company and the company ceases trading, the last thing they think about is your web hosting or domain name. By having them separate, you are lowering the risk.

Disadvantages of registering the domain name with your web hosting company

Many web hosting companies offer to register domain names on your behalf. You think that your domain name is with your web hosting company, when, in fact, they register it through some third party registrar for you. You then receive an invoice in 2 years time from a company you never heard of, ignore it, and in the worst case lose your domain name.

Furthermore, in many cases, you will not get access to your domain name details nor will you be given a domain name control panel. Why do you need a domain name control panel? You need to be able to update the contact information for your domain name(s). If you move house for example and don’t update you domain name details and for some reason you need to change registrar etc. (or because your web hosting company ceased trading), you are in danger of losing your domain name because you cannot prove any longer that you are the owner of a certain domain name.

Also, a domain name control panel allows you to change email forwarding, web forwarding, and most importantly, the domain name servers, as well as some other settings. Check out www.123-reg.co.uk if you want to find out more about that.

Larger web hosting providers

Have a good look around online and check out different web hosting providers. There are many large web hosting companies out there such as 1and1. The advantage of registering with a large web hosting company is that they have hardly any downtime and their servers will be fast and up-to-date with the latest spam protection etc. Web hosting can be costly though if you reqister with a large web hosting company and if you want any additional services, you will have to pay for them. Support can be an issue too – you usually have to wade through hundreds of “Frequently Asked Questions” before you are allowed to send an email to their support team. You might also have to call a Premium Rate phone number if you need to speak to someone urgently. These rates can rate from £0.50 to £2 per minute (!) or even more. In most cases, you will receive excellent support, but in some cases you might be put through to an unexperienced person who has to speak to their supervisor to double-check things frequently – and all that at a premium rate!

The biggest problem with large web hosting providers is that if you miss the annual payment and do not react to their payment reminders – they will remove your website, your account, without further notice. In some cases, there will not be any chance to recover your website. With a large web hosting company, your website is just a number in a very large pool of websites. Their systems will be automated, if you don’t pay on time, your website is automatically removed!

Web hosting with a smaller web hosting provider

If you find a reliable smaller web hosting provider, chances are that you will receive a personal service, and support questions are answered with a lot more detail and a lot quicker. Most likely, you can call a UK landline or an 0845 or 0870 number which is a lot cheaper than £2 per minute. In some cases, you might be able to receive a reply to your support question – which you sent on a Saturday evening – that same night.

If you miss your payment with a smaller web hosting company, they will most likely call you personally and remind you on your late payment. They are keen to keep you as a customer and will probably not remove your account and your website immediately.

Web Statistics

Ask the web hosting company if they provide extensive website statistics. You want to know how many visitors have accessed your website, what search terms they used to find your website in Google and other search engines, how many visitors you have per day, on a certain day of the week, and so on. Please also ask if you can have access to the website log files. You might think that adding a website hit counter will provide enough information, but that is actually the most inaccurate method of counting your website visitors – and apart from that they look tacky and unprofessional. Your web hosting company should provide statistics that are at least as comprehensive as Webalizer and if statistics are important for you, you need to have access to your log files which can then be analyzed with statistics analysing software (such as www.surfstats.com).

E-Mail issues to watch out for

Before you take out web hosting, ask them if they provide SMTP/POP3 which you need to set up email accounts. If you want one or several e-mail addresses with your website – such as sales@mydomain.com – the web hosting company needs to provide SMTP/POP3 setup. Some web hosting companies only allow you to receive emails sent to sales@mydomain.com, but they will not allow you to use these e-mail addresses to send e-mails from. They will simply argue that you can use your Internet Service Provider E-Mail address – such as joe.smith@btopenworld.com. This does not look professional at all, and you should avoid web hosting companies that do not provide SMTP/POP3 service.

Backups

Check with your web hosting company how often backups are made. Usually, backups are made on a daily basis. If you have a large online store on your website and the server room at the web hosting premises is on fire, you will lose all your work if they do not back up their web server files. So please check if they have a backup routine in place.

Free Webhosting with your internet service provider

Please do not use this! Your internet service provider company provide an internet connection. That is what they specialise in. They sometimes “throw in” free web hosting for up to 100 MB or even more. They normally do not provide SMTP / POP3 setup for the sending / receiving of emails related to your website (such as sales@mydomain.com), nor will they provide databases, server scripting language support and such like. Usually, you can only upload websites developed in pure HTML, and in some cases you will not be able to use FTP software for uploading your files and managing your files on the web server. Your business website will proabably use some sort of server-side scripting language – such as ASP, PHP etc. and maybe use a database such as MySQL. If your website is with your Internet Service Provider, the support for this service can be poor and the account can sometimes not be upgraded to include server-side scripting languages, and/or databases.

Web Hosting Costs

Web Hosting costs can vary greatly. You can take out web hosting for as little as £15 per year, or you can get web hosting, including 5 email addresses, 100 MB web space (which is a lot for a small business presence) for as little as £30 per year (check out Plugsocket). If you buy a web design magazine (such as NET – www.netmag.co.uk), you will see many adverts from bigger web hosting companies. Check out their prices, their policies, and maybe give them a call – you will find out how long it takes until your call is answered.

Do not jump in because it is cheap, and conversely, do not think the service must be great because it is expensive. Check out what is on offer and then make an informed decision.

Still don’t know? We can advise you what would be the right web hosting provider for your business! Give us a call on 01506 66 86 85!