Website Hosting and Creation Decisions
I have turned most of my domains into WordPress blogs for ease of use and all the handy gadgets that are available, although I understand that for sales pages, a regular HTML page can be more effective.
I can create HTML pages, but I’m not that well-versed with them. Since I am tasking myself with 11 domains, I am not planning to spend my precious time trying to figure out how to create a contact form.
I understand the importance of using contact forms, as I am still dealing with spam from the year 2000 when I made my first attempts at online income using free sites and free submission services. These are mostly just spam fests, so beware. You get what you pay for, right?
Free sites are not looked favorably upon by search engines nor are they welcomed by most email clients.
I spent a good deal of time paying for hosting for one domain. If you are unfamiliar with the terms, “domain name” refers to the name you choose, like “nsofi.org”. “Domain hosting” refers to where you keep all the pages, information storage, and videos for your domain name.
You can have your domain name registered at one site, but hosted with a different site. Mine were like this for a couple of years.
I decided that I wanted both my domain names and my web hosting company at the same place–one log-in simplicity. While researching the various hosting companies, I discovered that there are some web hosting companies that will host an unlimited number of domains for one price, so you pay an annual fee for the domain (as you would anywhere), and you pay for the hosting, but the hosting is about the same price as you would pay for only hosting one domain! Seeing as I already had at least 4 domains at this point I was extremely excited about this, as hosting is an expensive irritant when it comes to having your own site.
I also discovered that some hosting companies provide a control panel (cPanel) which makes it every easy for us non-technical types to have access to our web space with ease. You definitely want both of these when choosing a web hosting company.
I also wanted a hosting company that felt professional, fitting my personality better than some of the other options out there.
I transferred my old domain names and set up more with BlueHost. I have been very happy with their service. I can go to their cPanel and easily create WordPress blogs, check my email, create email forwarders, and redirect web sites. There are a ton of other icons for activities that I have not needed to figure out yet.
Also, if it’s important for your situation, most hosting sites do not allow adult content. While researching adult hosting companies, one lost me due to their annoying sales page, one lost me due to limits on bandwidth, so at this point I would go with Lunarpages, just because it was the best of the three that I found first. However, they don’t offer unlimited domains, so I’m going to continue shopping around for an adult hosting company later. Contact me for more information on adult site creation if you need it, I’ll see what I can piece together for you.
Alice Norris
