Website Resources
Helpful tools and information to understand website terminology and get them built
Website Building
Building a website is like building a home. There are four main components you need to build and keep a website.
1) Domain Name
This is like your postal address for your website. Put simply, it is the www.whatevername.com that people type in their browser to get to your site.
Godaddy.com – despite their odd commercials (ok, their commercials have definitely gotten better) Godaddy does excellent in the domain names department. They make searching for, buying, and maintaining a domain name pretty easy. They also boast that they are the world’s #1 domain name registrar. I’m pretty sure that’s accurate.
Bluehost.com – this is another great company that I also recommend for full-on web hosting. They let you get your domain name for free when you buy hosting with them and it makes managing all of that in one place very easy.
Namecheap.com – These guys are a little newer on the block, but they have grown in popularity recently as a first choice for registering domain names. As a disclaimer, I have not bought a name through them yet, but they come highly recommended from other sites that I trust. Judging by their website, they will continue to be a great source for domain name registration.
Google Domains – Yep, Google does domains too. They do everything pretty much! A nice place to register a domain especially if you like using Google’s other services.
2) Web Hosting
This is like the plot of land that you will be building your website on. The domain name is the address that points to your web hosted site. But you need that land before you can build anything on it. Because the two things, domains and web hosting, go so hand-in-hand, it is probably no surprise that the two places I recommend for web hosting are the same as for domains above. Except this time, I give Bluehost a little bit of an edge in the hosting department. Browse both of the sites and see what you think.
Liquid Web – These guys are rising stars in hosting. In fact, I now host my own most important sites with them and their Managed WordPress offering! They have U.S. data centers and are fully committed to providing the best Managed WordPress hosting plans.
WP Engine – Super powerful hosting specifically tuned for WordPress websites. Helps take care of security and backups internally and is incredibly feature rich. It costs a little more per month, but it’s worth every penny! Click here to get a discount off of the “Personal Plan” designed for a single site signup.
Bluehost.com – Simple yet robust hosting options at a great price which I love. I’ve been able to do amazing things with Bluehost! They are consistently ranked high in quality and in my opinion they have the best overall level of services and packages.
3) Framework
OK, so you have your address and you bought land… now you need to build the frame of your house. This is the bones of your website. And I highly recommend WordPress as the core framework you build your site on! For starters, it’s free. Who doesn’t love that!? And it offers a whole slew of features that not only make building a website/blog easy and fun, but that search engines like Google love, and that is really key to your websites success. It’s the only framework that we build in now!
4) Design
Lastly, after you’ve built the frame for your new home, you’ll need to paint it and make everything look nice for you and your guests. If you have used WordPress to build your site then designing the look of your website can be easy with a WordPress “Theme”. The theme is what tells a website to look how it does. There are many options for this. You can buy themes, or find themes that are free depending on your taste. And there are also themes that have flexibility and let you control how things look and operate. We use a “builder” theme that gives us maximum control and flexibility over how we design a site for you.
Let’s say a little more together!