There are a few basics that are required to get started on a website. The first two are: Domains and web hosting.
Domain Names
So what is a domain name anyway? It’s what is used to identify your website. It’s what is shown in the URL (or link) to your website.
When coming up with your domain name, it’s important to find something that both represents your business and is easy to remember. Preferably you will want to use your full business name followed by “.com”. It is possible that your business name has already been taken. There are a few reasons this might be the case, either your business name is popular and someone else has a business of the same name, or someone has already purchased the domain name in hopes to make money by selling it.
The most frequently unavailable domain names are acronyms. These are easy to remember, quicker to type into an address bar, and can represent more than one business name, making them widely desired and extremely valuable. Consider how much easier it would be to type in http://www.SHEC.com then, www.sundancehillsequestriancenter.com. If you happened to type that acronym into your web address, you can see that no one actually has a website with that address. It’s likely for sale for a pretty penny. Its unfortunate, as small business owners cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars for a domain name.
So where to get started? Search for your desired domain name on a domain hosting site: wordpress.com/domains/
Web Hosting
Now you ask, “what is web hosting”? This one is a little more complicated. Simplified: it is a company that stores your site data on their servers so that you can publish your website, and make it available to the world wide web!
In order to have a website published on the internet, you need to have it hosted on a server. There are thousands of different web hosting companies, each offering a variety of solutions. It’s important to determine what solutions are best for you and the website you are wanting to build. Things to consider include: how many site visitors you expect, how much storage space you will need, security features, and more.
The web platform that Indigo Fire prefers is WordPress, which offers their own hosting packages, but there are thousands of other options that might work better for your needs. There are several hosting sites that WordPress even recommends: wordpress.org/hosting/