Catholic Techno Geek

So now that you have a set of goals in mind for your website. You need to decide where you are going to host your website. Ideally, it would be wonderful if you could purchase your own web server and host your sight from that server.

The positives with having your own server, it you have complete control over every aspect of your server. In otherwords, if you want to have your server run SQL 7 (yes – I know it doesn’t exist yet),  you can do it.

The negatives with having your own server, is that you are responsible for every aspect of your server.  In other words, if you want the server to run SQL 7, you have to do the install or pay some to install for you.

Most choose to use an service provider that will host the website. Depending on the provider, you may a lot of control on the options for your server or you may have very little control. Fortunately, with WordPress, you don’t need a lot of control over your server, but you need to meet the minimum requirements.

You can find the requirements for WordPress by going to http://wordpress.org/about/requirements/ You don’t necessary need to know what SQL and PHP do, you just need to know that your provided meets or exceeds these requirements.

To help you in your search for a website provider, WordPress has a list of providers they feel are WordPress friendly http://wordpress.org/hosting/ To find out more about the service, you can click on the provider’s name and you will get more specifics on the company and the services they offer. You can also click on the “Forum Thread” and see discussions on various aspects of the service. You can see users providing tricks and support to each other to improve the functionality of his/her website.

I recommend before committing to any website that you spend some time shopping around and getting reviews of each provider who are considering. There are providers that might seem like a fantastic deal initially, but when it comes to support and service they leave you out in the cold. Others may cost more, but they usually provide more.

You definitely want a site that says they support WordPress. It makes things a lot easier. (However, there are website providers that don’t say they are WordPress friendly, but will run WordPress. This site is on one such host, but I had to do a lot of research to find out how to set up this site.)

You also want to look for a website that has support that is included in the package. If you do not have a firm computer background and even if you do, you can run up your expenses quickly if you have to pay for each support call. I should also note, look where you have to call. Sometimes you have to pay long distance although the support is free.

I like a service that provides email, however, there is a drawback. If you use this service, all your emails have to go out to the server and from there they go to whom the email is address. So if you are using email for internal company communications, your email containing potentially sensitive information is going out of the building tossed all around the internet, and then back into your building to your colleges email box. Along the way it can be intercepted and read be anyone with the know how.

The last option I look for is domain registration. A lot of providers will throw in free domain registration with their packages. (A domain name is the url you type to get to a website. My domain name is catholictechnogeek.com.) Here you need to read all the fine print. Some companies will register your domain name and allow you to own it. Others, will register your domain name, but they own it.

Why should this matter? After all as long as the domain name is registered and you get it as part of the package, why should it matter. Let’s say you want to leave your provider because the service becomes unreliable and you found a better provider. If your provider owns the domain name, they may not let you take it to the new service. So now you need a new domain name and a way of getting people to come to that new domain name and not your old.

In my next post, I will discuss domain names in more detail.