Gator Health and Fitness.com

Part 1
Register Your Domain

One of the most important aspects of your online store is your domain name. Make sure you choose a domain name that is short, catchy and memorable with no dashes in the name. You can go a little further and make it a long tail niche name. I’ll write more on that later because that’s a whole lesson by itself. I use GoDaddy.com to register all of my domains. Especially if you plan on having multiple sites like I do, it’s far easier to manage all of your domains in one place. Plus GoDaddy’s prices are dirt cheap and they are well branded so most people are aware of them.

While you are there, you should also pick up an SSL certificate which is required to encrypt and secure transactions over the internet. GoDaddy.com offers SSL certs for a very low price. For more information on SSL and how to install the certificate please refer to my future article on How To Choose And Install An SSL Certificate.

Servers are computers just like the one you are using to read this site, but they only do one thing.   Host web sites. That way they aren’t bogged done with other applications like many personal computers. Plus, companies who have these server computers make sure the power is uninterrupted, they give your site a dedicated ip address, the temperature is right, the air is clean and there is security so someone doesn’t break in and steal them. Basically, they baby sit and maintain the computer for you. They do all this at incredibly low prices. You could do this yourself and I have, but it’s hard to keep the costs down and have an ip address that doesn’t change. Hosting servers are really the only way to go for your site or sites.

When I first started out, I looked for the following attributes in my potential webhost providers
* Are they cheap or reasonably priced?
* Are they reliable? Do they have a decent uptime?
* Do they have good technical support?
* Do they load one machine down with too many users?
* Do they offer the features that I need to run my online store.

Recommendations:

I probably researched over 20 different shared webhost providers and narrowed the field down to 2, Hostgator and a one other. I then looked at what others were doing for hosting and talked to a friend in Dallas who was setting up multiple sites. Almost all of them chose hostgator. So I found a lot of testimonials to back my decision.

Currently, I run this blog and multiple sites on Hostgator. Transitioning a website from another host to a reliable host can be time consuming. I had one server with a site that got hacked so I moved it to my dedicated servers. I had bought the site from a guy and really didn’t understand the programming language the site was using. I could copy the files from a backup but had to hire someone to reinstall on my server. The lesson here is to choose wisely before deciding on hosting servers.
Hostgator offers you several different plans depending on your needs. Check out their site for details. In my experience, hostgator is fantastic. You can’t go wrong, but do the research yourself if you think your can do better.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is when you need the most computer horsepower. I might seem like a long ways off, but eventually you mightl want to transition your store to dedicated hosting. For dedicated hosting, I highly recommend ServInt.
The other reason I’m bringing up dedicated hosting early on is because certain shopping carts require more horsepower to run. For example, the Magento shopping cart(I’ll be covering shopping carts in a future article), pretty much requires dedicated hosting right from the start in order to run a usable storefront. In any case, selecting a domain and webhost provider isn’t a big deal. You can sign up for very little money and start your store for practically nothing. Where can you start a business for less? This question should be rhetorical by now. LOL

Next Up – Part2 – Finding Goods To Sell….

Did you like this article? I will now fill this site with articles on health and fitness.   Go to www.howtobuildawebsiteshop.com to continue reading on this series.

Post a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.