domain name purchase, please help!

I would really appreciate your help out there. I just had two different ideas that are both permaculture based and I really want to buy two different domains as soon as possible. Can you explain all the ins and outs of how to shop for a domain name? sometimes I hear about people spending $8.00 mo and then I will hear about how people will spend 3k.....confused. I was reading some stuff about it, and one article said to go with shared web hosting, bluehost.net? Thanks for all your help!

A domain name is separate from the website, which is separate from the hosting.

Think of a website like a house:
- Domain name, i.e. permies.com is the address
- Website is the house
- Hosting is the land the house sits on

You can buy all three separate or bundled together.

Buy a Domain name here: https://www.godaddy.com/domains/cheap-domain-names

Just start typing ideas until you find one that is available.  One that ends in .com is the most desirable. Ideally you want something reasonably short and easy to tell someone. Most good domain names are taken, so you will likely spend some time finding one you like. In today's age, you want the domain name and business/organization name to match if at all possible.

Just like a house, you can build your own website, but your results may vary the first few times. I think there are a few people here floating around who build nice websites for fair prices.

Something reasonably easy to DIY you own site would be something like: https://www.squarespace.com/

Please do not ever use GoDaddy. They are a bad service that "does evil".

I have been happy with NameCheap. http://namecheap.com/

The TLDs (like .com, .org, .farm, etc) will have different prices. I don't think there's any underlying technical reason for that, maybe just the owners of the TLDs trying to maximize profit. Like maybe Tuvalu wants to generate significant income from their ".tv" TLD.

Don't ever have domain service and hosting from the same company. It might sound simpler and easier (and it probably is) but if anything goes wrong you can be totally screwed.

Shared webhosting is where you are sharing a web server with a bunch of other folks. It is a good compromise for small sites that don't get a lot of traffic. They are not the simplest to manage, but still relatively easy.

If you are just doing an informational site, then I'd speculate that using wordpress.com might be OK. They have free plans, but if you want to use your domain name then it looks like you'd need to pay $4/month at least. If you are wanting to do some sales, then make sure you know what you are doing, or hire a pro. Squarespace is a decent option.

Don't ever use simple & easy sites like Wix. They break Internet standards and don't allow you to use good URLs. Like you can't have a page of "myawesomepermy.farm/howtousebiochar" (which is better for search engines) but will instead make you do something stupid like "myawesomepermie.farm/#B68768". And when it's time to upgrade the site, whoever is doing that will hate you for it.

But really, better advice can be given if we know more about the site ideas.

Hi Ron, you seem to have a bit of an idea. I used to have a website with weebly, which I found to be a decent website builder, but I didn't want to have my shop there because of the poor support. So I still pay weebly for the domain name which is a normal one: https://mountainherbs.net/ but have my site at shopify. That is of course a pain in the neck with google. Would you move the domain name? Is that possible and were to? Or would you simply leave it? I pay around $30/year which is quite low.
I also should have .com.au but I leave it, I think  a website should have a 'decent sounding' extension. If you are in a country other than America and you sell to that country this is what the name should be.

more info for more help: I just spent $99 for the year at wordpress.com. I think that means  I just bought the domain name, I m not sure   First priority is that I make sure that this domain name does not get  taken away from me, right now I just need to park it. I have too much going on right now to try and develop it.

$99 per year had better be for hosting. Domain name registration goes for $10-15/year from places I know about.

If you have secured your domain, great. For anyone who is searching, a point to be aware of: some sites have extortion as a business model. Using one of them to look up possible names, they will instantly register a name you enter so that if you want to buy it, you will have to pay them a large sum (can be hundreds or thousands depending on how valuable they think the name is.)

https://whois.icann.org/en will tell you if anyone already owns a domain name. When you go to a domain name host, reputable ones will tell you up front how much it will cost; if they charge significantly more than $15 or $20 per year, they are robbing you.

So the other day I purchased a domain name, and I decided to use namecheap. While I did get my domain name, I did not expect the torrent of hosting & webdesign marketing emails, phone calls, and txt messages on my phone. If I had to do it over again, and just wanted to secure a domain name, which is all I wanted to do, I would have put in a bogus phone number. Just FYI.

So I need to post a follow up and what I feel is more of a correction. A little bit about me, I'm not exactly fluent with technology or know what's involved with computer shit nowadays, I think I'm becoming a bit of a luddite if I'm not already one. I can type, check my email, and buy things on the internet, that's about it. Put a wrench, hammer, or garden tool in my hand and I'm good to go.

So I figured if one wants a website, a first step is to buy a domain name. Right? I did just that. I had no idea, that domain name holder information such as full name, email address, phone number, etc. is public information, and to keep it from being permies, one must pay extra to keep it private. My phone and inbox have been blowing up with spam for two days, and a very nice person at namecheap explained things to me and gave me a year of whoisguard, which keeps my info private.

Hopefully that puts the fire out. I wish that they had, in big bold letters, informed me that whoisguard is necessary to prevent such a disaster. Technically, I guess I'm at least half at fault, probably more, but I'm a guy; I don't read the fine print or look at the instruction manual.

I recently transferred my hosting account (and domain name  register to www.one.com

Their hosting accounts and name charges are pretty good, down time and such seems to be reasonable, not the best, but not terrible.

They give the first year free- or mostly free depending on the account-  and then instead of jumping to 100$+ the next year, it's like 20$/year or something like that to renew.

Every year it seems when I look for the next  deal I end up trying to transfer the site to the next free host, but it is a pain in the ass so i end up rebuilding--although I did transfer one other complete site I was managing, but it took a lot of time and really made my brain hurt. just transferring the name isn't terribly difficult, and different registers charge different prices for the same name--what the market will bear combined with the focus of the host

I think higher end hosts catering to more prime time sites end up charging more  for both hosting and registering a name. Popularity of a name I think can also influence price

I was a bit confused at what horror story might have happened to not want domain and host to be the same company.

If there is enough interest, I could host a number of websites for permies. But static sites only (no server side scripts, those are a security nightmare).
Who owns the domain, doesn't matter much to me. I can register them on my name as well.

Just out of curiosity: what is a static site? Is my site static or not?

Angelika Maier wrote:Just out of curiosity: what is a static site? Is my site static or not?

When you view a website the server that stores it can do two things:
a) send a file (in reality a bunch of files) that contain everything needed to display the website. All it does it send the file that was stored on the server.
b) run another program that processes the data send from the browser and generate the page for exactly this case. This requires to run user scripts(programs) on the server, and while it is theoretically possible to do this without major risks for the server, in most cases the program is written in languages that are not exactly "safe". So one needs a separate layer to prevent these programs from hijacking everything (making things far more expensive to run).

https://mountainherbs.net/ looks to me like a dynamic site that allows you to edit it (and runs the shop using shopify).
Making it static would be possibe, but require a lot of work.