Choosing a Domain Name and Hosting
This is the real thing. It is where the journey of creating website starts from. If you have no domain name, there is no way you will own a website. The first thing you must do in creating a website for yourself or someone else is to choose a domain name.
A domain name is that name which you want your website to answer.
A domain name is your website name. A domain name is the address where internet users can access your website.
First thing is to pick a domain name and another thing is to check whether the domain name is available for you to answer. Yes, that is it. If the domain name has been taken by someone else, you cannot answer that domain name. Example, for the website www.amazon.com, the domain name is “amazon”.What that implies is that there cannot be two “amazon” on the web. That unique name has been given to the company by domain name registrars.
What you should know in Choosing Domain name
There are things you need to know before you choose a domain name. These are as follow:-
A domain name is combination of letters that forms a unit. What I mean is
that the letter that form the domain name cannot be separated from each other. For example, you can have a domain name as “donsmart” but cannot have a domain name as “don smart”. That space is not allowed.
– A domain name once chosen and registered cannot be changed. Before you register a domain name, you should know that it cannot be changed until it expires. Otherwise, you register another domain name for yourself, and that will be double expenses.
– Make your domain name short and easy to capture. It is better you make
your domain name short and something that will be easy for your website readers to remember. If you want to make it long, just do it in a way that people can remember it. It is better to have a website URL as
“www.smartlearn.com” than having “www.uzfsyulearn.com”.
Can you see the difference in the two? The domain name “smartlearn” can easily be remembered by readers that “uzfsyulearn”. Readers will find it difficult to pronounce that second domain name. This will make then not to visit the site if they want to visit it again later. Because they could not pronounce the name, they could not visit the site as they forgot the domain name.
Domain Name Registration
You must first register your domain name through any website hosting
company. It is this hosting company that will make sure that your website is always online. In the other words, they will make sure that your files are stored in their server. Any time people visit your website, these files appear as posts in the eyes of readers.
There are several website hosting companies you can host your website with. When you visit their websites, you first check with their tool on the website to know if the website name you want to take is available. If it is, you can proceed with the registration.
At the end, you pay the company and then they register your domain for you. The website hosting company on their own then take the money for domain name registration, for giving you domain name, and for keeping your file sand web active on the internet.
Some hosting companies allow people to pay for at least one-year hosting of their websites. But in the recent time we have seen some changes in the duration of hosting. There are some registrars of websites that can allow you to pay for 1 to 3 months period. An example of such domain name registrar (also the same with website hosting company) is Inter Server with website URL as www.interserver.net. 
If you are a beginner, you can start with this website hosting company. Inter Server is cool and fine for people who do not know much about web
building. With this company, you can just subscribe for 3 months to experiment on what you have learned. After that you can decide whether to extend it and continue making use of the site.
There are many website hosting companies today. In United States alone,
there is over 900 website hosting companies in the country. It is your choice to make on the one you want to use to host your website. The prices paid varies as well. It is like you deciding on the price to sell an item to people and another seller deciding on the price to sell that same product in his own shop.
Some website hosting companies are as follow:
– GoDaddy
– Google Cloud Platform
– Amazon Web Services (AWS)
– BlueHost
– Squarespace
– Namecheap
– HostGator
– Automattic
– Wix Hosting
– Liquid Web
– DreamHost
– Weebly
– Digital Ocean
– InMotion Hosting
– Rackspace- Peedam Hosting
– Linode
– Leaseweb
– Media Temple
– EGI Hosting
– Cogeco Peer
– Network Solutions
– SiteGround
-HostMonster
-Psychz Networks
– iPage
-A2 Hosting
– SoftLayer
– Smart Web
– Hostway
– Inter Server
So out of the above listed website hosting companies, you are to make your choice on the one to use. They are all confirmed domain name registrars. In the next heading, I will be taking you on the practical approach on how to register a domain name through any of the hosting companies.
Practical: Step-by-Step Guide in Registering your Domain Name
Step 1
Visit the website of any of the above listed website hosting companies. If you do not know the direct link or the URL of the hosting company, you can search for the name through Google. The website of BlueHost ishttps://www.bluehost.com, that of GoDaddy is https://uk.godaddy.com, and that of Inter Server is https://www.interserver.net.
Step 2
Check for the domain name availability. You are to search the homepage of the hosting company you visited to know if that name you want to give your website is available. There is usually a search box provided for you to do so on the website.
If you search and the name has been taken, you have to try another name. You keep trying until you get the one that is free. But sometimes, if a domain name has been taken, the person that took it can still resell it to you if he or she has not built complete website on it. But he or she will do that at higher price if you really need it. Example is the experience I hard when I wanted to register techkindle before I finally chose teachkindle.
Step 3: Building with the Available Domain Name
Because the name I want to use for my website is not available and I don’t want to pay that amount of money to get it from the person that first registered it, I then try another name.
At this stage I choose to try another domain name called “teachkindle”. 
If try and the name is free, I can go with it. But if it not available, I will keep on trying. Once the domain is available, you see a message like
“CONGRATULATIONS YOUR DOMAIN IS AVAILABLE”.
Step 4: Sign Up with the Hosting Company
Since the name you want your website to bear is available, you then sign up with the website hosting company you want to use. In the sign up, you fill in the major information required from you. If you already had account with the website hosting company, you can sign in using your email address you have with them and your password.
I will show you sample. When I hosted recently, I used Inter Server hosting company. I didn’t not use GoDaddy again though I searched for domain name using their platform. You can still do the same using Inter Server website hosting company. I signed up with them before I could continue to make payment for my domain name “teachkindle”.
Once you sign up for an account with the company successfully, they will
send you email within a short time on how to continue with your purchase of the domain name. You can get an email in this format:
“Hello!Your InterServer account has been created. Login Name Smart*********014@gmail.com This sign up came from IP address **7.21*.84.**7
You can login to your account by visiting https://my.interserver.net
You can reset your password visiting https://my.interserver.net/password.php
—
Thank You,
Team unknown
Step 5: Login and Choose a Package
So, since you know that a particular domain you finally decided your website will answer is free, you are to login to the website of the same web hosting company. You will see “web hosting” on top or by the side of the website. Click on that and then search for the domain name again in the search box for verification purpose. The congratulations message showing you that the name is free will come up again.
You will be shown some packages. The packages vary by price. The reason is because each package has some features that make them higher than the other. In Inter Server for instance the packages the hosting company has are STANDARD WEB HOSTING, RS ONE, RS TWO, RS THREE, RS FOUR, RS FIVE, ASP.NET WEB HOSTING, WORDPRESS MANAGED HOSTING, and STAY HOME PROMOTION. As a beginner, I advise you go for Standard web hosting. Other website hosting companies have terms they use to categorize their packages also.
As you select any package, you will be shown how much you are to pay for a package per duration you want to own the domain. You can decide to own the domain for 3 months or a year.
Note: The domain name teachkindle20.com was chosen for this particular demonstration. In other stages and this entire teaching, we will be using teachkindle.com for most of our illustrations.
Step 6: Billing and Payment
This is the next step. Then when you proceed to the next step after choosing your plan, you will be shown an invoice of how much you will pay.
You will be given some options on the method you want to use to make the payment. Some hosting companies has up to 3 payment options whiles others do have less. You can be given the options to pay with card, direct deposit to the bank, or pay with PayPal. But some domain name registers have the option of pay with card and Payment with PayPal account.
In pay with card option, you input your debit or credit card number and the CVV number at the back of the card. CVV mean Card Verification Value. It is usually a 3 digit number at the back of credit or debit card.
After you enter the information for your account to be debited, you will get a security code sent to you by your bank through your phone number asking for your approval for your account to be debited. A box will be provided for you by the hosting company to enter the code. Once you enter the code correctly in the box, your account will be debited.
You will get a confirmation email in your inbox confirming your payment.
The hosting company will also send you details on how to login to your
control panel and install any program/application to start building your own website. The details to be sent to you for you to be able to log in to your email is your username or email and password. You are to keep them safe.
The caption is a confirmation message I received from a website hosting
company after paying for my package using credit card.
Note: Your payment may not go through after you put in the card details required from you to make payment for your domain name and hosting. You can get an error message. The error message can be because your card has not been verified. The message can be in this format:
To resolve the issue, the best thing is to write to their customer care. You will be responded to within 24 hours, but it depends on the hosting company. The customer care representative will guide you on what to do to resolve this. After this and you make another attempt to make your payment, it will go through without stress. If any error massage appears again, still write to them.
Conclusion
We learned how to host your website or domain. Building a website is a simple thing. You just need is interest.
