My First Hosting and Domain : How I started my Online Journey
This article is written specially to help those who want to start their blogging journey. This post would help those who want to make some savings on hosting plans and domain costs. I hope this would help.
1) How I selected my first Hosting & Domain
When I started my search for my first web host I also got affected with “Marketing Push”. Marketing Push is like companies push certain feature like “Unlimited Bandwidth” etc and over sell on the basis of these features only.
When I was looking for my first web host I wanted to save money first. Then I wanted my web host to be the best performing web host also. My first choice was TMDHosting.
So I made my mind for TMDHosting (Full Review). TMDHosting (affiliate link) best plans are for 3 years but then again as I had no experience in blogging. I was thinking that what if I will have to shut down my project just in a single year !!
So I asked myself again that do I need speed and performance at this time ?
It is obvious that if you are learning with your blogs then you don’t need performance. Rather you need affordability. So I again started to search for one year hosting plans.
So for one year Hosting plan I listed out Namecheap, HostGator (Full Review) and DreamHost (Full Review). Now before telling which one I went for out of these three web hosts, here is an important thing I want to talk about. And that is selecting a web host on the basis of market impression might not work for everyone.
Selecting a Web Host on the basis market impression :
Now many of you might have known to the fact that certain web hosts are being hated a lot. There are certain web hosting that are giving affordable web hosting and they are hated for that reason.
People think that cheaper rates means cheaper in performance also ! But it is not like that. Many people are at least starting out their online journey just because of the cheap web hosts.
Now you might have seen that you hear about some web hosts that it is the best web host. Well it is the best because it has been marketed like that.
I mean there are web hosts like InterServer (Full Review), GreenGeeks (Full Review), FastComet (Full Review) and TMDHosting (affiliate link) that they never do such kind of marketing.
And because these Web Hosts don’t do marketing you never have to have a chance of even hearing of these web hosts. The thing is that GreenGeeks (affiliate link) and InterServer (affiliate link) also serves you the same level of performance that other “Best Web Hosts” are telling to you in their marketing campaigns.
So the moral of the story is that don’t blindly follow “the best”. Get some information on what you want from your web host and then decide your web host.
Cheap Options might work well for beginners :
Talking about impression there are many talks regarding not going for certain cheap Web hosts and they are not good in Speed etc features.
The fact is that all the Web Hosts have invested heavily after their Servers and Staffs and all the web hosts have their own limits.
No one is going to give bad service knowingly. All the Web Hosts will try to keep their customers for longer period of time.
And talking about costly fancy Web hosting you should keep in mind that all these things can be part of marketing only. It might be possible that you might miss out on a better host because they don’t market them selves in that matter.
For example : TMDhosting (affiliate link), GreenGeeks (affiliate link) and DreamHost (affiliate link) never does hardcore marketing and they win their customers on the basis of mouth publicity. So there might be chances that you may miss out on good Web Hosting services.
On the other hand there are many who will just negatively present cheap web hosting. But the fact is that all newbies and individuals need to take small steps when they are learning and growing. And in the beginning these cheap web hosts are the most Ideal ones to begin with.
So HostGator (affiliate link), NameCheap and DreamHost (Full Review) one year plans can really be useful if you are just looking for one year plan while starting up.
Out of HostGator, DreamHost and Namecheap I decided to go for Namecheap as it was the cheapest. But keep on reading. 🙂
The problem of not getting a Free Domain
Now after selecting the web host there was one more thing I could save money with. That’s a one year free domain.
However with Namecheap (Full Review) I was not getting “.com” domain for free that luckily got me to look towards GoDaddy which is providing Domains at cheapest rates.
So if you want to save some costs on your Domain Names you can try considering GoDaddy (Full Review).
Just take Domain names separately from GoDaddy (affiliate link) or Namecheap (affiliate link) and get your hosting separately from a better host. This combination of buying domains and hosting from separate companies can save you a some money in future.
Because generally the free one year domain price renews at a very high rate. So you might end up paying costly bills at the time of renewals.
Power of Email marketing :
Now in this whole process of selecting a web host I was also preparing my materials for the website. And I was looking for the right time to purchase hosting from Namecheap.
I had already purchased the Domain name from GoDaddy as it is the cheapest. But for hosting I was waiting till cyber Monday kind of occasions to get some extra discounts.
Then I came to know that web hosts like Namecheap, TMDhosting (Full Review), GreenGeeks (Full Review)give away discounts for a whole year. So no need to wait for cyber Mondays except if you want to buy from HostGator. HostGator is well known for providing great deals on various occasions.
Now I was ready for Namecheap and I tried for the purchase but their payment gateway was not working. So I had to wait.
Now see the twist. I waited fro 2-3 days and while that time only I received an E mail. The email was saying about HostGator giving a great one year plan in a very very cheap price. The deal was only for 4 days.
So without any delay I just grabbed the deal. And as a result I could happily start my project. So that’s the power of email marketing.
However due to various reasons I have not started collecting any Emails but if you want to increase sales Emails can be handy. Not only sales but you can remain connected with your audience as well.
However for connecting with my audience I use Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram.
2) Reasons to select self hosted WordPress :
Now after selecting hosting and domain there is no question I was going for self hosted WordPress only. There are some good reasons for going with self hosted WordPress.Org.
1) You get good amount of liberty with your content. You own your content.
2) You can enjoy various plugins and themes that you don’t get with free platforms.
3) There is a domain and hosting cost but you own and control your whole website or blog.
4) You can easily monetize your website and there are no restrictions in terms of how you manage ads on your blog.
So this is how it was a great and happy decision to select WordPress.Org over free platforms like Blogger.
The thing is that we always think like let me just try out blogging with free platform and if it grows then I will migrate to WordPress. The thing is that we don’t realize that WordPress is so powerful that there are more chances of your success with WordPress.Org rather than with some other platforms.
But we limit our own capabilities when we select the platform that has its own limitations. It’s simple. If you want limitless growth in your project select the limitless media. And WordPress.Org gives you limitless power to grow your blog or website.
So it is always better to start with WordPress.Org rather than struggling here and there.
Conclusion
So concluding this article I would say cheaper is better for beginners.
If you are starting up find out what are your web hosting requirements and accordingly select your web host.
Purchasing Domain names differently from GoDaddy (affiliate link) can be beneficial.
WordPress.Org is better than any other platform.
To get clear info regarding WordPress you should also read this article on the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.Org.
I hope this article will be useful while beginning your online journey with a website.
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6 Essential WordPress Plugins : Plugins that you definitely need
