Web Design All-in-One for Dummies®

Chapter 19. Domain Registration and Hosting

In This Chapter

• Selecting a domain name for your site

• Getting help from domain name generators

• Registering a domain name

• Finding the best hosting plan

• Designing a placeholder page for the new domain

• Uploading a placeholder page to the new domain

This chapter focuses on what you need to do to prepare your site for publishing. You find out about domain name selection, name generators, domain verification, and domain registration. You also discover how to find a good hosting plan, including what to look for in a plan, where to find a host, and general pricing structures. The last part of this chapter shows you how to create a customized placeholder page, which is a single, simple Web page with company branding, an e-mail link, and a smattering of other contact information that can hold the place on a new domain until the new Web site is fully built and ready to publish.

Understanding How to Get Your Site Online

Before you can make a new Web site available on the Internet, it must first be assigned its own special Web address, which is commonly referred to as the domain name. The process of acquiring a domain name can be a fun adventure and only requires a little bit of work. To start with, someone needs to think of a good name for the site and then check to see whether that name is available for use or whether it has already been taken. If the desired name is available, the name needs to be registered, and that can be done either through a domain ...