Other than “dont’ use Godaddy”, what do I need to know? I’ve never owned a domain or had a website of my own before.
- Domain registration/host recommendations?
- Web hosting recommendations? Should I mix #1 and #2?
- Website template creation suggestions? Have fairly simple needs like service offerings and contact forms but want something without rotating construction cones.
- What else should I consider? Security? e-mail?
- Am open to all-in-one for the above, just would like to understand tradeoffs, what to look for/avoid.
TIA
While I don’t want to say this is a perfect solution, it is a free solution, and one id checkout early, that said I’d still recommend shopping around to see what best meets your needs.
You could get a Gmail account for the business/ website and then register for a free WordPress site. WordPress is both software you can download for self hosting and a website service where they take care of everything (for free or a price. The free version may end up with the website having ads served to viewers and only has limited upload).
As for design, there are a few free as well as paid templates. They can also get your site a domain like yourbusiness.com , but you can get a free subdomain at WordPress like yourbusiness.wordpress.com
If you wanted to go complex, you could self host or hire a virtual computer to host from a cloud provider, but things like making sure software is up to date and security patches applies are up to you. You might already have a server / network attached storage device which could be the server and get the domain linking to it and have your router forward incoming traffic to it, but it depends on how hands on you want to be.