Learn/Getting-a-Website-for-the-First-Time

Learn

Steps Towards Your Online Presence

By MarkDilley
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Let's start this off clearly. You can't buy a website - you lease it. This is a different message from the people in the business to 'sell' you websites. You can lose your website if you don't pay your yearly rent. See Virtual Property for more information.

Ok, now that we have that off the table, here is what you will need to consider.

You rent your website name (commonly called a domain name) from a Registrar.
Then you need to Host an actual website somewhere.

Think of your website name as a pointer to your content which is the website. Two steps. Some companies will do both for you.

Websites name generally cost ~$10 a year - sometimes more, sometimes less. The cost for hosting a website is pretty much the wildcard expense here. It really depends on what you want the website to do.

Do you want a website as an online business card?
Do you want to try and host a community on your website?
Are you selling goods or services?

I personally have many websites where I only lease the website name and point it to a free page, like on AboutUs.org or a free weblog, like Blogger.com or posterous.com. If you want something more complicated than that - you will need to ask around. Just like other things, probably best to ask friends you know who are online, who they get their website hosting from.