Festive

• Shared web hosting solutions
• Dedicated web hosting solutions
• Credit Cards and Credit Card Processing Services
• Domain Name Registrations and finally
• Buying Domain Name

The first step to building your website is to purchase domain name. Therefore it is in your best interest to review many of the web hosting solutions out there on the Internet because buying domain name requires you get a shared or dedicated hosting with it.

So one might ask? What are the different web hosting solutions available?

As you can imagine, there are many types of web hosting solutions available on the Internet. I will summarise some of the most common web hosting solutions for this article.

Shared web hosting solutions vs dedicated hosting

The most common, those that most people use for their affordability, are shared web hosting solutions. Shared means you share the server space, the server hardware (usually one box per x number of web sites) and other resources with everyone else. Now, if you have to use the same stuff everyone else is using, then you will probably have to live with any problems doing so may cause. For example, if one site owner renting space in this method, who happens to be sharing the server resources with your, decides to mess up his account with viruses and or allows hackers to get into his network after he unknownly dumps their scripts (agents) into his account, then your shared web hosting solutions is no longer a solution, but rather becomes your night mare. In my experience, I have heard of many cases where people lost their hosting account for abusing the system by bringing other sites down when they uploaded melicious software into their hosting account. However, these cases are rare. There are millions of reliable shared web hosting solutions and are mostly cheapest web hosting solutions you can find out there. So unles you are planning on getting a commercial web hosting, then, you're better off to purchase domain name and shared web hosting solutions from a reliable web hosting service.

Although sharing your web hosting solutions may have its advantages, such as being cost effective, sometimes it is not a viable solution at all. For example, as a commercial company, if you are running a profitable business where many customers do mobile credit card processing, do activities with credit card processing services, or your web site is accepting credit cards, you may lose money if your customers are unhappy with any issues that may arise due to sharing your web hosting solutions with someone else. You don't want a form filled out fully containing customer credit card information ready for credit card processing services on your server (that is shared with thousands of other site owners) and then get all that valuable data lost because your web hosting solutions (site and server together) decided they time out! This is where you need dedicated web hosting. You see, cheapest web hosting may be shared web hosting solutions, but sometimes, it is better to have your own dedicated web hosting service.

Dedicated web hosting.

(Credit Card Processing Services example) In the above example, if you own a business where customers buy stuff from you on the Internet and then you are accepting credit card purchases. This means, you cannot have any down time on your server when a customer is in the middle of credit card processing services, i.e they're waiting for you to tell them 'your order has been received' or you have just paid this much for this item - thank you- the sort of assurance that the customer will get what they paid for. If anything goes wrong, the customer may beleive you are a fraud even if the transaction went through. This is why dedicated web hosting solutions are better. Since you are no longer sharing with anyone else, the web hosting company makes sure your dedicated web hosting is always running at optimal level. As you know in these days, you get what you pay for. So by sharing your web hosting solutions, don't expect it to be perfect. However, if you get dedicated web hosting, then your customers will be happier and may come back to you to purchase your products again. You see, it is not the cheapest web hosting, but dedicated web hosting solutions can be what you need when you are a big timer, and are in need of commercial web hosting.

Buying Domain Name

Now that you know the most common web hosting solutions out there, lets get back to buying domain name. To purchase domain name, you should be ready. Know the domain name you need and research the available domain names to see if the one you want has not already been registered. If the domain-name.com is taken, try for domain-name.com or .net etc extensions. This is where domain names search becomes handy. Visit www.who.is and type in your desired domain to see if you are in luck, if not, see if a variation of it is available. One thing about buying domain name is that you rarely get the first one you think of, if that is a common name or one that popular. Long domain names are more available but short ones like cat or dog are all taking so do your domain names search effectively. Once you're ready to buy a domain name, you can can consult domain name registrations services, more commonly offered by your own web hosting solutions themselves.

Domain Name Registrations

The easiest thing to do in getting your web site on the Internet is using Domain Name Registrations service. Simply type in the name you want, select the web hosting solutions you can afford, then click on buy domain name button. Simple one, two, three step process. Normally, and this has always been the case since the early days of the Internet, there is credit card processing services involved anytime you purchase something online. The way web hosting companies guide you in is, they tell you to buy a domain name for as low as $1.99 (.info is going for that much on GoDaddy). As they lure customers in with the cheap promotional price of the domain name, their Domain Name Registrations service is actually built to upsell you. So, you soon find out quickly that buying domain name without web hosting solutions is really like having four wheels without the rest of the car. So you then have to buy a domain name and web hosting solutions at the same Domain Name Registrations gate.

So, to purchase domain name, one must be (even if vaguely) familiar with Domain Name Registrations which are simple enough that anyone can buy domain name nowadays. But the buyer has to be ready with their chosen and unique domain name and be also ready for credit card processing services (the check out). However, before all that, the buyer must decide the type of web hosting solutions - whether shared or dedicated web hosting. And finally, that is when they truly are able to buy a domain name confidently.

In the following posts, I will explain the two main types of web hosting solutions, .net web hosting and linux web hosting.