Your Personal Domain Name

I have been hearing more and more people wanting a personal domain as of late. Each person has his/her own reason of wanting to have a personal domain. A few important things you should know about getting your very own personal domain. It’s definitely not like having a blogger.com account anymore depending on your hosting provider. With the free hosting services you don’t concern yourself of the different components that makes your blog work like: domain, hosting, database, CMS(Content Management System) software like WordPress, etc. When you decide to have your own domain and manage it yourself, you should get ready for an ‘exciting’ learning experience and also be ready for the sleepless nights figuring out what to do.

• Choose a domain name that suit’s you best. (example: for me www.mygoodfinds.com)

• Register the domain and purchase a hosting package. You see, when you register a domain, it’s like you having a home address where people can find you. You can have the address but for you to able to make it your home, you have to put a house on the address. In this case you are only renting the house(if you want to own the ‘house,’ it’s entirely a different story and cost). The hosting is like the physical structure of a house where you put your personal effects. In a website or a blog, your personal effects are the contents like your photos and posts.

• There are providers who will do more for you like install the software and keep up with the updates for you but of course ask for a higher fee(what do you expect? time is money, you know).

• There are providers who will give you the whole control of your domain and hosting and it’s up to you to install your software and updates, you are totally responsible for the contents. Think of it like going to Ikea for furniture, it’s cheaper because you have to assemble it yourself. It’s less expensive this way but I would only recommend it if you know what the heck you are doing. If you don’t have much technical know how, ask a friend who does and treat her/him to dinner or at least offer something. You’ll become pretty much dependent on your techy friend because of human nature- you’ll be wanting to do alot of changes in your site/blog. You don’t really expect your friend to spend serveral hours of her/his day for free to help you out each time you call, do you? If you do, then you must be REALLY good friends. It wouldn’t be that bad if you are willing to learn to manage your website/blog yourself.

• I entrusted my domain and hosting with a company that has robust data centers and high speed redundant connections. Data centers have a collection of servers(powerful computers), use sophisticated systems and procedures(security, back-up and recovery, etc) to make sure your data(blogs and photos) don’t disappear from the face of this Earth that easily. High speed redundant connections, it means that if one connection goes down, your blog will still be running from different connections.

• Make sure that if your domain and it’s contents are hosted as a favor is to ask for something written saying that you own the domain and it’s contents. But with no written contract whatsoever, the person who gave you the favor is not lawfully obligated to you to transfer your domain and it’s contents if they no longer can host you. I know it’s a bunch of legal stuff but who knows your domain and it’s content may become very valuable down the road, you really don’t want to be caught in a position when a judge can tell you: you have no case due to the lack of documentation or you don’t have a binding legal business deal. It all boils down on how much you value your domain and it’s contents(the blog you spent time writing).

When I was looking at hosting services for myself, www.GoDaddy.com stood out among the hosting services because of the great hosting packages. I had excellent customer service experience from both sales and technical support. I have chosen the Deluxe package, it may sound exessive but if I would have chosen the Economy Plan and I happen to generate traffic beyond the allowed bandwidth, I would be billed a whole lot more. Again, read the fine print in the terms and conditions.

I only endorse products and services that and can call My Good Find. I have been with Godaddy for more than a year and have signed up for 3 years with them and I trust that I will renew with them when the time comes.