| First Steps to Creating an Author Web Site |
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| By Apryl Duncan | |
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You've finally decided to get your own Web site to promote yourself as a writer. Congratulations! Now the real work begins. Where will you host it? What will your domain name be? Where do you begin?
Just when you think one question is answered, another one pops up. Like: What's all this jargon about hosting and domain names? Hosting Some Web hosts are free but they usually require you to have their ads on your Web site. Many free hosts do offer free Web templates where you simply plug in your information and go. This is extremely helpful if you have limited experience with HTML (the code used to create a Web page) or you just want to get a Web site up and running quick. In this case, a free Web host may be the right choice for you. Over time, you can learn more about HTML so you can design your own site and eventually get a paid Web host so you can maintain your site the way you wish. These days, you can have your own domain name and Web host for a relatively low cost so if you have about $10 a year for a domain name and even $5-10 a month for hosting, you can bypass a free service that's going to plaster ads all over your site. Remember, if you're doing business as a writer, costs for domain names and hosting are also tax deductible. So you have a more professional appearance on the Web and you get a deduction you can use on your taxes. For paid hosting, you pay a fee and you get to do what you want with this piece of land without having someone's ads on your space. You don't have as many restrictions on your site and you get to do more of what you want with your site. This is how most people prefer to maintain their Web site. If you've ever searched for "Web hosts," you've undoubtedly come back with pages and pages of results for "best Web hosting" and "cheap Web hosting." Choosing a host can be difficult and you may even find you have to switch hosts every now and then if a service isn't up to par with your expectations. Finding that right host when there are so many out there can be a time-consuming task. But spending lots of time evaluating a host is vital to choosing the right company. If you're looking for hosting, start with this great tool: FindMyHosting.com. Search out a host for your Web site by choosing your price range, disk space, etc., and the results you get will give you a good place to start your research on each company. FindMyHosting.com shows you the company's ratings submitted by the customers, the monthly price for hosting, disk storage and even offers a link to check the host's reliability. Reliability is crucial in your search. You don't want a host that offers $2 hosting per month but their server is down 50-percent of the time in any given month. No one will see your site and the super cheap deal you got on hosting won't make one difference. What you should look for when evaluating a host: Is that low rate you found only good if you pay for a year in advance? Be cautious of paying everything up front because if the host is unreliable and you find your site is down more than it's up, most hosts won't refund your money. You can take your site elsewhere but you won't get that money back. Send in a few questions to their support team. Ask if you can see some of their clients' sites. Ask about uptime of their servers. These questions are important to ask but you're also gauging how quickly support is getting back to you. If you have to wait several days, or worse -- you never even get a response -- chances are this is the type of service (or lack thereof) you'll be getting after the company has your money. Web hosting companies are so competitive these days that you should look for one that doesn't require a setup fee. Any host that is charging a setup fee for simply assigning you a username and password for your new hosting account is making easy money. A majority of hosting companies do not charge setup fees. How much is their site up? In other words, if the uptime is 80-percent for one month, the server was down the other 20-percent of the time. That's a lot of downtime in today's world. Most hosts have at least 98-percent uptime. It may sound like a great idea to have your own dedicated server. This means you, and only you, will have your Web site on the server. Dedicated servers can be very expensive and you can get just as good service on a shared server. Other sites will be on the shared server with you but you probably will never even notice and the cost is much more affordable. The more disk storage you need, the more you'll pay. Fortunately, most hosting companies offer several tiers of hosting. So if you choose a hosting package with 100 MB of space, you can easily upgrade to the next tier with no problems. Be sure you ask if this is a possibility before you buy. Also, for your writing site, you're probably not going to need a whole lot of space. A host that promises 2 GB of storage space will be way more space than you'll ever need for a site that shows pictures of your book jackets, book excerpts and the like. You don't have to purchase a huge piece of server to get a really professional, sleek-looking Web site on the Internet. Domain Names Domain names (or URLs) are just a fancy way of saying a Web address. Of course, a Web address is how you access a Web site. For example: This may seem elementary but many people find the idea of domain names intimidating. How do you get one? How do you choose one? Why do you need one? These questions used to be hard to answer when would-be webmasters first hit the Internet so many years ago. Now you can find everything you need to know and even the most inexperienced Web user can get a domain name of their own. Domain names used to be pricey per year. Some registrars (the place you go to register your domain name) still charge a high amount per year. But it's not necessary to pay more than $10 a year for your own domain name. Sample domain name registrars that are both popular with users and offer low cost domain names include GoDaddy.com and Yahoo! Domains. Signing up for a domain name is easy and registrar sites walk you through everything step by step. When choosing a domain name, you want to spend a lot of time brainstorming. First of all, there are so many Web sites out there that you may come up with a great domain name only to find someone else has come up with it too and already registered it. As a writer, you may want to register your name, such as www.MyName.com. You may even want to go for something more creative that goes with your site, like www.FictionAddiction.NET. Some authors even register the name of their book as their domain name. This will limit you when you publish your next book but with the low cost of domain names, you can always register your next book's title too...if the domain name's not taken already, of course. What you also have to take in consideration is what type of content you'll be offering to decide what domain name will serve you best. If you only plan on offering information about you, your books, current projects and public appearances, your name may work best as a domain name. Most of the popular authors have their own name as the domain name -- StephenKing.com, NoraRoberts.com, JudyBlume.com. If you plan on offering all of this information plus tips on writing, a blog, forum, etc., getting more creative with your domain name may be the way to go. If you're strictly wanting to use your Web site to attract readers, you might want to re-think a creative domain name, though. It will be much easier for people to find you on the Web and for you to promote your domain name as well if you keep it simple. No matter what you choose, getting your first domain name, Web host and taking that first step to building your home on the Web can be exciting. A little scary at first. But definitely something you need to do as a professional writer. |
