Web Hosting and Domains

Post written for Thriveworks - At Thriveworks, I lead our inbound marketing efforts targeted specifically to counselors. If you are a counselor seeking web marketing, visit Thriveworks Counselor Marketing.

Building a website can be a complex process, but it is a great first step for a person marketing their business. You essentially need 3 things:

1. A Domain name (www.thriveworks.com)….

2. Hosting Space on a Server (Network Solutions, Go Daddy, Blue Host, Host Gator, etc…)

3. And finally the website itself (WordPress Theme Install, Custom Built CSS and HTML site, etc…)

How does all of this work? You create your website, whether it be WordPress, a theme, a hand coded site, and then you upload it to your hosting space. You can upload it by FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or some web hosting spaces have a great Upload feature.

Once it has been uploaded – you need to tell people how to get to it. By default, your website can be found by its IP address. It looks something like 255.255.255.0. But who wants to remember something like that?

Instead, the people at the w3c (World Wide Web Consortium) made it easy for us mortals. They let us use easy to remember words (domain name). That is where your domain name comes into play. You then “point” your domain name to your hosting space – Viola! You have yourself a site.

What type of hosting space should you get for counselor marketing? Unless you are getting thousands of hits a day, you don’t need anything too complex. We, at Thriveworks, have a dedicated server because we get a lot of hits a day.

But for most websites starting out, unless you get featured on Time, you will be okay with the smallest and cheapest hosting package offered by any web host. Most of the “Basic” packages can handle a few hundred hits a day. Look around – find some promo codes – get a good deal.

But do make sure you get web hosting that fits your needs. Also, almost every web host offers email clients – but check to see if you can get gmail with your domain. Gmail has a great web client that can plug right into your email needs.