A few things to be on the look out for when selecting a web hosting provider:
• What is the web host’ s advertised uptime? 99.9 percent uptime is the bare minimum you should accept.
• What is the quality of their customer support? Submit a few queries and call their customer support team before handing over your money.
• How much storage space will you have? Aim for a minimum 5 GB of storage space.
Be careful not to get hung up on choosing a hosting provider. At the end of the day, most shared hosting providers will be adequate for getting started. Once your site gets bigger and more popular, you might want to think about whether you’ re happy with your hosting, but in most cases you won’ t be able to tell the difference between providers.
If you’ re nervous, opt for a month-to-month payment plan( rather than buying for a whole year up front) until you’ re sure you’ re happy. If you do decide you hate your host later on, you can move your site to a new host. Often your new host will be happy to help you migrate everything over.
For more information on web hosting, as well as how to register your hosting and link your domain name to it, look at the“ What to Look For in a Hosting Provider” lesson.
Site Building with WordPress
WordPress is a content management system( CMS) that makes it easy for even the biggest technophobe to build and run a professional-looking website.
It’ s essentially a software that you can install on your website that allows you to add content and change your website settings, all from a friendly admin panel( rather than staring at screens of code). WordPress is free, and it has a huge community behind it, so you’ ll find a lot of tools and support to help you.
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