How to Host a Website

Having a website is the best way to get your name out there and offer your services to a lot of people. Before you get published online, you need to learn about the steps involved in hosting your own website.

The internet has a ton of information about every little detail you need to worry about. That’s why we gathered the best information in one place to get you fully informed about hosting your website on a custom domain.

In this post, we will cover the following topics:

1 - Static / Dynamic website

Before you start looking for hosting options, you have to decide if you want a static website or a dynamic one. Here’s the difference between the two:

Static - Imagine a static website is like a brochure. Everyone that comes to the website sees the same information. This could be a list of your services, a resume, or a product you’re selling.

Static websites are generally easier to manage and load much faster. Here’s a great example of a static website.

Dynamic - Dynamic websites or web apps are websites that change depending on the user visiting the page. Your Facebook page looks much different from mine. That’s because Facebook is a dynamic website.

Dynamic websites are much harder to build and maintain. They also load slower than static sites in terms of page speed.

2 - Hosting Companies

Now that you know which type of a website you would like to build, it’s time to pick a hosting company. They will take the code of your website and make it available for everyone to be able to view. There are many different providers available online but not all are great. When you’re starting out, you should work with providers that have:

Great customer service: Website hosting is nothing short of a complicated process behind the scenes. While hosting companies make it easy, issues can arise from time to time. When it comes to customer service, you can save yourself a lot of headaches.
Stellar uptime: When your business is on the line, you need to make sure your website is never down. Good hosting companies will have a track record of more than 99.99% uptime.
SSL Certificates: SSL Certificates help you protect your users’ information using encryption.

Here are 3 providers that we recommend:

Dreamhost – Virtually inexpensive, priced monthly at $2.95/month
Hostgator – Outstanding uptime
Tiinyhost - Easiest to get started with

3 - Purchase a Domain Name

Any website needs a name. Therefore, the first step is to register a domain name for your future website. The name of the website will become its permanent address where users can find it on the Internet. A unique domain name can be registered through an accredited company or purchased from the current owner.

In order to host your website on .com or .net, you need to buy a custom domain. We recommend using Namecheap for finding high quality and cheap domain names. Here’s how to get your custom domain on Namecheap:

Navigate to namecheap.com and enter in your desired business name.
Namecheap’s Beast Mode will show you all the TLDs that are available for your name. Note that .com and .net domains are usually very expensive and can go for $10,000+. If you’re looking for a cheaper domain, try .xyz, .store, .shop, .co, .cloud. Some of these are available for ~ $1.
For additional savings, Namecheap has a coupons section (https://www.namecheap.com/promos/coupons) that lists monthly discounts on their domains. Be sure to check here for deals before completing the purchase.

Once you purchase your domain name, you can provide it to your hosting company and they will make your website available on that address.

4 - Simplest way to host website using Tiinyhost

Once you have your website ready to go. You can host it using Tiinyhost in 3 simple steps:

Zip your website into an .zip folder
Navigate to tiiny.host and drag and drop your downloaded .zip file onto the main screen.
Enter the name of the website (could be anything). After a few seconds, your website should be live on .tiiny.site.

5 - Email Accounts

Once the business goes live, you will need a branded email account for yourself and your team. This would be something like - aaron@mywebsite.com. Having a company email account will:

Make you appear more trustworthy
Build your brand
Help you manage team access

This feature is generally available as an add-on by your hosting company. We highly recommend opting in for it.

Conclusion

If you’ve been able to follow through all of the above written steps, you are now ready to share your creation with the world and have a plethora of visitors checking out your website every day. You can do this by:

Talking about your website on social media
Going on podcasts and mentioning your business
Experiment with paid ads on Google, Facebook, and Youtube