• For example www.intouchwebdesign.com. You can see if your domain name is available on any website hosting site or some where like Yahoo!: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/
• You can buy a domain name for around $10 and have a very simple html page with contact information or a "coming soon" message.
• Suggestions on picking a domain name:
  • Don't register domain names that are too long and have too many syllables if you can help it. You can register names up to 63 characters long, but that doesn't mean you have to use all 63 characters. You want your name to be easy to remember. Not everyone will bookmark your page initially so try to think of something that can be easily remembered.
  • Use hyphens if your name is more than 3 words long (unless your name includes 3 short words). A name like carbuying.com doesn't really need a hyphen because it's readable the way it is. However a name like used-car-buying-scams.com looks better than usedcarbuyingscams.com since there are so many words in the name.
  • Protect your name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.) This deters people from copying your name. For example, if you own garden-tips-for-us.com you can also register garden-tips-for-us.net and any other extension that's available. You don't have to build a site on all the domains, but you can reserve the others to keep people (copycats) from registering them.

• A web host provides you with the space, tools and support to create your web pages and email accounts (you@yourdomain.com).
• If you sign up for hosting service with a hosting company, your domain name fee is usually included in the cost of the hosting fees.
• See" hosting service features explained" at the bottom of this page for more information on how to choose a hosting plan.

There are many tools available to help you design a website.

• From scratch - type in the html yourself (this can get tedious)
• Free site builder software offered by your hosting service
• WYSIWYGs (What You See Is What You Get) such as Microsoft Frontpage, Dreamweaver, GoLive, etc.
• Website templates offered by various companies online.

• If you want to sell stuff online, you will need a shopping cart. There are many different shopping cart applications out there. The first place to look would be at your hosting company to see what kind of shopping carts they offer and determine if they have all the features you will need. Usually, if you want to setup a shopping cart, you will also want to be able to accept credit cards. PayPal offers their own shopping carts as well as a list of compatible shopping carts and they are the cheapest way to accept credit cards.
• If you want to sell stuff by credit card online, unless you us PayPal, you will need a merchant account or an "e-commerce" bank account that can accept credit cards.

You can choose to put any information you want on your site. Here are some typical categories that are listed on websites:

• Business name
• Services
• Contact info
• Prices (possibly)
• Portfolio of your work or products
• Frequently Asked Questions
• About page

• Google
  Add your URL (http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl) to their index.
  Google Sitemaps - Tell google what pages are present on your site. (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login?hl=en)
• Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org/add.html)
• Yahoo! (http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html)
• Others (http://www.wordsinarow.com/search-engines.html)

This is amount of space allocated to your website files and all of your images. Most simple sites with few high resolution pictures will not take up that much space. For e-commerce sites or photography sites, you will want more storage.

The bandwidth is how fast data will transfer to and from your website. If you have a lot of people visiting your site at the same time, lower bandwidth will cause your page to load more slowly. If you have a lot of pictures and images, it is especially noticeable.

In website hosting, the term "bandwidth" is used to describe the amount of data that can be transferred to or from the website or server, measured in bytes transfered over a prescribed period of time (usually one month).

Web hosting companies often quote a monthly bandwidth limit for a website, for example 100 gigabytes per month. If visitors to the website download a total greater than 100 gigabytes in one month, the bandwidth limit will have been exceeded.

Image sizes, html file sizes, file downloads, etc. will all add to the amount of bandwidth being transferred from your hosting server anytime someone views your website. For each page they visit, the data for that page is being transferred from your hosting server and that will add to your monthly bandwidth quota.

Most personal or small business sites will not need more than 1GB of bandwidth per month. If you have a web site that is composed of static web pages and you expect little traffic to your site on a daily basis, go with a low bandwidth plan. If you go over the amount of bandwidth allocated in your plan, your hosting company could charge you over usage fees, so you may want to go through some calculations to estimate the amount of bandwidth your site will require.

For more information on how to estimate your bandwidth requirements, refer to the following site: http://www.findmyhosting.com/bandwidth.htm

FTP support is a good way to transfer files to the web host server that you designed outside of the hosting service's own site builder software.

There should be excellent customer service because you never know when you will have a problem. Look for 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week available customer service.

This allows you to have an email account with your domain name. For example you@yourdomain.com and is a professional way to associate yourself with your business.

You want to be able to access your website account at any time. Look for 24/7 access.

A subdomain adds another extension to your website name. For example www.mysite.intouchwebdesign.com. You can create a whole new website on a subdomain. These are good if you have "sub-businesses" or departments associated with your company. For example, www.finance.intouchwebdesign.com.

Most hosting packages include 1 domain name, however, there are some more enhanced packages that can offer more than one or even unlimited domains. If you plan to have several businesses or make many independent websites, look for multiple domain offers.

Scripting languages are what is used to manage a lot of the content on a website. You need to know how your website will be implemented and if it uses any scripting languages so that you can pick a web host that supports those scripting languages. For example, PHP, Perl, CGI-BIN, Frontpage extensions, Cold Fusion, ASP.NET, etc.

Most hosting services provide some type of software that you can use to design and build your own website. See if you can give tham a try to see how easy they are to use.

If you need to use a database with your website, make sure your hosting service provides the type of database you need. Most of the time MySQL will be OK, but if you already have a database built in another type of database management software, make sure it is supported.

If you want to be able to accept credit cards or handle sensitive or personal information on your website, make sure the hosting package includes SSL or some other kind of secure file transfer mechanism.

If you want to be able to sell items using a shopping cart, look for a hosting package that includes shopping cart software with it.