GET THAT DOMAIN

You need an identity for your site. What is it called? Will it be your name, a brand, the title of your book, services, or a new business? Some designers will build your site, and then let you go off and do the Domain Name and the Hosting yourself. Yes, yes, yes, it can be done in any order you want (kind of not true) but why risk things falling apart when you try to associate a name to a built site. What if you lose the site or it resets itself during the process?

Yup. Big bummer there.

I recommend using 123-Reg https://www.123-reg.co.uk (123-reg.co.uk) as they have a great range of domain names for super low prices (for the first year). For most sites you’ll be looking at £1.99 for the entirety of Year 1, and then £14.99 for Year 2 onwards.

Option 1 is getting the name yourself, so that you own it, and then changing the DNS Name Server (your designer should know how to do this) towards your suited Hosting Service.

Option 2 is that you let the designer obtain it for you. There is a risk that they then hold you to ransom as they’ll possess the rights to the Domain, and I have seen cases of this happen, so if you do let them purchase the Domain, make sure that you have a Contract in place ensuring that ownership shifts back to you at any time with no loss of service.

At BATS, we can purchase the Domain for you as part of a Hosting Package, even if you go for the Basic Package at £6 per month.

Some recommendations are:

• Don’t make the Domain too long like BusinessAnalyticsandTechnologySolutions.com
• Don’t add too many hyphens or symbols like Business_Analytics-Solutions.com
• Don’t make it too vague unless you have a brand: GreenPlop.com
• Don’t purchase too many domains and then link them all to just one (costs will add up)
• Don’t create a site per novel you write; aim to promote yourself as a writer
• Don’t use offensive or suggestive words as your name
• Think out of the box. We couldn’t get BATS.com, so we got BATS.work
• If a name is taken, try an alternative like Apple.org.uk (notice the .org)
• Say the domain name aloud. Would someone get it if they just heard it?