Anyone on here familiar with how domain names work? I'm helping a friend of mine with a small business project and we're a bit confused about which domain name to choose. Looking at this
Domain Registration - Register Domain Names and Domain check with 1&1 it looks like you get more of a choice than just .com/.net etc. Which is best, your first choice of name with a less well-known extension, or a different name/hypehsn etc and .com? Is there much difference?
Thanks in advance.
Free advice worth much denero -
STAY AWAY FROM 1&! (AND EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY ) STAY AWAY FROM GODADDY!!!
You will actually end up paying them so they can own your site.
If you want good results, find a local web developer and supply them with CONTENT. You won't regret it. Or you can PM me and I'll be glad to take a look (even though I'm not local ... but I do work cheap as in "questions answered at no charge") as the web allows this work to be done from any place in the world. The problem with the big sites is, you have no experience, they only have paid question answerers ... and you are the payer. Best of all, paying doesn't guarantee the answer fits your situation or needs.
Domain name purchase?
www.namecheap.com (Domain name is domain name - it's who you pay to register it that counts) They don't raise the cost of renewing your domain name either, so no need to seek another name next year.
A great looking site that does not operate properly is a failure. A site that looks good and has poor SEO is a failure (BTW, the SEO help the "build it yourself" people offer is a big PDF file you can read). Also important, if the site looks "amateurish", even with great SEO, folks leave right away.
Hosting? Webhostingbuzz.com gives me 750 Gigabytes of storage (and with new accounts, they sometimes offer a free domain name or two that you can choose) for under $80/year. Every year my storage increases, and after two years (original purchase and one renewal) you get a loyalty discount. I actually host my sites and several sites I do for my business.
CONTENT: Whether you do the site, or someone else builds is, YOU need to provide the content (Pictures, stories, sales pitch, testimonials, videos, etc.). Those big hosting companies won't do it for you, and a small operator will need that from you to make your site a success. Have a vision and be willing and able to express it to the designer so he/she can show it to the world.
Hope things work out for you.