This is the first part of the second step in a series of posts I’m writing that will help you set up your own website, with your own domain.

As I’ve mentioned before, setting up your own website involves following a short series of steps, and the second step to building your own website is finding a place to put your websites files – choosing a web hosting company.

If you do a search on Google for “web hosting” you’ll quickly find that there are thousands upon thousands of web hosting companies out there – all anxious to get the new webmaster (you) to sign on the dotted line and pick up one of their web hosting packages.

This is good in the sense that competition drives the price down, but bad in the sense that it confuses the hell out of the average person out there who is trying to sort the wheat from the chaff.

It seems like everyone’s offering “unlimited bandwidth” and “unlimited number of domains” and “unlimited storage.” Unfortunately, although those phrases sound great, they really mean jack squat.

Why? Well..

A web host that’s costing you $5 per month for hosting isn’t really going to offer you unlimited bandwidth – because they’d be out of business in a month if they did.

A web host that’s offering you an unlimited number of domains and databases that can be hosted on your shared space is still going to limit you in another way – to a small portion of the CPU power available on the server.

While both those limitations are normal in the web hosting business, they usually don’t come up as a problem for people until they reach the point where they get their service cut off with no warning. That’s hugely frustrating to most people, and is probably why World War 2 got started.

I’ve had several accounts with different web hosting providers and the two that I recommend to anyone are Hawk Host and Liquid Web:

A well-thought-out company has a target clientèle that they’ve set their business up to attract and support. While other types of customers can be attracted to their services, they’re not the intended customers and may find the company’s services either too limited or too costly.

Both these web hosting companies are looking for completely different customers, but I’ll give you the rundown on both companies and let you decide which is right for you.

Hawk Host Overview

I was turned onto Hawk Host by Michael Lankton – a friend of mine who likes to think he knows something about everything, like me. While he’s wrong when it comes to motorcycles and music, he’s right when it comes to web hosting.

Hawk Host is looking for customers on a budget who know what they’re looking for – a cheap, reliable web host with fast servers and no problems.

One of the things I like most about Hawk Host is that they keep the overselling to an absolute minimum.

Shared hosting providers are notorious for overselling their servers, in the hopes that all the people buying web hosting from them won’t actually use it. That’s fine for the majority of websites out there, but if and when your site starts getting some decent traffic, you don’t want it to be brought down because the server that it is sitting on can’t handle it.

Another thing I like about Hawk Host is that they have pretty generous CPU limits and, in addition to that, they won’t just pull the plug on you if you exceed them.

CPU limits are important. As your website starts attracting more and more readers, each reader that hits your site is going to cost you CPU cycles. If you start using up too many of those cycles, your usual web host will shut you down for an hour or so at the best, or permanently at the worst.

You do not want this to happen. It is bad.

Imagine someone coming into your house and turning off your computer while you’re finishing up your first novel and you haven’t saved for the last day or so.

Yeah, that bad.

So if you’re wanting to sign up for Hawk Host, here’s what you do:

Click the link here -> Hawk Host.

Click either the “Sign Up Now” button on their front page to sign up for their $5.95 monthly service, or go to the “Web Hosting” tab on the top of their page and select the hosting package you’re most comfortable with. You’ll be taken to this screen:

Because you’ve already registered a domain name, you want to select the “I will update my nameservers on an existing domain Or I will register a new domain” radio button and put in your domain name, like this:

Once you go to the next screen, you see this:

If you’re really in a pinch for cash, you can go with the monthly billing. I would advise against it, however, just for the simple reason that you’ll be saving money over the long run if you pay for a year’s worth of service – especially if you use one of the discount codes that you should be using. So, follow my advice and pay for a year’s worth of service in advance.

Don’t worry about getting a dedicated IP address right now, unless it’s something you have experience with and know that you want. So select the 12 month price and either pick the server location that you like the best or let Hawk Host pick for you. Once you hit “Update Cart” you’ll be taken to this screen:

Look this over to make sure you didn’t type your domain name in wrong or anything like that. Then focus on that little box that says “Promotional Code” and open a new tab.

You’re going to want to search for current Hawk Host promotional codes. Here, let me Google that for you. Look for a code that gets you 30-40 percent off the first payment and either write it down or highlight it, then right click and copy it.

I found a great coupon code for Hawk Host – october2009 – which you can just copy and paste into the little box there and enjoy a 45% off discount for your first year’s worth of hosting:

Hawk Host puts out a different set of coupons every month, and coupons expire regularly, so just keep looking and experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t. It seems like you could try the current month and year format that they’re using and get a great deal, so try that first and see what happens.

Once you get a coupon code you’re happy with, click the “Checkout” button and go to this screen:

If you don’t know what to do at this point, you’re better off making whistles in Uganda. Seriously, step away from the computer and take up lifting things as a hobby, or maybe take up thinking about how pretty rabbits are and how you’d like to pet them.

Pay with a credit card. They give you better protection than PayPal does and possible reward points.

Pick a good, secure password. Write it down and keep it in your wallet. Use a number/letter/symbol combination. It’s best to get into the habit of picking secure passwords now.

Once you pay, you’ll get an e-mail from Hawk Host with all the IP addresses, nameservers and other information you’ll need to complete the next steps. Save that e-mail, please.

Since this post has already passed 1200 words, I’ll split this post into two different sections, giving you the lowdown on Liquid Web in the next section.

Hawk Host Pros

• Cost – If you can’t find a Hawk Host plan that fits your budget, you might want to either reconsider setting up a website or maybe start thinking about getting a second job of some kind. Selling some plasma, maybe. Hawk Host’s hosting plans are even cheaper when you factor in online discount codes and coupons.
• Reliability – 99.9% uptime guarantee. This is good.
• Fast Servers – In my experience, comparing Hawk Host’s servers to other shared hosting providers is like comparing a Lexus to a Hyundai.
• Customer Support – It’s like the guy lives at the office. I’ve always had fast customer service with Hawk Host, with e-mails usually coming back within an hour with either a solution I can implement or announcing that they’ve already fixed the problem.

Hawk Host Cons

• Does not offer the same level of technical support as companies that provide managed servers.

The Guide:

Building Your Own Website

Registering a Domain Name
Choosing a Web Hosting Company: Hawk Host or Liquid Web
Pointing Your Domain Name to Your Web Host
Using cPanel and Fantastico to Put Up Your First Website
Changing The Default WordPress Settings On Your First Website
Locating, Loading And Activating Useful WordPress Plugins For Your First Website
A List Of Useful WordPress Plugins

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