get a .com if you can. Dot-coms are the most popular and with that popularity that have the most name recognition. A .net or .org domain name is an ok choice as well. If you just have to register a certain domain and it's only available as something other than .com, .net, or .org, I would first try a little harder to think of a variation of the domain you want. If you can't find a variation of the domain you want then one of the other domain extensions will do, but I still think you're better off with a .com, .net, or a .org. It's possible and even likely that in the future other domain extensions will become popular, but for now .com, and .net are really the jewels of domain name extensions. Remember that .org domains are usually registered by non-profit organizations.

Is the domain I want available?

It's easy to check if your domain is available. Any domain registrar will let you know. Simply type the domain into the field provided and click on the button. We now use Godaddy.com for all of our domains. CLICK HERE to visit Godaddy and see if the domain you want is available.

Registering a domain

If you're going to be building a website with your domain, then many web hosting companies will try and lure you in with an offer of a free domain registration when you sign up onto one of their hosting plans. We don't think it's a good idea to choose a web host simply because they're going to pay for your domain registration, and you can learn more about it if you read our article about domain registration.

Regardless of whether or not you plan on building a website for your domain, a good domain registrar is the best place to register a domain. CLICK HERE to visit Godaddy and register your domain.

Building a website

Building your first site can be intimidating. Without any experience, many people often don't even know where to begin. If your brand new at this, then your going to need to spend some time getting familiar with the tools needed to build a website.

If you have Microsoft Frontpage or Macromedia Dreamweaver, then you already have the basic tools, you just need to learn to apply them. Many people may not even be aware that they have MS Frontpage. Often, it comes packages with the rest of the MS Office Suite, so if you're not sure if you have it go ahead and look through the programs on your computer and see if you can find Microsoft Frontpage. If you don't already have one of these tools then it's a good idea to purchase one of them. Advanced webmasters almost always recommend Dreamweaver, but Frontpage is easier to use and if you're new at all this you'll have an easier time learning Frontpage since it is a Microsoft product and it's features are similar to other Microsoft software that you may already be familiar with.

We did some looking around for places online to get these programs legitimately and at a discount. Softwaresurplus.com has these programs available at a pretty good discount. It was about $90 for MS Frontpage 2003 and about $240 for Macromedia Dreamweaver. That may seem expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than buying it from a local computer store.

If you don't have one of these programs and you can't afford to buy one of them, then you still have an option. In that situation, a good options is to take advantage of some of the free web builders available online. Just type in "free web builder" into a search engine and see what comes up. There are a lot of them. Yahoo has a very popular one called Yahoo Site Builder. These site builders are very simple to use and require no experience. The websites they produce aren't great, but they aren't all that bad either. Most web hosts will also supply you with one of these basic site builders as a part of your web hosting plan. However, don't choose a web host just because they have a site builder. Our top web hosting company, Hostgator does offer a site builder starting with their $9.95/month plan and up. If you're looking for a web host, read our review of Hostgator.

If you already have MS Frontpage or Macromedia Dreamweaver or you are going to buy one of them, but you don't have any experience building websites then the paragraph below this one is very important for you to read. Learning to build a nice looking website from scratch can take a long time. These programs aren't trivial. A great way to get a professional looking presence on the web in a hurry is with a web template.

Thank goodness for web templates

If it were not for web templates, there would be far fewer nice looking websites online today. We purchased a template for this site. We have also built many sites from scratch, but we really liked this template and decided to use it. If you're curious where this template was purchased, it was www.allwebco-templates.com. We paid $95 for the template used for PerfectFitHosting.com. As far as templates go, that's quite expensive, but we thought it was worth it at the time and we are still very happy with it.

If you do get a template, the company you buy it from may ask you to host your site with them. We strongly recommend that you don't do that. They may be the worst web hosting company ever even if their templates are great. Stick with web hosting companies that specialize in web hosting and you'll have a much better chance of making your internet adventure a good one.

If you're on a tight budget, basictemplates.com has a lot of nice templates for as little as $5 apiece. Aside from them, you can do a search for "web templates" on a search engine and you'll find that there are a whole lot of companies selling templates.

Of course, there is more to it than just purchasing the template and getting your site on the web. You'll need Frontpage or Dreamweaver to edit the templates and personalize it for yourself. This personalization will require you to learn a little about basic web design, but not even remotely close to all that you would need to know in order to build a nice site from scratch.

It can't be stressed enough how important templates are if you don't have web design skills. Hiring a designer can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, while a nice template can be yours for only $5. The knowledge you'll need to edit the template is not very extensive. A short tutorial on Frontpage or Dreamweaver should be enough to get you started. Simply type "Frontpage tutorial" or "Dreamweaver tutorial" into a search engine and you'll find a lot of information for free.

Images for your site

Free website builders and templates allow you to use your own images in order to personalize the site. But where do you get those images? Some people use Google Images for their websites, but those images are taken from other people's websites and that is a copyright violation. There are stock photography sites online where you can purchase images for your site. We use www.bigstockphoto.com. Each image costs around $2. You may be able to find a cheaper deal if you look around, but you will have a tough time finding a better stock image site than www.bigstockphoto.com. They have a search function that will allow you to look through their images to be sure that they have what you want before you make a purchase.

In order to use the images in your template, you'll need to resize them to fit properly inside of your template. Unless you already have Photoshop or some other program that can resize images, you'll need to find a tool that can do this for you. We use Photoshop, but that's expensive if you don't have it already. A perfect solution to resizing images is picasa.com. It's free so thank god you don't have to get out your wallet again.

You may also want to make a logo for your site. If you're on a somewhat tight budget, you can easily create a nice logo on your own very cheaply as opposed to graphic artists, who will charge you as much as several hundred dollars to create a logo. Logos will give your site a professional appearance that you just can't get with plain text. We use Photoshop for most of our logos along with images that we buy from bigstockphoto.com. Photoshop is the Rolls Royce of image editing and creating programs. They have a 30 day trial that you can use to test it out. If you try the trial and need some guidance on how to do something in Photoshop, try typing your request into Google. For example, "resize images in Photoshop" will return some results that will tell you how to do just that. You can also use the help menu in the software itself. If you decide to purchase Photoshop then make sure you get the best deal possible. Again, use Google or another search engine to find good deals on Photoshop software.

Luckily, there is an easier and much cheaper solution than outsourcing your logo design or buying Photoshop. Along with Photoshop, we also use the software at Easylogocreator.com to build a lot of our logos. This software is extremely easy to use and will only cost you about $30. It requires a little getting used to, but it doesn't require any experience.

With MS Frontpage, a template, some stock photos, and a logo creator you're looking at about $130 or so to get you started. Of course, $120 of that is for the logo maker and Frontpage, which you will only have to purchase once. Any other sites that you want to build will be much cheaper.

Choosing a web host

We go into much detail about this subject on our home page. We would recommend that you first purchase your domain from a domain registrar and then purchase web hosting. See our article on domain registration for more information. Our favorite web hosting company is Hostgator and we talk about them extensively on this website. Check out our review of Hostgator.

Uploading your website to your web host

This is another source of confusion and frustration for people just getting started. If you built your site using MS Frontpage, then most web hosts provide Frontpage extentions which means that you will be able to upload your site directly from your Frontpage software.

FTP or File Transfer Protocol is the most common way to upload your site from your computer to your web host's servers. But how the heck do I use FTP, you ask? There are a lot of FTP programs out there and fortunately it's not necessary to pay for your FTP. Some companies do charge for their software, but there are some that don't charge and if you don't have to pay then why should you.

We use coffeecup.com for FTP. If you go to their website and scroll down you'll see a lost of their free software and on the list you'll see Free FTP. Download their free software and you'll be able to easily upload your website your your web host's servers. I've also heard good things about www.coreFTP.com. Their software is also free and will suffice to get your website from your computer to your web host.

We hope that this article has been helpful to you. If you have any questions, please go to our contact page and send us a message. We'll do our best to get back to you as promptly as possible. You can help us by linking to this site from your site or telling your friends and family about the resources on this site.

Good luck getting started online,

PerfectFitHosting.com