The first step in building an online business is registering a domain name. It’s like incorporating a company when you want to set up a business. The only problem is, it takes a lot of thinking and patience to find a perfect domain name that reflects your personality, or business, or both.
A domain name is your identity on the web. So try to find a name that’s unique, memorable, short, readable, and brandable (preferably a .com). You will also have to make sure that it doesn’t conflict with other brand names or trademarks.
Recommended Read: How To Choose A Domain Name For Your Blog
Even though you usually get a free domain name when you sign up for a 12-month web hosting plan, I would recommend purchasing a domain name on your own from a domain registrar like
Namecheap.com or
GoDaddy.com and it costs $10-$15 per year.
Doing so will make it easy to manage all your domain names from a single dashboard (assuming that you will need more domain names in the future).
Web hosting companies offer a domain name free of cost only for the first year, after which they start charging a premium rate. There’s every chance that you might not stick with the same web hosting company in the future, so it’s always better to purchase your domain names elsewhere and manage them separately.
A website can’t exist without a domain name and a web hosting plan. There are a ton of web hosting companies on the web and then there is countless web hosting comparisons, reviews, coupons, and deals of those hosting companies. And almost all of the bloggers recommend at least one web hosting company of their choice.
The problem is, the web hosting provider recommended by ‘Blogger A’ could be the worst rated hosting company by ‘Blogger B’ or vice versa. Again, a good percentage of the bloggers or the “best web hosting reviews and ratings” are biased.
I would say there’s no such thing as a perfect web hosting company. You need to select a web hosting plan based on your actual requirements and budget. If you are unsure about it then the best thing is to get help from your geeky friend or ask on a web hosting forum.
You can also check out my
Web Hosting Handbook to know all (almost) things web hosting. Anyway, I’m recommending a shared hosting plan by
InMotion Hosting (oh yeah, Minterest is also hosted by them).
Just in case, Shared Hosting is the most popular — and also the most affordable — web hosting plan. It’s super-easy to manage a shared hosting plan and it’s equally good for beginners as well as experienced webmasters.
Shared hosting basically means that you’re sharing your server (resources as well as the cost) with hundreds of other websites. And that makes it affordable for everyone.
The majority of websites on the web are actually hosted on a shared hosting plan. It can cost as low as $1 per month to as high as $25 per month depending upon the hosting brand and their resources. If you are new to blogging or have an existing WordPress.com or BlogSpot.com blog that’s not getting a lot of traffic, a shared hosting plan is all that you need.
Also, shared hosting is good for a personal website or a small business website (assuming that you don’t expect too much traffic every single day, and all you need is an online presence plus business email).
And hey, a shared hosting may also be suitable when you need to host multiple websites — as long as you don’t expect hundreds of thousands of visits an hour to each website.
So let’s get started!
When you browse a WordPress theme, you need to visualize your future website. That's why picking a theme/template is the toughest part of setting up any WordPress site. Seriously. There are a large number of free and paid WordPress themes out there so selecting one from so many themes can be extremely difficult.
The problem with free WordPress themes is that its developers may not update their themes regularly. And when the codes of your themes are not up-to-date, it becomes vulnerable to attacks in the future.
The same applies when you buy a paid WordPress theme from an independent theme developer (or freelancer). You may get the theme you really like at first, but eventually, the theme will become outdated.
I personally recommend buying WordPress themes from a premium WordPress theme marketplace because they make sure that their WordPress themes are up-to-date. And that’s why they release new updates regularly and even add additional features when WordPress updates its core software.
Out of the premium WordPress theme marketplaces, my personal favorite is StudioPress.com (oh yeah, I am also using one of their themes).
First things first.
There’s every chance that you will come across few terms like WordPress Framework, Child Theme (also known as Skin), and WordPress Hooks to name a few. So let us just explore those terms before getting started.
I love Feedly and I love it even more now because they have launched features. The first time I tried Feedly was when Google discontinued the Google Reader. I even published a blog post about Feedly to 
WordPress is a jungle. Seriously. When I first planned to write this series of WordPress posts, the idea was to get some essential WordPress topics published on my blog so that I could link to it from related blog posts and can supplement few upcoming blog posts as well.
And then I realized it's not easy. I mean, it became a struggle to keep it short and simple as there are a lot of things surrounding even a tiny WordPress option or a menu.
It's kind of difficult to decide what to include and what not to. So, make sure that you take enough time and explore each feature/settings by yourself --- especially if you have zero experience with WordPress.
Now as you might have already imagined, this is the second part of my WordPress Settings & Features That You Should Know series. Just in case, if you missed the first one, here you go:
WordPress has two flavors, WordPress.com (the free hosted version — like example.wordpress.com) and WordPress.org (the self-hosted version — like maheshone.com).
WordPress.com is a version of WordPress.org that is hosted by Automattic. WordPress.org is the self-hosted version of WordPress which means that when we install the WordPress software on our web server, we own it and manage it.