Step 1: Choose your website’s name
The first step in creating a website is coming up with a good name. This is called the “domain name”, and is something like “www.google.com” or “www.facebook.com”.
There are two challenges:
1) Finding a name that isn’t taken and
2) Choosing the “domain” for your name
The “domain” is the .com part. There are lots of options, such as .com, .net, .org and more. Some have special meaning, and there are country specific domains as well, like .ca for Canada. The preferred and most common is obviously .com, but many of the .com names are already taken. For example, “blogcoacher.com” is now taken (by us!) but other domains, such as “blogcoacher.org” might still be available.
Your name will ideally reflect your business or idea, but should be easy to spell and pronounce. Ideally it won’t contain any “-” or “_” and will be no more than 10-15 characters long. Longer names or names with dashes are often hard to remember and become even long when you combine it with your email address. For example, steven@theoutbacksteakhouseandgrill.com is quite a mouthfull.
Once you have your domain name in mind, we’ll move to the next step: