# Domain, Hosting, Carts ?! Need Help!



## hls1621 (Feb 16, 2009)

I am looking to start a website for my business. What is it exactly that I will need? This is what I'm gathering so far...

1) Domain name.
2) Hosting service for the website.
3) Shopping cart.
4) Hosting service for the shopping cart.
***I have pay pal also and would like to have that set up on my website checkout.

What else do I need?

Who's services do you reccommend for all this?


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## Instant Classic (Mar 19, 2010)

hls1621 said:


> I am looking to start a website for my business. What is it exactly that I will need? This is what I'm gathering so far...
> 
> 1) Domain name.
> 2) Hosting service for the website.
> ...


I got my domain name through godaddy.com I would suggest doing a Google search for godaddy coupon codes since you can usually find a percentage off coupon.

I use Big Cartel for my website shopping card and host. It links directly to my PayPal account and I set it up so Big Cartel transfers to my domain name. You can also sign up for a free account with tinypic.com for your other image storing needs.

Overall Big Cartel has been great for my needs as I start out.

Cheers.


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## brice (Mar 10, 2010)

Hard hat hosting can do it all affordably, even provide the cart software and help you configure it (for an extra fee). Reasonable and good customer service. Google them.


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## hostingdiva (Mar 31, 2006)

Yes, you're correct - sort of. You do need a domain name and you need a website hosting account. You can either purchase both from the same place or use different companies. 

Yes, you do need shopping cart software, but you may be able to get that from the same company. BigCartel also provides both. If you use something like ZenCart or osCommerce, that is a separate company from your hosting. 

Where you're wrong is the hosting service for the shopping cart. Generally, you want the shopping cart to be in the same place as your website because you do not want to have: mywebsite.com but then your shopping cart be mywebsite.zencart.com. That doesn't look good and I think may hurt your credibility with consumers.

That's all you need. As to who to recommend - that really depends. Do you need support? If so, you're going to want to look at a system that will provide you with full support. GoDaddy, for example, has really great support (from my experience). But, they only support their own products. So, if you use them and then install osCommerce, you're kind of on your own. Basically, you have to look around and see what companies offer. You also need to examine your own level of skill and see how much time and effort you want to invest into learning how to do this. There are many do it yourself systems that are affordably priced and which will allow you to get a site up relatively quickly.

The best thing you can do is find a system and try out their demo. Then call their support and ask a few questions.


Good luck with your hunt!


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## Daniel Slatkin (Jun 25, 2008)

hostingdiva said:


> Yes, you're correct - sort of. You do need a domain name and you need a website hosting account. You can either purchase both from the same place or use different companies.
> 
> Yes, you do need shopping cart software, but you may be able to get that from the same company. BigCartel also provides both. If you use something like ZenCart or osCommerce, that is a separate company from your hosting.
> 
> ...


This is very good advice! Look around and find something that fits your skills, budget, and needs!


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## TeesForChange (Jan 17, 2007)

I really like Big Commerce. Easy to set up, lots of available templates, easy to install and SSL certificate and PayPal options and lots of good SEO features.


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## Fr4nk13 (Feb 10, 2010)

hls1621 said:


> I am looking to start a website for my business. What is it exactly that I will need? This is what I'm gathering so far...
> 
> 1) Domain name.
> 2) Hosting service for the website.
> ...



Hi Heather,

Before you even start thinking about these things, I'd suggest taking one step before.

What exactly are your goals? Are you looking to sell a couple of shirts here and there, or are you looking to run a legitimate online business?

The reason I ask, is because if you aren't looking to use this website as a staple in your business, then you have a different set of options.

Basically you have two main types of websites. You have professional websites (ones that were or could pass for being built by a web firm) and non-professional websites.

If you're not worried about professionalism, you can choose a to go through someone like webs.com, which offer you free hosting, but limited options as far as building goes. 

As stated earlier, you could also go with a prebuilt shop such as BigCartel. These look great, but don't allow you to customize the way a custom build website would.

If what you're looking to do is build a site from the ground up, a whole new slew of options opens up.

Firstly, you would have to get a webhost. There's literally thousands of them out there, but there's certain ones that stand out for their reliability and customer service.

GoDaddy, DreamHost, HostGator and BlueHost are just a few (DreamHost is who I use, but GoDaddy is by far the most famous.) 

Once you have a host picked out, you need to buy a domain. This will be the address that everyone uses to get to your products, so choose wisely.

Now it's time to build your site. There's plenty of robust platforms that take care of a lot of the techie backend for you.

My favorite three (in order) are Wordpress, Joomla! and Drupal.

The benefit of using one of these platforms is that they're easy to work on, and they all have their own set of addons such as carts, blogs, podcast tools etc. This will truly allow you to make the site what you want it to be. (and you won't have to get hosting for any of these addons, as they'll be on the same hosting as your website)

As for the look of the site, this is where it gets a little tricky. There's a lot of tempate websites that have premade templates for websites of each platform, but chances are, there's already dozens of websites with that template.

You could use a program such as Artisteer, which takes you step by step in building your own template in a very 'Microsoft Office' type of feel. This is a great option, but the options are limited, although much better than you would get with a webs.com site.

If you want something truly unique to your business, I'd suggest hiring a professional web designer (or at least someone that knows what they're doing). This way you can worry about your business while your site is being built, and take the hassle of it off of your plate.



Whatever you choose, just make sure it fits YOUR needs. There's literally thousands of options, but no real 'wrong way' to go about it.


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## mnhim001 (Jan 25, 2010)

I am using ipage.com, one of the deciding factors for me was that it had unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage.


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