If you own a website, it’s best to use an email that contains your domain name. This not only makes it look more professional during your correspondences with your clients or visitors on your website, it also lends credibility as people are assured you are from where you claim to be from.

You can still use Gmail or other free emails if you want, but it just doesn’t cut it, especially if you are running a business on your website.

In the video below, I am going to show you how to setup an email account for your domain. This is actually a very simple process.

I use HostGator and HostGator uses cPanel. If you have a different web hosting account which uses cPanel, then the setup should be the same.

For other web host control panels such as vDeck, you should look for an icon that is for email account creation. It should be prominent quite on your control panel.

Video on How To Setup Email Account For Your Domain

Here’s a quick summary on how to setup an email account for your domain:

1. Log in to your webhost control panel. The login URL should be given to you. If your web hosting company uses cPanel, you can also try to access the login page on http://yourdomain.com/cpanel.

2. Locate the “Email Account” icon within the Dashboard of your control panel.

3. Enter an email name you would like to create and then the password

4. Click on “Create Email Account” button.

That’s all you need to do to create your own email address with your domain name!

Setting up Your Email On Your Mobile

Now, there’s one more thing I’ll like to share with you.

If you are like me who is constantly on the go, it can be quite a hassle to frequently check your emails on your computer.

If you have a data plan on your mobile (that is, if you can surf on your Mobile), then you can setup your mobile to fetch emails for you. This saves time and you don’t need to be sitting in front of your computer waiting for any urgent emails.

I’m not going to put the steps here. Someone else has done the job pretty well and I find their instructions quite easy to understand.

Here are the links:

• Configure your domain email on iPhone
• Configure your domain email on BlackBerry
• Configure your domain email on Android

To find out what your incoming and outgoing servers are, refer to your web host control panel, if they are not there, check your sign up email as some web hosting companies will email them to you for your convenience. As a last resort if you still can’t find them, google for it or send an email to your web hosting company.

Hope you’ve learned something.;)

Feel free to share your comments below. And don’t forget to spread the love using the social buttons below.

The post How To Setup Email Account For My Domain appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

I’ve already given you a clear introduction, features and pricing of Web Hosting Hub in my previous post, however here I will detail some of the key points of the service, as well as a more in depth look at both the good and bad this company has to offer for the aspiring entrepreneur in the Web Hosting Hub review below.

The Good…

And there is a lot of good.

The web hosting business has become extremely competitive, so any company still left standing is almost guaranteed to be top notch.

Web Hosting Hub is no exception.

Web Hosting Hub makes its money on blogging sites. It is their specialty, and their full package gives the aspiring flogger everything they could hope for or want. You are able to have a fully functioning and robust blog up in under 10 minutes, which is quite a feat.

Facilitating this process to make it smoother is the cPanel control panel. It is the industry norm at this point and is the panel of choice for almost all web hosting sites, a few of its competitors such as FatCow and iPage still do not.

The bonus of cPanel is the plethora of documentation that can be found on the web, allowing you easy flexibility and a shallow learning curve for the aspiring entrepreneur or blogger.

The WordPress manual is written under the assumption that you are using cPanel, and if you are looking to monetize your site you’ll spend a lot of time dealing with WordPress.

Web Hosting Hub also has 24/7 U.S. tech support. 

They also offer contact, an excellent email marketing tool to help get your site or product out there and e-online data, one of the better credit card payment processes. Excellent if you are looking to set up an online vendor… 

One key thing we don’t see with other web hosting sites is the no down time website transfer.

Web Hosting Hub accomplishes this by giving its customers access to a temporary URL that they can upload web files, create email accounts and make sure everything is operational and working correctly before the domain name is transferred.

A god send for webmasters with high traffic or online vendor sites that don’t want, or cannot have, a hiccup in their services.

Now For The Bad…

Also the surprising for those who don’t comb through their Terms of Access.

The 90 day money back guarantee is just for the base features. Any extras you opt for while not be refunded, you’ll lose the money you spend on those.

Web Hosting Hub also offers only Linux hosting on its shared servers, and doesn’t offer dedicated hosting service. While this may seem minor, if the proper resources are not allocated correctly it will cause issues not just for that one person, but for all accounts on that server.

While its not usually a problem it is something to be aware of, especially for existing webmasters with large sites and multiple domains and accounts.

Web Hosting Hub Review Conclusion…

In conclusion, while Web Hosting Hub has far more pros than cons, it might come up short for serious web masters or entrepreneurs that know they are going to be scaling up their businesses. For most bloggers or small online vendors however, it is a great hosting services at just the right prices.

Hope you’ve found the review useful. If you like, please share this review with your friends using the social buttons below.

Also, if you are a Web Hosting Hub user, feel free to rate this web hosting service at the reviews section below.

The post Web Hosting Hub Review appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

Welcome to my first lesson on WordPress Tutorial!

If this is your first time using WordPress, or if you are looking for a WordPress Overview to understand about it better before getting started, then this article and video is for you!

You see…WordPress is actually quite easy to use. The learning curve is not that steep.

However, to figure it all out on your own is still tedious.

That’s why I’ve prepared this WordPress Overview video tutorial to help get you started.

In this video, I’ll show you:

• How to log in to your WordPress site
• Overview of your Dashboard (the first page you are going to see after you log in)
• How to update your WordPress site after the installation.

WordPress Overview Video

Here’s a quick summary of the video:

1. To log into your WordPress site, go to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin. (Replace yourdomain.com with you actual website address).

2. Enter your WordPress username and password and click log in. You will be redirected into your DashBoard.

3. Familiarize yourself with the Dashboard and the menu bar on the left.

4. To update your WordPress site, click on “update” or the update symbol on the top (See picture below.)

5. Update the WordPress version, Plugins and Themes separately by checking their corresponding checkboxes and hit “Update”.

In my subsequent WordPress tutorials and videos, I am going to show you in more details about how to use WordPress and the cool plugins you can use to help your site rank better on Google!

If you’ve always wanted to set up your own website and had been procrastinating it until you find a good and easy video tutorials to show you how…

Then check out my Website Creation tutorials. 4 lessons is all it takes to get your website up and live!

Hope you’ve grasp a better picture of WordPress.

Don’t forget to leave me a comment and share this video with your friends using the social buttons below.

See you in the next lesson!

The post WordPress Tutorials 1: WordPress Overview appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

Over the past two years I have come to know and understand the BlueHost system, having used it to manage several different websites. And hence I’ve decided to do a Bluehost review here and share my experiences below.

It is easy to understand why Bluehost is a popular web hosting company.

Bluehost uses the Linux servers known for its stability that delivers all that you need in one hosting plan. They pride themselves as one of the pioneers to simplify and repackage everything needed for launching a new website into a single plan.

They don’t just stop there and also provide a multitude of step-by-step guide and tools to ensure that novices are able to achieve what they set out for.

Thus, many non-techies can simply sign up and get to work.

Overall I rate the service pretty well, though it has a few minor annoyances….or it could be just me.

Now here’s my honest Bluehost review:

Bluehost Review: The Good

• Bluehost offers an easy to use and popular C-Panel system almost anyone can use it. With cPanel, you can easily manage your domains, databases, emails and other things needed to run a website smoothly on a single platform.
• The ease of use doesn’t stop there, the one click installs are not limited to WordPress, and there are about 60 useful cloud software tools you can install on your site. Some of which are very useful, including CMS solutions, Concrete, Joomla, and Drupal. These one click installs are also supported with an easy one click upgrade feature, to ensure your software is always up to date.
• For webmasters planning to build an ecommerce store, it is good to know that Bluehost includes shopping cart software and SSL certificates required to perform transaction online. For some web hosting companies, you would have to pay an extra fee to get the SSL certificates, but this feature is included right into its hosting plan.

Now, you’ve noticed I haven’t talked about the features so far in this Bluehost review. And that’s because the features are pretty standard. Unlimited domains, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, unlimited emails…the list goes on.

If you’ll like more details on Bluehost’s features and offers as well as how these match up to other web hosts, check out my article on the Best 5 Web Hosting Companies.

Bluehost Review: Some Minor Annoyances

• While the one-click installations are great, the Webmail/Email system leaves a lot to be desired. Its “Postini” spam filtering is great at filtering out legitimate emails, and not very good at filtering out spam, and instead of putting them in the “spam” folder where you can easily access them, it holds onto them for a day before giving you access.
• Unlike HostGator, Bluehost do not offer hosting plans such as Dedicated servers and Virtual Private Systems (VPS).If you want to upgrade to switch to dedicated servers in future, it would mean having to switch to another web hosting company – something you may want to factor in to avoid future hassle, if your online business plan is an ambitious one.
• Another issue I dislike about Bluehost is its billing system. Unless you go into the system and turn off auto renew, it will automatically bill you 6-8 weeks before the expiry of your account for another year. I prefer to be charged just before the expiry and not 1-2 months before expiry. That’s just a personal preference.

Conclusion                                                     

On the whole, I would still recommend the service for its reliability and ease of use.

The good far outweighs the bad, though I will put one asterisk on the recommendation – I would investigate other services. In short Bluehost is good, but could do better.

Hope you find my Bluehost review useful. Feel free to share this article with your friends using the social buttons below.

One more thing….

If you are an existing or ex-Bluehost user, we’ll like you to share your experience with us. You can leave your user reviews and rate Bluehost using the review box below. Thanks in advance!

The post Bluehost Review appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

Do you know you can create a website using WordPress in 5 minutes?

I’m not joking. It’s that simple…

Any WordPress users can attest to that.

Once your domain and web host has been set up properly, you are ready to install WordPress onto your site.

The installation process takes a few settings. The rest is automatic and takes less than a minute.

Once the installation process in complete, your site is live!

You are now ready to log into your new WordPress site and add your content.

Before we jump right into how to create a website using WordPress, here’s my little rave about why I loved WordPress so much…

Today, about 15% of the websites online are built using WordPress and the numbers are growing.

Do you know big sites such as New York Times and CNN built their sites on WordPress too?

All of my sites are created using WordPress as well, simply because…

• It’s easy to install.
• It’s user-friendly.
• It’s highly customizable.
• It’s observed to rank better in search engines
  
• It’s FREE!

I love it. Once you watch the video below, and my subsequent WordPress Tutorials, you’ll agree….

How To Create A Website Using WordPress

There are a couple ways to install WordPress onto your new site.

The first method is to download the WordPress installer from WordPress.org.

WordPress has a very detailed guide on how to install the downloaded software. Follow their step-by-step guide and you’ll be fine.

Personally, I still find this method tedious, although it’s already very easy.

I’m the lazy Internet Entrepreneur, remember? Work smart.

There’s even a simpler method which I used in the video below.

The second method is to install WordPress via your cPanel. If you are using popular web hosts like HostGator or BlueHost, the WordPress Installer is available via their cPanel.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to create a website using WordPress via your cPanel:

1. Log into your web host cPanel. The cPanel URL should be given to you after signing up with your web host.

2. Locate the Fantastico icon (HostGator/BlueHost/Web Hosting Hub) within cPanel. In some web host, it may be Softaculous.

3. Select WordPress on the Fantastico/Softaculous page.

4. Fill in the details and install WordPress on your site. Your new site is now live!

One last thing, not all web host have the same set up as the one in my video. Having said that, most big web hosting companies use cPanel and their cPanel interface should be somewhat similar.

If you cannot locate the WordPress installer on your cPanel, write to your web host company and ask whether they have a WordPress installation module in their cPanel. Sometimes, all it takes is to ask the right people.

We’ve come the end of my 4-part mini tutorials on Website Creation (Click the link to review any past tutorials from this series).

In my later posts, I am going to show you how to configure your new WordPress site as well as how to publish your content in the WordPress tutorials.

Remember to check back often to look out for new posts.

You can also subscribe to my newsletter on the right and be notified whenever a new WordPress tutorial or posts related to Internet Marketing is published.

Hope you’ve learned something.

Leave me a comment and let me know if I missed out anything.

And don’t forget to share this with your friends using the social buttons below.

The post How To Create A Website Using WordPress appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

For those looking at building their online business, there are many options for purchasing web hosting sites. One of the more intriguing is iPage which offers a number of interesting options for building a website. Here are my iPage reviews to give you a better understanding of what iPage has to offer.

Price Plan

If you opt for the 2-year or 3-year subscriptions, you pay $1.99 for the first 3 months followed by $2.95 for the subsequent 21 months or 33 months.

When compared to many other web hosting services, the sign-up price is certainly one of the lowest that made iPage really stand out from the rest in terms of pricing.

The renewal price after your initial term reverts back to the regular pricing of $8.99/month for a 1-year, $7.99/month for a 2-year and $6.99/month for a 3-year subscription. This is almost the same as any web hosting companies out there.

Nonetheless, it is still a bargain as it does offer a very low price for a number of good services that would benefit someone who is just starting their online business.

The only complain I have for the price plan is that iPage don’t have a monthly billing cycle, which means buyers have to fork up the entire subscription fee upfront. But most web hosting companies don’t offer a monthly billing cycle anyway.

Watch my video clip here as I run through with you if these add-ons are really required…

Control Panel

A control panel of a web hosting account is where a webmaster can manage domains, website files and email accounts, backup website data, install software onto the domains along with many other things required to run a website smoothly.

When it comes to control panel, iPage uses vDeck as opposed to cPanel, in which the latter is a more popular platform used by several of the web hosting companies such as HostGator and BlueHost.  

Here’s a quick video demo of the vDeck control panel to give you an idea how vDeck looks like. You can also see the cPanel demo here.

Below is a table of comparison between vDeck and cPanel:

Really, I’ve used both cPanel and vDeck.  For the average users, vDeck and cPanel can satisfy all their needs.

Since cPanel has been the more popular platform, users are already very accustomed to the cPanel layout and features.

Hence, cPanel users would probably find vDeck cumbersome during their first use due to unfamiliarity with vDeck.

This is however not an issue in my opinion.

My experience had been similar (finding it cumbersome on first use) but given vDeck’s well-organized platform and neat appearance, I quickly got used to finding my tools around vDeck.

It’s just us humans who have a tendency to stick with something we are familiar with…so I shall not blame vDeck for its differences.

Features

If you researched for iPage reviews, you will find many of these sites have already done a lot of talking about its features.

Nonetheless, I will summarize the features here for you:

Included in the monthly price is the unlimited bandwidth, disk space and email addresses.

• The disk space allows for websites to place as much text, images, videos, graphics and more on the site without having worry to hit a maximum cap.
• The bandwidth allows for unlimited quantity of data transfer per month which is a major plus point for websites with a larger traffic.
• Having an unlimited amount of email addresses is a nice addition which may be useful for some types of online businesses. 
• Along with the unlimited disk space is ability to create unlimited domains which is a very nice feature indeed to help expand your online business or create new ones without having to pay all over again.
• Combine this with free domain registration and you have a very impressive web hosting package.
• There are free site-building tools, search engine and marketing cards, online store and a new feature, a free security suite that provides protection from malware, spam and business verification that is displayed so that customers can feel more secure about paying for your products or services.

These features are actually pretty much standard as with other web hosting companies.

For a detailed comparison of how iPage’s features, reliability and moneyback guarantee match up to other popular web hosting companies, take a look at my post on top web hosting companies comparison.

iPage Reviews Conclusion

While iPage lacks the monthly billing cycle, the initial subscription fee is definitely attractive for any serious webmaster looking to build a website for the long term.

Features-wise, although I would like to say who does better and who doesn’t (that’s what usually review does, doesn’t it?), I am apt to say that it’s comparable to most of the web hosting companies out there.

As such, the pricing and customer service gains more weight when comparing these web hosting companies side by side.

While I am happy with their customer service, it is also worthwhile to note about what majority of the people say about their service. It seems to me that amongst some unhappy individuals (there will always be, tell me who has not heard anyone complaining about Microsoft or Apple), the majority of the customers who gave their feedback were positive.

There you go…

Hope you’ve found my iPage reviews here helpful to make an informed decision on which webhost to sign up with.

If you like this review, please share this with your friends using the social buttons below.

Finally, if you are also an iPage or ex-iPage user, share your experience and rate iPage at the reviews section below.

The post iPage Reviews appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

Having covered the basics and introduction of HostGator in my Top 5 Web Hosting Companies Comparison article, I’ll give you a synopsis of the key benefits, or lack thereof, in the HostGator reviews here.

HostGator Reviews – The Good

The good points are many, and it’s no surprise that HostGator is one of, if not the leading company.

• Firstly, they’ve always some form of promo-code giving considerable discounts to your first purchase, thence reducing your initial start up cost.At ChiuJingHong.com, I’ll offer your an exclusive HostGator coupon code found only on our site. So don’t miss it if you want to sign up for HostGator.
• Their customer service is excellent, with the Baby plan, giving you toll free numbers for 24/7 after-sales service, live chat, emails and forum that is actively monitored by HostGator employees.
• Their malware support is exceptional, and this can be a big deal to many web designers. Most people do not have the technical skill to find and remove files with malware injected by malicious browsers. Using HostGator’s excellent customer service they will find the file, tell you the vulnerability exploited, and then clean the injected files. All for free.
• The Baby plan offers you unlimited bandwidth, storage, domains/sub-domains and FTP accounts. Great from an entrepreneurial stand point because it allows for unlimited scaling for countless domains. The FTP accounts let you grant secure access to any number of people if you wish to work with many different contractors later on. You can safely hand over the sites to be maintained by your staffs while still retaining overall control.
• They offer unlimited MySQL databases, a key feature for someone who wishing to expand into multiple websites under one account for easy management.
  
• HostGator uses cPanel, which is a great bonus. While it is generally the industry standard, some hosts such as iPage do not use cPanel.
• It has a lot of documentation and tutorials that allows easy flexibility and the WordPress user manual is practically written with the assumption that you are using it.
• Most importantly after doing my research, I decided that transferring my domains over would be a good idea. While this can often be a difficult and/or slow process, it was extremely simple and took no more than ten minutes for the whole process. Best of all, it’s free.
• Lastly, HostGator also supports Eco-Friendly initiatives. They contracted to power their servers with wind power. So it’s good to know that you are also doing your part to save the environment when you use HostGator.

HostGator Reviews – The Not So Good

Nothing is ever perfect however. Here’s some of the not so good in my HostGator reviews:

• The do not offer first year free domain as with BlueHost, Web Hositing Hub or iPage.
  
• There is an illusion of a steep bell curve when initially using the site. By this I mean it appears complicated, and though it is extremely simple and comes with tutorials, this can be a confidence shaker to new web designers. However, if you’ve used cPanel before, then it should be a breeze.
  
• Their Time To First Byte (TTFB), a measurement of a web server’s responsiveness, is one of the slower of the web hosts.
• While the $100 AdWord credit is a great deal, that is all they offer. In comparison, other hosts offer a plethora of goodies, such as FaceBook, Yahoo and Bing ad credit.

Still, the list of cons is short and not anything the average webmaster would take notice of. And I would still recommend HostGator for any serious online small business owners and bloggers.

I’ve used HostGator myself and have not experienced any problems so far. In fact, this website is hosted on HostGator.

I hope you’ve found my HostGator reviews useful.

If you’ve used or is using HostGator now, please do leave your HostGator reviews in the comments section below and share this review with your friends using the social buttons below.

To learn more about reviews for other web hosts, check out our Web Host Reviews section here or visit HostGator Website now to see their offers.

The post HostGator Reviews appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

In the previous lesson, we show you how to buy a domain name from GoDaddy or Enom via Google. Once you have purchased your domain, you are ready to set it up with your web host. If you already have a web host, skip to Step 2 on how to link domain to web host.

If you hadn’t have a web hosting account, then Step 1 is also for you.

Step 1: Signing Up a Reputable Web Hosting Company to Host Your Domain

So why do you need a web host?

First of all, a web host is a remote server that will store all your website information on their storage facility.

Unless you have the budget, time and space, setting up your own web hosting server may not be a good idea for beginners and small businesses on the Internet.

Otherwise you’ll need to keep your computer or server running for 24 hours with adequate cooling (oh boy…the electric bills), ensure that your network is set up correctly, maintain the server, resolve any technical faults…. You get the idea.

Therefore, your best option is to pay a web hosting company to do that for you.

For a few bucks a month, you pay someone else to do all of that for you!

Good web hosting companies will also provide fast internet connection (download/upload) so that your site loads quickly on a web browser and so that you can upload your stuff quickly to the web host server respectively.

There are a few good web hosting companies I recommend such as HostGator and BlueHost.

These are the ones that I have personally used and found them to be reliable, reasonably priced and has great customer service support. Many of my friends who are internet marketers used them too.

In another post, I have a review for Top Web Hosting Companies to help you get started with a web host. Check it out!

For this video training, I am going to use HostGator as a demonstration.

It’s pretty straightforward.

Step 2: How To Link Domain to Web Host

Now that you have purchased a domain name from a registrar and secured a web host to host your new domain, you need to link these 2 together to ensure that the domain knows where to “point” or link to.

Why do you need to “point” or link your domain to your web host?

Simply put, your domain is just an address on the Internet provided through your registrar. Your registrar do not store any data for your site. Your data for your website will reside in your web host which is on another address. Therefore, you have to tell your domain registrar where your web host address is so that the data from your web host server can show up on the web browser.

Now, if you have purchased a domain and web host account with the same company, this is usually set up automatically for you by the company so you can skip this step.

Otherwise follow the video and see how to link domain to web host easily:

For demonstration in the video, I’ll be using the my domain purchased from Google and Hostgator.

Here’s the step-by-step instructions on how to link domain to your web host (I’ll try to keep these instructions as generic as possible):

1. Log in to your domain console. The URL should be given to you by your domain registrar after you’ve purchased your domain. For Google, log in to: www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com.

2. Locate the page on your domain console where you can set your nameservers.

For Google, you’ll need an additional step before you can change your nameservers. Navigate to the page by clicking on Domain Settings > Domain Names > Advanced DNS Settings.

On this page, you’ll find a set of username and password given to you by Google to log in to your GoDaddy/Enom console.

Click on “Sign-in to DNS console” and log in with the set of username and password given.

You’ll see your domain name in the console, click on it to access the page where you can change your nameservers.

3. Set your nameservers to the ones provided by your web host account. It should be given to you by your web host after you’ve purchased a web host account.

4. It’ll take 1-2 hours for the changes to take effect. You are now ready to create your website.

In the next lesson, I’ll be showing you how to install WordPress on your new site.

WordPress is a free content management system that is simple to install and easy-to-learn for any beginners. With WordPress, your website can be live in 5 minutes!

It allows any webmaster to quickly publish their content on the site with ease.

Once you’ve completed the 2 steps above, jump right in to the next lesson!

Hope you’ve find this article useful.

Please leave a comment and share this with your friends using the social buttons below.

See next Lesson (How To Set Up A Website Using WordPress)

The post How To Link Domain To Web Host appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

This may be one of the most common questions for people who are planning to create their own website.

So I thought it is a good idea to create this article to shed some light about the best practices in choosing a domain name.

There’s actually a couple things you need to note so as to make the most out of your new domain name.

Choosing a Top Level Domain

A top level domain (TLD) refers to the last part of a domain name.

Let’s use www.google.com as an example, the “.com” is the TLD and “google” is the second level domain name in this case.

There are several top level domains to choose from such as .net, .org, .me, .biz to name a few and even country specific TLDs such as .us (for USA), .ca (Canada), .in (India), .sg (Singapore) and the like.

Country specific TLDs usually require you to be a citizen or a business entity operating within the country before you are allowed to register them in your name.

However, if a .com version of the domain name is available, take the .com version.

Since the start of Internet, people have been used to domains that ends with .com. Therefore, it is natural that most people will assume your domain name ends with a .com.

Another website address with a TLD other than .com can lose some traffic to their .com competitor as a result of this when people try to type in the site’s name directly into the address bar.

This is not a grave issue though, but I just want to point this out. You can still win back a lot more organic traffic through optimizing your site for the Search Engines.

If you have the budget, you can buy all the variations of TLDs to safeguard your website name across all TLDs from other competitors.

A .com domain typically sells for anywhere around US$9 to US$15. Domains that are .info are the cheapest, about US$3-US$4.

Choosing a Name for Your Site

Another common question when it comes to choosing domain names is “What domain name should I use for my new site?”

First and foremost, it has to be a domain name that is still available. You can easily find out if your domain is still available using the search query on any of the domain registrar.

You cannot buy domain names like Google.com, YouTube.com and Yahoo.com since they are already owned by someone else (unless these companies decide to sell you their domain names. Be prepared to pay a hefty sum.)

Choosing a domain name is not a random choice.

You typically want to choose a domain name that:

• (A) Has your important keywords in it
• (B) Tell people clearly what your site is about

(A) A keyword is a word or a phrase that people most often type into the search engine to look for that specific information.

For example, if I am interested in finding information about dog training, I’ll type in “dog training” into my Google search bar.

If a lot of other people around the world also used “dog training” as their search term to find information about dog training, then this is a keyword and a good one because it has a high search volume.

A website such as dogtraining.com will be a good start for a website related to dog training. (Last I checked, this site has been taken by someone.)

In my later posts, I’ll show you how to find keywords with high search volume so you can use them for your domain and SEO. That’s a topic that stands on its own. So stay tuned!

(B) Your domain name should not confuse people what it is about. If your domain name is dogtraining.com, make sure that majority of the information is about dog training.

If it’s all about training a horse, it confuses people and turns them off. Your site can lose credibility as a result.

Additional Tip: Registering The Domain Name with Private Whois

The domain registrar will allow you to hide your particulars when you sign up for a “private whois” or “private registration”.

If you don’t want others to know that you own the site, opt for a private whois.

Some domain registrar may offer this feature for free, but most registrar will require a fee (around $5 – $10 a year).

Like I said in my previous posts, Google has partnered with GoDaddy and Enom to offer purchasing of domains and you can opt for private whois at no extra charge.

In another post, I talk about how to buy a domain through Google and I’ve included a video demonstration on how to do that. So remember to check it out!

I hope this article has benefited you.

Remember to leave me a comment below and share this with your friends using the social buttons at the bottom.

The post How To Choose A Domain Name For Your Blog appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.

In the previous lesson, we talked in general how to create a self-hosted website from scratch. In this tutorial and video training, I am going to show you in detail how to purchase domain name from Google.

There are actually a lot of places or rather domain registrars where you can purchase a domain name.

The popular and reputable sites selling domains are GoDaddy.com, Enom.com, Tucows.com and NetworkSolutions.com.

Personally, I’ve not reviewed every single registrar listed, but the first two GoDaddy and Enom are the ones I’ve used (through purchasing from Google) and have great experience so far.

If you’ll like to find out more about how to choose the right domain name for your new site, check it out by clicking on the link.

Once you have chosen a good name for your site that is still available, you are ready to purchase the domain from any domain registrar of your choice.

Video on How To Purchase Domain Name From Google

As mentioned in my previous lesson, Google has partnered with the 2 largest domain registrars GoDaddy and Enom to offer domain purchase services.

The private whois can be opted-in free of charge with every domain bought through Google. If you buy a domain name from GoDaddy or Enom directly instead, the private whois will not be free.

For the purpose of our video demonstration, I’ll be purchasing my new site through Google as I also want to get the free private whois for my site.

The video demonstration will take you through an actual process where I’ll be buying the domain for real.

Through my subsequent posts, you’ll see how I will set this site up, configure it and how I build the site from zero to something cool.

This will be as close to a real life demonstration as you can get; as if you are watching my computer screen over my shoulder.

If you are planning to create a self-hosted website on your own, follow the step-by-step video tutorial and you’ll be on your way to purchasing a domain of your choice.

Here’s a quick summary on on how to purchase domain name from Google:

1. Go to the domain registration page on Google: www.google.com/a/signup

2. Follow the step by step instructions to fill in your details.

3. Make payment. Most major credit cards are accepted.

4. Once payment is made, Google will assist to get your domain registered for you. The process may take 1-2 hours. The status of this is shown on your Google Dashboard. Once the status disappears on the Dashboad, it means that the process is completed.

Now….This is only the first step, there’s still a bit more work to do in order to get your new site live!

In the next lesson, I’ll be talking to you more about how to find a good web host and set it up with your domain name.

Also, when we talk about signing up for a new web hosting account, you will discover that some web host companies will offer a free 1 year domain as perks. That’s a great offer!

However, you should also work out your long term cost and see how much you will need to spend in the subsequent years for the domain and the private whois.

If it’s anything lesser than $12, then it should be worth it. If it isn’t, then the Google package here will be more economical in the long run.

My experience has been that it’s usually more than $12 with private whois. Prices do change over time though. So I’ll let you decide.

Finally, don’t forget to leave your comments and share this post with your friends using the social buttons below.

Hope you’ve learned something. See you in the next post.

See next Lesson (How to Set Up the Web Host with your Domain Name)

The post How To Purchase Domain Name From Google appeared first on Chiu Jing Hong Blog.