Other than “dont’ use Godaddy”, what do I need to know? I’ve never owned a domain or had a website of my own before.
- Domain registration/host recommendations?
- Web hosting recommendations? Should I mix #1 and #2?
- Website template creation suggestions? Have fairly simple needs like service offerings and contact forms but want something without rotating construction cones.
- What else should I consider? Security? e-mail?
- Am open to all-in-one for the above, just would like to understand tradeoffs, what to look for/avoid.
TIA
I would avoid the .us domain unless you have a good spam filter. If you register with .us, you get put on a public list, and you get calls from people begging you to hire them to design your website.
You get that with virtually any domain/registrar these days if your contact details are public for any amount of time.
A lot of domain registrars nowadays have a privacy-protection feature which will fill the public WHOIS entry with the registrar’s own geographical address and a randomly-generated email address which forwards to you. It’s easy enough to set up a filter sending any email you get via that forwarder straight to spam, as in all probability you’ll never get any email of value from someone who looked up your WHOIS to contact you.