Hey, we have you covered! That's what EZGenerator is for. After you build your website you will have a folder on your PC with all the files needed to function as a fully self-contained website. EZGenerator can upload these to a folder that is accessible on the internet (see below).
Most website hosting companies (see below) also provide domain name registration services. Domain names are for lease only, you never actually own the name. However, once you have a lease on a domain name you have rights to continue leasing it until (if ever) you want to drop it. Here is just one company from 10,000's that can perform this service Host Dime. You can lease a domain from ANY company you like and then use it with ANY website host company you like. Mixing and matching is fine. To see if a domain name is free just type it into your browser and see what comes up. Registration companies will also provide tools to check if the domain you want is free.
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Once you have the domain name, or at the time of purchase, you will need to tell you hosting provider what it is and they or you will make it visible to the Internet by adding it to their name server/s. What happens is that the host company tells the Internet web-address indexing sites, that if you are looking for http://www.ezgenerator.com (for example), to get it from their servers. This means that you will need a website host (see below) since their name-servers are what you use at this step.
Free vs paid. Make sure that if your site contains PHP based pages they provide PHP scripting services, that is their servers will run PHP code. While most paid hosting services do support PHP, many free don't:
- Free - There are many free web hosting companies. Often your internet service provider (the company you use to connect to the internet through) will provide its customers with some free/limited space for personal websites. However most of these solutions do not allow completely customized web addresses. You will end up with something like http://www.freehost.com/EZGenerator or http://www.myisp.com/EZGenerator rather than http://www.ezgenerator.com. This may or may not matter to you. The free host route is a great way to put your toe in the water and see if you want to get serious.
- Paid - Once you do get serious you will probably want to secure your own dedicated server space and for that you can browse this EZGenerator forum thread for host companies and ask advice. These services generally offer more disk space on their servers for you to upload your content to, faster download speeds for your visitors, and more advanced back-office options (web shops, PHP stuff etc). Expect to pay between USD $40-100 per year for a quality provider with customer support services.
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