web hosting recommendations

[gilana]

I'm working on building up a freelance design business, and I'm starting to think it would be a Good Thing to have my own domain for it.  The nice thing about having an unusual name (or at least an unusually spelled one) is the most of the variations I might want are available; I'm thinking I'll probably go with rosenthol-design.com.  (Although if you have strong opinions against the hyphen or have another brilliant idea, now's the time to let me know.)

What I want:
my own domain name
an email address at that domain
a place to put up a small web site on that domain

Of course, I'm not making a ton of money at this yet, so I really want to keep it cheap.  Any opinions on the cheapest place to register a domain and/or get web hosting?  Or warnings against places I should stay away from?  Thanks!

Also, if you know anyone who needs print design done -- wedding invites or programs, birth announcements, business cards, logos, you name it -- point them my way!  My portfolio is currently at rosenthol.carbonmade.com.  Thanks!

Comments

[skreeky]

Got mine at godaddy.
Their ads are pretty offensive, but they do have what you need, cheap.

[tcb.livejournal.com]

you absolutely want your own domain, and I would suggest not having the hyphen. or maybe have both, but have them point to the same server.

as for hosting, godaddy is certainly good, and is where my domains are managed (but I host them on a separate machine). I've also heard good things about dreamhost.

[valadil.livejournal.com]

I'm happy with dreamhost but I hear they're inadequate for anything beyond mysql/php.

[aphrabehn.livejournal.com]

Another vote for godaddy. That's where I got my domain. I host on some free crappy place for web hosting - hostrator or something? I'll look tomorrow. It's just a plce holder until I can be bothered to actually do something with my website.

[buxom-bey.livejournal.com]

I had to use Godaddy for an admin client and I hated the UI. I've built/am building two sites on Fatcow.com and have been mostly happy. The first one I got a bunch of bells and whistles on (mostly dealing with security that in hindsight is unnecessary since I'm not selling/taking payments/collecting confidential info) and it cost me about $125. The second site I got just what I needed, the domain, website and privacy setting for under $75.

I compared Fatcow to Dreamhost. Dreamhost had a longer list of options, but everything I wanted and understood was also on Fatcow, for less money at a greener company.

And, also not a fan of the hyphen.

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

I take it that "Rosenthol Design" is the name of your business, and that's why you want that domain name. The problem with that *is* the unusual spelling of your name, which could cause a lot of people to type it wrong. With paper-based communications routed by human eyeballs, a misspelled name will still likely get to its destination. Web addresses have to be exact, though. I could just see someone saying "Dammit, I typed in 'rosenthal-design.com' SIX TIMES and it STILL doesn't come up!". Unless you can register the misspelling as well (and alias it to your real address) you're bound to have problems. I can rattle off my domain name to anyone over the phone and it generally comes out right (baldwinhillframing.com).

Oh, and I'd lose the hyphen, but that's just my (biased) opinion :)

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

I've been happy with dreamhost. I use godaddy for domain registrations, but don't really like the way they talk about their hosting offerings. Dreamhost seems to offer pretty solid, if not perfect, low-end to mid-line hosting.

I agreed with the above advise about hyphens (don't use them) and being worried about misspellings. If you stick with using your name, you might think about typography to emphasize the second "o". (I find that if I write my first name in caps or small caps, people get it right. With lower case, they believe the last letter is an "a".)

[lordfeepness.livejournal.com]

I agree with many of the people above. Domain names are pretty cheap these days, so I think it's a really good idea to get as many variations on your "main" domain name as you can. At a minimum, I'd get both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated names. jim_p has a good point about common misspellings, too. If you can afford it, you might also want to buy up the .net and .org versions of your domain name, too, to avoid brand dilution, though that's probably less of an issue for you since your domain name is so specific. Anyway, those are my opinions as someone who's done a bit of research into this lately, and also someone who desperately wishes he could get the non-hyphenated version of his personal domain name. :-)

As for hosting services, I recently moved over to webfaction.com from 1and1.com, but that was mainly for the plethora of developer features at webfaction. 1and1.com is cheap and probably not a bad option for a small site; on the other hand, they don't give you enough database space on any of their plans to run Wordpress or anything heavyweight. I hear a lot of good things about GoDaddy.