Step Two – Fetch Your Credit Card

Spend Wisely…

Although you can get away without spending any money on an author webpage. I highly recommend you do. But spend wisely…

As was explained in the previous step, there are three things you need for an Author page:

Web Hosting – Somewhere to put your author page.
Domain Name – Something people type into the address bar of their browser to see your author page.
Email Address – You probably already have one of these, people are going to want to say “hi” somehow.

By joining the WFSC for $40/yr we can provide you with an author page.

If you’re already a member of the WFSC, we can provide

Hosting
Subdomain
- http://joebloggs.writersfsc.org.au
Email forwarding
- joebloggs@writersfsc.org.au
- Any email will be forwarded on to the email address you’ve told us

$40+ for 2 years

If you’d like to go more upmarket, you should get what I call a “vanity domain”.

You’ll likely get an amazing discount on your first purchase, make sure you’re aware of what it will cost you to renew the domain.

Your own domain name will always cost you money
It will always come up for renewal every two years
You’ll always be buying from a reseller, I recommend GoDaddy
You can make your domain name point to wherever your website is hosted
- This uses a Domain Name Server or DNS (like the yellow pages)
Set up email forwarding or mailboxes for your vanity email addresses
- GoDaddy provide email forwarding for free.
- Make sure you set up a “catch-all” email address.
- Don’t purchase email accounts from GoDaddy

$15 – $20 USD a month

AWS is the service that is used by the Writers of the Far South Coast to host their website.

If you ask the WFSC, we’ll host your Author page for free
Only use your own AWS server if you know at least 3 programming languages
Otherwise, GoDaddy can provide hosting as another of their services.
Nearly all hosting services are being bought up by MelbourneIT
Avoid the little guys, although they need your patronage, their servers usually have more trouble

In terms of Webhosting without thinking about too much nerd stuff, I hear good things about bluehost.

They’re pretty cheap.