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.
Writers of the Far South Coast
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
GoDaddy
$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
- GoDaddy
Amazon Web Services (AWS) – Web Hosting
$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
Bluehost
In terms of Webhosting without thinking about too much nerd stuff, I hear good things about bluehost.
They’re pretty cheap.