I've always wanted to own a domain but for whatever reason was scared to buy one.
Weird right? Call it the fear of the unknown or maybe it's the thought of owning something that is literally not tangible but either way I have officially bought a domain for this blog! It started with waking up about 5:00 am this morning. I knew I was going to start this blog today so I had ideas rolling through my head. What can I talk about that's interesting, how am I going to organize this endeavor, what is the best way to learn to use Blogger, how do I get a domain name, what is a domain name, the list went on and on. So I started looking into domain names. I guess I sort of knew a little bit about it just from 20+ years of casual web browsing but I had to really nail down what I was getting myself into. Needless to say it was easier than expected, not scary at all, and with a couple hours of searching the web I found everything I needed to get started.
What is a domain?
My understanding is that a domain is simply a location or address. People type in that location, i.e., example.com and are pointed to wherever your website is hosted. Web hosts are the house for your website, it is literally a physical place (server) where the information for your website resides.
Great, got it, I need a domain so I have an address people can find and my domain needs a web host. Now if only I had a real estate agent to help me find this address.
What is a domain registrar?
Ahhhh, there's my real estate agent! So I can go to various different domain registrars such as: godaddy.com, domains.google, namecheap.com etc. These are companies that have access to a registry (owned by a non-profit entity) and can make changes to it for entities looking to buy, sell, or update domains.
I spent about an hour looking through the different domain registrars, what services they offer, what prices the services were set at and I came to the conclusion that I have no idea what I'm doing but domains.google seemed like a good option. The price I paid was $12.00 USD for a full year of ownership for the domain name. There were a couple addons I could purchase such as Google Workspace but I declined because I am the sole contributor to this blog currently and I don't really see the need for having a special email address for it. The service was very cheap though, $6.00 USD would have gotten me a specialized email address and a bunch of customization options and specialized emails for any employees if I had any. Sweet, that will be a fun thing to learn about in the future! Now if only I had a house for my domain...
What is a Web Host?
As I mentioned above, a web host is the server where your websites files are located. There are a ton of web hosting service providers that offer cheap or even free plans. Some popular web hosts I am aware of are: godaddy.com, bluehost.com, shopify.com, and of course google. Once again I stumbled into something that I am not exactly knowledgeable on and so I defaulted with Googles services. "Why would I have Google as my web host", you might be asking and I have a very simple response. Google hosts blogs on Blogger for FREE. Yup, $0.00 USD, does not get better than that.
In all honesty, I could have opted to have the Blogger domain, web hosting, and website design services all for free from Google (Blogger). You do not need to spend one cent to start a blog using Blogger. The reason I bought the domain is purely to learn and for the experience. I guess it is an investment as well because there are only so many domain names you can buy and lots of companies that need them (hey to all potential domain buyers out there, this domain is definitely for sale for the right price)
What are web design services?
You caught that didn't you? Yes, after you have an address (domain name) and a house (web host), you need a website! Once again I am faced with even MORE options to chose from. There are all of the big names that you are probably familiar with from adds on YouTube such as squarespace.com, Wix.com, Shopify.com and the list goes on! Obviously I went with Blogger because it is free and so far from what I can tell extremely easy to use. I plan to learn more about customization later today and tomorrow and plan to post some blog updates about my experience. I have used Wix.com years ago which if I recall was really easy and I am currently working on a Shopify store. Shopify is taking a bit of getting used to but it is really starting to grow on me. These web design services come at all different price points and with their own perks and drawbacks. The main drawbacks usually involve tiered pricing for access to premium options. With Blogger I haven't encountered anything like that yet so I am hopeful that this was a good choice!
Website wrap up
So my website continuouslearningjourney.com is officially up an running! That literally took me half a day between researching what I needed, where I wanted to purchase my services from and writing this post. I hope this journey has given a little insight into what it takes to create your own website. I am brand new to owning/launching a website so if you have any recommendations feel free to drop a comment. I look forward to continuing on this journey!
P.S. other things I learned during this experience
How to jump link text in your blog
This required a little more investigation than I expected so I have actually created my own tutorial on how to do this. Here is a link Bogger - How to Jump Link
How to embed YouTube videos in your blog
I might need to edit this but all I did was hit the "share" button on the
YouTube page and then selected the "embed" option. I then copied the
html script and pasted it below. We will see if it works once I
publish this post.
Okay so there was one or two steps I missed. In order to embed the
video below I had to go to the upper left hand corner of my screen, click
the pencil icon and change it to html view. Once in html view I pasted
the html code at the very bottom of the page and BOOM!
The best way to embed a YouTube video is to hit the video button at the top of your page while editing and select YouTube. Wow - at least we learned something!
For a more in depth look at how I did this please check out Blogger - Embedding YouTube Videos
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