You have your domain name and it is ready. It’s time for hosting. I use and recommend ThirdSphere. It’s easy to use, it has Fantastico and CPanel, every extra you can think of including autoresponders and more, and the support is the best I’ve ever used. Of all the hosting companies I’ve used, ThirdSphere blows away the competition.

Here’s a quote from the front page of their site: “Design, develop, manage, automate and promote your own money-making website with a power-packed, amazingly simple, all-in-one web hosting solution!” Their statements are true!

Why is Fantastico important? It allows you to install WordPress with a few key strokes instead of downloading WordPress from the WordPress site, setting up your own MySQL database on your site, fiddling with the wp-config file trying to input your database name and your password, and uploading it to your site. I’ve done both and I wouldn’t be without Fantastico.

Check out ThirdSphere now. Next time we’ll talk about themes.

Today let’s talk about hosting your own WordPress blog. The first thing you need is a domain name. This isn’t as difficult as you might think. Your domain name should reflect the name of your business. Mine is WordPressGuru. Think of several that might work because your perfect name might already be taken. Get a .com domain. That’s what people look for on the internet. The lines have blurred a bit but .org used to mean a non-profit organization and .net usually means a company that uses the net for its business, like your ISP.

A good place to look for and then buy your domain name is 1and1

I like 1and1 for several reasons.

• It is very easy to follow the instructions to purchase your domain name.
• They are one of the most inexpensive around.
• They have an easy redirect function, which I’ll explain in a moment.
• And if you purchase a domain that you aren’t going to use right away, you can park it on Sedo at no charge. Sedo is a domain selling company. Who knows, one of your good domain names just might make you some money!

When you find a domain name that is available, you want to buy two versions of it. The ’scrunched’ version - like WordPressGuru.com, and the hyphenated version like Word-Press-Guru.com. You will only host one of them. The other will be redirected.

When you have purchased your domain names, you must wait until 1and1 has propogated them across the internet. Sometimes this is almost immediate and sometimes it takes 12 - 72 hours. You will know when this has happened because you will see the status change in your account. The domain is ready when you see the word ‘Ready’ in the status.

So - go to 1and1 right now and see if your perfect domain name is available!

We’ll talk about hosting next time. Happy Hunting!

Blogarithm is a cool new alternative to RSS.  This service lets you keep track of all your favorite blogs in one e-mail a day.  This e-mail alerts you to which of the blogs you are tracking have been updated since the last e-mail.  Actually, you can track any web page you want.  All you need is the URL and Blogarithm will check it for you and send an alert in its morning BlogMail if it has changed.

This is a cool alternative to RSS because you don’t need a feed reader and you know exactly which sites have changed since yesterday.

You will see the Blogarithm box just to the left on this page.  Give it a try.  It’s simple to use and a great time-saver.

A side note - thanks to everyone who has responded to the survey.  It’s a great help and I’m just about ready to get started teaching you how to build a blog in WordPress from the ground up.