So you want to build a website

If you want to build a website the First thing you need is a domain.

But what is a domain?

When you visit a website you are asking a computer somewhere on the internet (Or these days, usually a piece of a computer) to deliver or Serve that website to you, the client.
That computer doesn’t live at decorpo.co, that’s just the domain. The internet relies on a protocol called IP (Internet Protocol). And the IP Address of that computer is 147.182.231.57.

So we use something called the Domain Name System to resolve domain names to their IP addresses. Your computer might call up Googles public DNS server (which lives at 8.8.8.8) to find out where decorpo.co lives, and then that little computer responds with my website.

So when you buy a domain you are basically reserving that name. These reservations don’t frequently cost a lot, unless they are already owned of course. This is why it’s important to get your domain as soon as you can, it doesn’t mean you have to build your whole website right now.

Domains usually cost between $8 and $20, with some exceptions for “trending” Top Level Domains like .co, and where .com is usually the most expensive.
I generally recommend Squarespace Domains for it’s middleground price and ease of use.
Cloudflare is more expensive but does offer fancier features, but it is also a little more confusing for new users. And of course they did have a massive outage recently.
For the best price I’ve been looking at porkbun lately.

Once you have your domain you can throw up a static page for free using Github or DigitalOcean, while you work on a more refined site like a blog or a store.
If you’re a quick learner you can get something going quickly by coding it yourself. But more than likely you can hire someone local or on fiverr to develop your site for you, if you don’t want to code. A static page can be had for as little as $40 paying someone like me to build it for you.
When you decide you want a more robust site you can either keep developing your static site, or you can use a framework like Django or WordPress.

Hope this helps 😀