Hosting & Domain Names

Once you have decided you want a website, you need to decide what the domain name will be, register the name and host the website somewhere.

Domain names must be registered by the client.  Many website design companies register domain names on behalf of their clients.  In our experience, this is not a good idea as the client usually has little or no control over their domain name.  This is particularly important if in the future you wish to instruct a different web design company to maintain your website for you.  Our advice when choosing a web design company is to make sure the domain is actually registered in YOUR NAME.

We can give advice on the most appropriate domain name for your business.  It is important if you haven't already registered a domain name and you want to be found easily in the search engines you discuss your proposed domain name with us.

We would recommend that you do not neccessarily register your domain name and purchase you hosting from the same company.  This will depend a lot on whether you are going to use a .co.uk domain, a .com domain, a .info domain etc.

Again, we can advise which is the best solution for your particular circumstances.

To register a domain name we would recommend 123-reg .  They currently charge £2.99 per year + VAT for a .co.uk domain. They can also provide .eu  and .com plus a range ofother domain name extensions.

NEW!!  We will host your site for you for the first year free of charge.  Subsequent years will be charged at our standard hosting rates, currently 15 Euros per year.

French domains can be problematic due to the way the French domain registration system works, particularly if you want to host your domain anywhere other than France (This is because of protocol differences).  Hosting in France can be quite expensive compared to hosting in the UK for example.

There is a case for using a French domain name as many ex-pats who have moved to France use Google as their search engine.  If google.com is used, then google.fr is the search engine that is actually used.  The results are then biased towards French websites which means if you have a .co.uk or a .com domain name, you probably won't appear as high in the search results.  Again, we can offer advice on this.

Below are the hosting requirements for the version of Joomla that we use. Please don't be intimidated by the technicalities of this as again, we can give you advice.