Cheap and cheerful websites; why pay for something complicated if you don't need it.

Domain names

For a website you need a domain name. This then forms part of the website address. For this website, the domain name is “cheapandcheerfulwebsites.co.uk”. I chose ‘.co.uk’ as this is a commercial website in the uk (and these also tend to be amongst the cheapest sort), but others are available. You need to choose a domain name that describes what you website will be about, isn’t too long and is easy to remember and type in. This can take some thought and isn’t something to rush into.

Once you are happy with what you want your domain to be called, I can register this for you and set it up to work with the website. The domain costs approx. £5-£25 per year - I’ll need payment for the first year before I do this on your behalf. Domain names are like a subscription and need renewing yearly, so every year I’ll invoice you for the renewal1 2 3.

Already got a domain name?

Great. I can use this, but some settings will need to be changed - a domain name has a number of settings behind the scenes which computers use to know what to do with the domain name. These settings describe where to go to load the website, but can also include what to do if the domain name is used in an email address4, eg hello@cheapandcheerfulwebsites.co.uk.

I can give you the settings you’ll need to change on your domain - you should have a login from the domain provider to allow you to do this - bare in mind this is getting into advanced stuff. If you prefer, it is possible to transfer a domain to me to manage but we would need to check what it is already being used for (if anything) to ensure no disruption of services.

  1. If you don’t wish to renew, I can let the domain lapse, just let me know. ↩

  2. If you should ever decide you want to take control of your domain - perhaps later you want website with all those bells and whistles - no problem, just let me know and I can transfer the domain name to your own domain registrar. ↩

  3. Domains be purchased for more than 1 year at a time, for a little cheaper, but I like the flexibility of yearly renewals. ↩

  4. There are a great deal of other settings too, which I’m ignoring here for the sake of simplicity. ↩