Help :(

I have had an idea for my own business, my main point of contact with customers would be via the internet, but I would not necessarily require e-commerce certainly not immediately.

Knowing absolutely bugger all about web design, hosting and domain registration can anyone recommend one of the multitude of companies available, I am looking for ease of use (for a simpleton) and cheapness (it may turn out to be a bit of a pipe dream:O)

Final question, if I was to just register the domain name I want with any of the companies and pay the fee for say 2 years, would I then be able to use any other company for hosting without incurring the fee again, ie is the Domain mine or am I leasing it from the original company? (sorry if I am uneducated in this field)

Thanks

Andrew

Have a word with a friend of mine, John Smart at Internet Design - Hosting, Web sites & E-commerce.

Not sure if he can help, but mention my name and i'm sure he'll do you a favour.

Always keep hosting and the domain registration with 2 seperate companies. Makes things easier if one is pants and you decide to move.

For domains, 123-reg are good IME.

Fuzioned Hosting UK Web Hosting at its Best

A couple of very good friends of mine run this company, tell them Waller sent you and they'll either give you a discount or double the price, not sure which though :P

After a bit more searching last night I registered a domain name with fasthosts, purely because they offered 2 years free .co.uk with the .com reg.

As anyone any experience with them as hosts and how easy is their free software to build my own site??

Now that I have registered the domain name with them am I free to use any host and leave the registration with them or does it have to be transferred?

TIA

Andrew

I'd avoid fasthosts my self.

What happens is you register the domain with A and use B for hosting. B will give you their nameserver details, which you change in the admin screen of A's website. Now your domain will point to your hosting.

If you later decide B is crap, then get the details from another host, and update the nameservers and you can switch without the user being any the wiser (bit more complicated with shopping carts and database driven stuff).