Church Consultant Website Project Part 2
I want to focus in on the importance of a domain name but before we do that we need to have a discussion about website hosting and platforms. I recommend WordPress for the website platform and HostGator for the hosting.
WordPress
You want to make sure you are using the WordPress.org platform which is for self-hosting. There is also WordPress.com which uses it’s own hosting system which can be fine for a small blog but if you are building a website for a ministry or church use the WordPress.org option.
Hostgator
Since you will need to purchase hosting for this option I recommend Hostgator. There are some other fine options out there but I have used Hostgator for years and am satisfied. If you go the Hostgator route, they have a starter package for about $6.00 a month that also provides you with an SSL certificate and a domain name. Regardless of who you choose for hosting here are a few things to know. You should never pay more than $10 – $15 a year for a domain name. You should easily be able to get hosting for around $5- $7 dollars a month. Hostgator will actually get you all set up with the WordPress platform loaded onto your site. That is a great option for people who are just starting out. I have included a link below to some great videos on starting out with WordPress that I encourage you to watch.
https://www.hostgator.com/blog/resources/wordpress-tutorial-for-beginners-2021-with-videos/
The Importance of a Domain Name
A well thought out domain name can really give you a leg up when it comes to where you will end up on a google search result page. For this project I want to have a website that shows up on the first page of Google when someone searches for a church consultant.
Let’s look at the results for the Google search for church consultant:
The search results above are interesting. The first two results on this page are actually sponsored ads so they don’t influence our domain name decision much. The only result that has a domain that is similar to our search request of church consultant is the churchconsulting.org which is showing up as the number 4 result. The rest of the page has very solid and established websites that are showing up because of the content on their website. Good content is a big deal with Google but so is a good domain name.
Welcome churchconsultant.org
For this project I wanted a domain name that would help with Google results for ‘church consultant’. Interestingly, churchconsultant.com was available but the people who had it wanted $6,500. for it. That is so not happening. To my surprise churchconsultant.org was actually available. I bought it for $13.00 per year. Usually, you have to get a lot more creative on your domain name search. I would have considered adding a word on one side or the other of church consultant if I needed to. Another note is that your first choice would be a .com. After that a .org or a .net will usually work just fine. There is a wealth of other extensions available now, but I don’t usually see them ranking well on search results so I stick to the three most common ones.
Now that I have a domain name for the project, I will get it hosted, get WordPress installed and add an SSL certifiacte to the site. (An SSL(Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is what makes the http: change to https: which is required by most browsers now.) Once that is complete I will start working on the new website which we will talk about in the next article.
