Do You Have To Have A Registered Business To Get A .dev Url

A New Spider web Dev's Guide to Buying a Domain

The number 1 step you can take to legitimize yourself equally a web developer is to build web sites and web applications. That said, the easiest way you can brand yourself look more legit is to register a domain name for your portfolio or for your freelancing business.

It'south not hard to do, simply it can be intimidating if you've never done it before. Let's work through it together.

What to Buy

What domain you lot should purchase depends on how you desire to make yourself. Do you want to promote your proper name or a business name, or would yous rather promote yourself starting from the trouble you solve?

Imagine you specialize in building sites for attorneys. Yous could register your name as a domain proper noun (This site is a modified instance of that.), or you could register attorneysites.com (or something like information technology). You might have a slight SEO advantage with the latter, but information technology probably wouldn't brand much deviation.

I'll get out that decision to you, simply you should go on these rules in mind:

Effort for a dot com if you can. Even today, people are more comfy trusting them. This depends on the audience you're serving and isn't a hard-and-fast rule.
Avoid clever spelling — "2" for "to," missing letters, and the like.
Avoid articles like "the" unless it'due south an ingrained function of an existing make. Even Facebook used to be "thefacebook.com" and ended up dropping "the." It'southward just too hard for people to remember.
If people could become confused whether a word in your domain is plural or singular, annals both variations and point both to your site.
Avert dashes in your domain.
Avoid numbers in your domain — spelled out or otherwise.
After observing the above rules, make your domain every bit short and memorable equally you can.

Ane quick test that encapsulate almost of the in a higher place rules: imagine yourself telling someone your URL. Does it crave a long explanation? Recall most the difference between telling someone to get to awesomeweb.com versus two-websites-iv-one.com. For the beginning 1, y'all'd just say it. For the second, it would go something similar this: "It's two websites for one dot com with the number two, the number four, and the number 1, and with dashes betwixt each of them." It's a nightmare.

Just like most other decisions you'll make, your domain conclusion isn't fix in stone. Domains are inexpensive, and changing them isn't impossible. Don't allow this slow you downwardly. Annals something at present. If you find yous fabricated a mistake, set up it afterward.

Where to Buy

The easiest place to go to become your domain is wherever you're hosting your site. In general, I tend to recommend the easiest path with the fewest barriers (because those are the paths that people will walk). Here'southward a rare instance where I'll break with my convention.

In the past, I've seen unscrupulous hosts utilise domains registered with them to get in harder for you to change hosts. Most domain registrars make it easy to change DNS settings which allows yous to point your domain wherever y'all want it to go. This detail provider didn't brand information technology easy to alter DNS settings which fabricated changing hosts more difficult.

By the fourth dimension I had witnessed this, I fortunately already had all my domains at a registrar that gave me piece of cake access to all the DNS settings. I had to have this since I didn't accept whatsoever hosting with them. I'd recommend y'all brand certain to use a registrar that gives y'all full access to DNS settings so that you ever take the flexibility to change hosting whenever you need to. Don't but register your domain with your host considering it'due south easiest.

For the by 7 years or so, I've been registering all my domains with Namecheap, and they've been great so far. As the name suggests, they're inexpensive, but they likewise accept a overnice interface, making it pretty easy to make changes when y'all need to. I have also worked with clients who swear by Hover, and my experience with information technology has likewise been shine, although it'due south a little more expensive.

I endeavor to avoid GoDaddy since they've been defenseless in bad business practices in the past. On an sometime HackerNews thread, a user reports that, afterwards doing some research to find the best domain name for a project, they returned to one of their early on candidates to find it had been registered by GoDaddy. This practice of registering your user'southward domain searches before they can is chosen "front end running."

Despite this, I have dealt with GoDaddy'south back up on several occasions since they're i of the nigh well-known registrars and clients often come up to me with domains already registered on GoDaddy. The support experience has always been good, and their reps are knowledgeable and friendly.

What to Do With Your Domain

At present that you've selected a domain name and registered it, put information technology to work to start making yous look more than credible. My favorite way to get an email address on my domain is using G Suite. In addition to the email address, information technology gives me a calendar, documents, and quite a few other tools to keep business stuff organized.

If you lot absolutely tin't spend whatever money, Namecheap offers e-mail forwarding for free. You can set up equally many virtual email addresses as you want and have them forward to your existing address. This is cheap (costless) for a reason: you can't ship emails from this accost. It's only an e-mail box that forrard messages to your actual email accost. If yous can squeeze it into your budget, the Thousand Suite option or something similar would be much better.

With email squared away, you'll want to point your domain to your web site. This will vary depending on where your spider web site is hosted. Quality hosts should have documentation on how to configure a domain to piece of work with their hosting. Namecheap has some general instructions covering what you'll need to do on their end.

Who Enters Your Domain?

Running a business concern, particularly equally a web developer, without a domain is kinda like selling organs out of your trench coat: it doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Fortunately, the cost is extremely depression, and the credibility it lends you is well worth that price. It won't make your career, but it'due south one more tiny step toward building trust with your spider web development prospects.

If yous're looking for other strategies to build trust with your prospects (and y'all should be; that'due south why people hire y'all), check out Getting Started in Freelance Web Development Without Feel. If you're ready to get your freelancing business concern going, my week-long free class teaches you everything y'all need to know to become the business upwardly and running! 👇

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You lot'll get everything you need to prepare upwards a freelance spider web development business. I'll besides share other resources to assist you become a web developer.