As you probably know, I have a web site for my small nursing/healthcare oriented production company.
A few questions to ask yourself:
1) What is the goal of your web site? To provide information? To sell merchandise? Both?
2) Intended audience?
3) How multi-media intensive will your web site be? (Use of pictures, sounds, video-clips, etc)?
4) Plan on using any data collection web-based programs?
A few things to consider:
1) Expandability/upgradeability of web-hosting plan.
2) Size of storage space for your web site.
3) Amount of monthly bandwidth (amount of information going in/going out of web site) provided by web hosting plan.
4) Microsoft based verses Unix based verses other based web-site.
5) Support provided by web-hosting company.
There are TONS of web-hosting companies to choose from!!! It's mind-blowing to say the least!
I started out with one web-hosting company at a nice yearly rate. Unfortunately they raised their yearly rate considerably. So, I switched companies. . . very quickly, I might add. It's not uncommon to do this. . . it's a buyer's market considering the number of web-hosting companies that exist.
But buyer beware! Despite the number of web-hosting companies, there seems to be a small percentage of reputable ones.
Please email me, and I'll be more than happy to discuss this issue.
You might also want to ask Brian too! He is, after all, our resident computer-geek/nurse. Take a look at "Allnurses.com". It's a real success story!
Registering a domain name is simple. Go to:
Network Solutions
Hope this helps! Good luck!
Ted