In the complex orchestration of website strategy and web development, your domain, web hosting, and email setup are the cornerstones that lay the groundwork for your digital presence. Yet, navigating this maze of interconnected components can often feel like deciphering an ancient script. Fear not, because in this guide, we shed light on the nuances of domains, emails, and hosting, helping you to make informed decisions tailored to your unique business needs.
Domains: The Signposts of Your Digital Identity
The first step on your journey into the digital world is your web identity – your domain. Much more than just your web address, your domain serves as a beacon, guiding visitors to your virtual doorstep. But behind its simplicity lies a world of considerations.
Understanding the Domain Landscape
A domain is the digital address where your website resides the first point of your website strategy. For instance, our domain, mirageandmole.com, is more than just a string of characters; it’s a gateway to our online presence. However, securing a domain name gives you only the address itself. To breathe life into your domain and truly create a digital presence – to host a website or set up email addresses – you’ll need hosting and an email package.
Choosing Your Digital Moniker
In the realm of domains, simplicity reigns supreme and is a real important part of your website strategy. Choose names that are easily spoken, heard, and remembered, steering clear of convoluted or lengthy strings. This could be more difficult if your company name is long or could look strange when written. For example, company names with two words, where the last letter of the first word is the same as the first letter of the second word. Let’s use an example “British Hounds” this simple britishhounds.co.uk is likely to cause issues with people spelling this due to the double “hh”. And long strings of letters that combine longer full company names “British Hounds Safety Systems” would create britishhoundssafetysystems.co.uk will have people lost halfway through! Keep it concise, clear, and reflective of your brand essence and/or what you do.
Unveiling the SEO Myth
While Google might say that domain names hold no sway over search rankings, practical experience tells us a very different tale. A strategic domain choice, intertwined with relevant keywords, can influence search intent and user perception. Remember that Google is trying to return results that are most relevant to a user’s query. So, a query for British Hounds, for instance, may inadvertently blur the lines between general searches for British hounds and those that are searching specifically for your brand.
Deciphering Domain Extensions
The domain extension, that final flourish after the dot, speaks volumes about your digital footprint. From ubiquitous .com to niche .club or .today extensions, each extension paints a distinct picture in your website strategy. We advocate for extensions that mirror your market – .co.uk for UK-centric endeavours, .com for global aspirations, or .org.uk for charitable ventures. Steer clear of obscure extensions, which may undermine your professional image.
Mastering Domain Registration and Ownership
Domain registration is the gateway to your digital and website strategy, and numerous registrars are fighting for your attention – and your business. They generally all offer the same service with tools to allow you to search for your perfect domain name and check if it’s available. With lots of options at your disposal, ensure your ideal domain is available before setting your heart upon it. If it’s taken there are ways that you can purchase it however, if it’s not available, they will often offer alternatives. If it is taken, check if there is a real website using the domain name, or simply a “domain for sale” page. Buying from these companies that bulk register domains to make a profit by selling them on, can be expensive. So, think about how important the name is to the relevance of people searching for your company before spending a fortune.
Once securing the domain name and paying for it you don’t actually “own” it. This registration process lasts for a set period – anything from 1 to 10 years. As you approach the end of this you will need to renew if you want to keep the domain name. You can choose to auto-renew, but you will still receive email notifications as you near the end of your period. It’s important to ensure that you have completed the renewal before it expires, or it will become available for others to purchase. You may have heard of the man who managed to buy google.com in September 2015 for just $12.
Hosting: The Backbone of Your Digital Strategy
Enter the realm of hosting – the invisible hand that breathes life into your website, ensuring its perpetual presence in the digital landscape. It’s usually a hosting issue if your site goes down.
Unravelling the Mysteries of Hosting
Hosting is the silent sentinel that guards your website files, ushering visitors to their intended destination. It holds the “things” that people see and interact with on your web pages. All of that creative content that you want your audience to see. Whether nestled in shared servers or standing tall in dedicated sanctuaries or floating in the cloud, hosting serves as the linchpin of digital accessibility and your website strategy. These servers need to be constantly running so that your website is always available.
- Shared Hosting. Your website will site on the server of a third party with hundreds of other websites. This is the often the cheapest way to host your website but can come with risks associated with other sites on your server being hacked.
- Dedicated Hosting. Your website will site on its own server and is a much more expensive way to host your website. You will need to have a lot of infrastructure in order to have servers constantly running. It’s not really necessary for most websites and is more suitable for large companies.
- Cloud Hosting. All of your website files are housed on a virtual server. This is typically more flexible and more secure as they don’t rely on any physical hardware – which requires maintenance and can fail.
The Case for Cloud Hosting
Amidst the myriad hosting options, cloud hosting emerges as a beacon of reliability and flexibility. With its virtual infrastructure and inherent scalability, cloud hosting offers security and agility, empowering businesses to navigate the digital realm with confidence.
SSL: Fortifying Your Digital Bastion
When it comes to hosting, security should be at the forefront of your mind. SSL certificates emerge as the sentinels of security, fortifying your digital bastion against prying eyes and malicious intent.
The Essence of SSL
Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, encapsulates the essence of digital security, encrypting data transmissions to safeguard sensitive information. From payment gateways to user authentication, SSL certificates stand as the guardians, ensuring secure passage through the digital ether.
Embracing the SSL Need
In an era that is constant cyber threats and regular data breaches, SSL certificates transcend mere niceties. It becomes a must have for digital trust and credibility within your website strategy. While optional for non-transactional sites, SSL certificates provide the user with a badge of legitimacy (the padlock in the URL), assuring visitors of your commitment to their digital safety. Without it, users will see a “not secure” message in place of the padlock – a surefire way to create doubt and make them go elsewhere. You really don’t want first time visitors thinking that your website isn’t safe to use.
The SEO Connection
Beyond security, SSL certificates wield influence over search rankings, subtly nudging the scales in favour of SSL-secured sites. With search engines prioritising user safety and data integrity, SSL adoption offers a real SEO advantage. It enhances your digital visibility and trustworthiness. So even if you aren’t processing payments or handling sensitive data and therefore don’t technically need one, this small cost provides tangible benefits to your website. From improved customer trust and confidence in your business to a boost in the search rankings!
Email: Navigating the Digital Mailbox
Digital communication – and the use of email has become a fundamental part of everyday life for nearly everyone. Email stands as a timeless pillar of connectivity, bridging distances and fostering engagement. But do you know what they are and how they work? If you’re building a digital presence, then you will need to have a basic understanding of the options available.
Exploring Email Hosting
Dive into the realm of email hosting, where myriad configurations await your selection. From third-party providers to integrated solutions, the choice of email setup shapes your digital communication landscape, dictating accessibility, security, and functionality.
- 3rd Party Emails. Your emails are all managed through a third party provider. There are lots to choose from – the big ones being Yahoo, Gmail and Outlook. You would create an email address like mirageandmole@gmail.co.uk or mirageandmole@outlook.com.
- Website Provided Email. Your web hosting package also provides email addresses to compliment your website name. These are usually free (or at least cheap), and will come as part of a shared hosting server solution.
- Dedicated Email Services. These include Google’s GSuite or Microsoft 365. These services allow you to use addresses at your personal domain but run them through a dedicated and email service. They need to be paid for, but these services are those that most of us are used to using in our everyday lives.
- Exchange Server Emails. These are used to manage lots of email addresses and are usually only required for big companies. This option is a lot more complex to set up but can provide a much higher level of security.
Connecting Your Email Service
Once you have set up your email service you then need to connect your email – and here there are two options.
- IMAP. Your email is stored on your email server, and your email program simply copies all that information to whatever device you are using to access the email. In a world where we might need to access our emails on our desktop, phone and tablet this is the recommend option. It allows you to access your emails on multiple devices. As your emails are stored on your server, it is possible that you can use all of your available space. You will need to have regular clearouts of your email or pay to expand your mailbox capacity.
- Emails are downloaded from the server and placed onto your device. They aren’t copied (like IMAP), but completely removed, so the email is not stored on your server and will sit on your device. This makes it more difficult to use across multiple devices but has the advantage of being able to access them if you aren’t online. You won’t need to expand your mailbox storage as each time you connect the emails will be removed from the server – but you will still have the problem of storage capacity on the device it ends up on!
Hosting and Accessing Your Emails
We would always recommend a dedicated email hosting service. Our preference is Microsoft 365 but there are alternatives like Google GSuite. These are paid for services but are still much cheaper and much simpler to run and maintain than operating your own exchange server. And choosing to use one of the big players like Microsoft 365 over a free service also comes with added benefits. They offer an email service that will be much more secure and with more storage than any free services and you can use your own email domain.
With your email hosting selected you then need to choose how they will be accessed. If you have chosen Microsoft 365 then you can access your emails in your web browser at outlook.com and likewise with GSuite at gmail.com. The other option is through an email client. Setup is quick and simple (as long as you have your email address and password for the account!). Your email client will then sit on your device with no need to sign in every time you want to send or receive an email. They also offer quick and easy ways to organise and manage your emails. The most common email clients are:
- Outlook
- Windows Mail
- Thunderbird
- MacMail
Everyone has their preference and whilst you can’t have emails for your domain using different hosting services, users can chose to use their preferred email client. So a Mac user would likely be using MacMail and someone else could be using Thunderbird or Outlook.
Email Setup and Troubleshooting
This will depend on the choices that you have made in the previous steps – with hosting and client selection. And for us is another of the reasons why we recommend Microsoft 365. As this setup can be as simple as opening your email client and entering your email address and password. Choosing other hosting services and email clients will require you have other information and this is where things can start to get complicated! You’ll need the following details:
- Email address and password
- Incoming and outgoing server information – this is usually mail.yourdomain
- Connection type – usually None, SSL or STARTTLS.
- Authentication method – usually Password Authentication or Normal Password
- Port numbers for your incoming and outgoing servers.
The process will be different for every possible type of setup, and some providers offer little to no support! So a paid service like Microsoft 365 brings simplicity, security and support you can rely on. We also love the way Microsoft 365 works with FluentSMTP to integrate your emails with your WordPress website.
If things go wrong and your email isn’t working properly, it’s usually because the settings aren’t right. If you’re getting bounce back messages and your emails are being rejected, it’s likely that your server has been blacklisted. This is a very common problem if you’re using the email that comes with your domain hosting. But sadly, there’s nothing you can do but wait. Again another reason we would recommend Microsoft 365 (or GSuite), as they pretty much never run into this problem.
Forging Your Digital Destiny
As you enter the digital landscape, armed with newfound knowledge and insight, your website strategy and digital destiny lie within your grasp. Our top tips:
- Choose your domain name wisely (and don’t forget to renew!)
- Harness the power of cloud hosting service (for flexibility and security)
- Embrace the security of SSL (give your users confidence and trust in your service)
- Use a dedicated email provider like Microsoft 365 (the small costs bring big benefits)
- Opt for an IMAP setup (allowing access across multiple devices)
If you are still not sure you can create a website strategy alone then get in touch. We can work with you and our IT experts to understand your requirements and help you in your choices to unlock the mysteries of your digital foundation and embark on a journey of boundless possibility.
