Finding a web home for your homepage

By RICHARD WOOD

When you have your site ready for the web, it's time to find some space.

Most ISPs give you a little allocation under the title of Homepages. For example, for my personal account ihug provided me with 5MB (megabytes) free and will sell more for $2 a MB per month.

If you want more space another option is to rent it in bigger chunks, starting at $15 to $20 a month, from a specialist web-hosting firm such as Nucleus or Iserve. There are a many such deals, so it is worth comparing prices and features.

You will likely want to get your own domain name and point it to your hosted site or to your homepages using "URL redirection". Check that this will be free when you buy your domain name and ask if related email addresses will also be free.

Don't imagine that all the good domain names are gone. That is certainly not the case in New Zealand (.co.nz), and even in the United States there are good names to be had if you have a specific idea in mind.

I readily picked up ITKiwi.com and ITKiwi.co.nz for my IT export-oriented news site, and Subedit.com for my wife's editing business.

Domain names cost from about $40 a year for a .co.nz.

You can pick up .com names for $50 upwards.

To some degree you can find what is available by simply testing it in a browser. But to search more properly go to a domain-selling site such as Free parking or Register Direct.

But be a little careful. I found .com name searches were being monitored and identified for sale elsewhere on the net. So be ready with your Visa card when you go hunting.

Nucleus

Iserve

Free parking

Register Direct