Ladies Who Launch

Introduction:
This post is designed for you to get a basic website and email addresses up and running for next to nothing. In my next post I’ll talk about setting up a blog.

Step 1) Domain Name.

If you already own your domain name. Skip all this and go to step 2)
This is going to be the most expensive step. You need a Domain name. The Domain name is the address of your site. Ladieswholaunch.com is the domain name of Ladies Who Launch, LLC. Ivesdigital.com is my personal domain name. The internet uses numbered addresses (IP Addresses) to identify computers and devices on the internet. The domain name system is like a card catalog so humans can find the computer they are looking for with an easily or not so easily remembered name. You can register a domain name at an Internet Registrar such as Network Solutions or any other registrar. This can be intense. Most of the best short names are taken. You can purchase those in auctions the Registrars have or you can use whois ( a function most registrars have) to identify who owns the name you have and see if they’d be interested in selling it. If you are the Trademark owner you may have a case against them if they are simply squatting on the domain to extort you. That is all outside the scope of this blog post, but it is important that you have a domain name for the rest of this article.

step 2)
When you purchase your domain name see if the registrar offers DNS (Domain Name Service) as a package with your domain. Some registrars call this domain hosting. Buying your domain is different than hosting the Name Service. Think of buying your domain as registering a business name with the Trademark office or setting up a Doing Business AS with the government. Think of domain hosting as your listing in the Yellow Pages. This is the services that matches the name you just bought the rights to use with the IP address (number) of the computer(s) that will eventually host your website and email. Most registrars can do this. However, they don’t offer all the premium services of DNS. I recommend buying service from Dyndns.com. It’ll cost you about $20/ year or less.

Step 3)

Hopefully you got lucky and now have a great name you love. The next thing to do is to get your domain name working with email. For this, I recommend Google Apps for Domains. I’ve used this personally, and at 3 companies I’ve helped start. You can’t beat the price (Free). You can use your own email client if you want to Outlook, etc. You’ll get 6 gigs of email space and space to host your site. You can sign up here.

Google has great documentation and a way for you to get signed up. The basics are that you’re going to have to configure things in your DNS. You’ll have to prove you own the domain. That’ll be easy. In Dyndns. You’ll had a new cname record that will point where google tells you.

for example my ivesdigital cname record is as follows:

googlec7f2eb3073d74bff.ivesdigital.com Alias (CNAME) google.com

Google will give you the exact cname to set up.

Once you’re done setting up your dns CNAME records for each service in google that you choose. docs, email, start) you’re ready for

Part 2. To be continued next week:
Using Google Sites to host your website.
Using wordpress hosted blogs with your dns to have you own blog(s)
Creating a mail list