In our experience, a lot of focus when it comes to websites for photographers is spent on deciding between the actual site platform you will build on (or in some cases – migrate to). In one of our recent blog posts, we compared WordPress vs. Showit to highlight some major pros and cons between these two really popular options.

Now, while we’ve covered the core of website platforms in other blog content like that one, we want to talk about actually hosting your domain – something we find people can easily get confused about from time to time…especially if it’s your first time.

To make this as easy as possible, we’re simply going to walk through the steps to hosting your website. 

Hosting your website is a crucial step to getting your photography business online and accessible to potential clients.

Step #1: Choose a Domain Name

You are going to want to choose a domain name that accurately reflects your business. In case it isn’t clear or the phrase “domain name” is new to you, this is your website URL address. 

The most important thing here is that your domain name should be easy to remember and relevant to your brand.

For example – my photography brand is Hand and Arrow Photography, and my domain name is handandarrow.com. 

It’s simple and easy to remember. 

We don’t need to get too fancy!

Step #2: Check Domain Name Availability 

Alongside choosing your domain name, you are also going to need to make sure the domain name is actually available. 

You can use a domain name checker tool like Name.com to help you see if the domain name you want is actually available.

If it isn’t, you may need to get creative. 

As a general rule, you should ideally register your domain name with a .com domain. 

If a .com is not available, but others are – we would not recommend using that name since it runs some risk that clients going to look for your website, land on someone else’s because most people will naturally search for .com sites. 

Step #3: Buy a Domain Name

Now that you have a name ready and available, you’ll want to purchase the domain name from a reputable registrar. 

Most standard registration fees are around ~$10 – $20 bucks a year. 

We would recommend buying your domain from the same company you plan to host your website with, but it’s not completely necessary. 

The reason for this is because if you are registering your domain name through one company and your website hosting through another – it can make the initial setup a little more technical and time consuming. 

If you need help choosing a good domain registrar, check out Website Domain Hosting Companies for Photographers – a blog post we created to help with just that!

Let’s go look at website hosting, too, while we’re here!

Step #4: Select a Website Hosting Provider

The best thing to do here is simply research domain hosting providers. 

You will want to look for a provider that meets your needs in terms of performance, support, and cost.

Step #5: Select a Hosting Plan

When you go to buy your website hosting, you’ll be prompted with some different options – which admittedly can be confusing if you’re not super tech savvy. 

So let’s look at a few key things to know. 

First up is the type of website hosting – there’s a few different types:

• Shared Hosting: Multiple websites share the same server resources. It’s cost-effective and sufficient for most photographers.
• VPS Hosting: Stands for Virtual Private Server. It offers more resources and better performance than shared hosting.
• Dedicated Hosting: Provides an entire server for your website alone. It’s the most expensive and offers the best performance.

In general, simply using a shared hosting plan is going to be more than sufficient for your needs. 

Moving to higher tiers of hosting, like a dedicated plan, would be a tool to help improve site performance (like speed), but is only necessary if you feel you are just not getting the performance you need on your site after exhausting other options like optimizing your site’s content. 

Next, is the storage:

Ensure the hosting plan offers enough storage for your website’s files and images. 

We’d recommend at minimum 5 gigabytes of storage, and choose unlimited storage options if it’s available to you for a reasonable rate. 

Now…SSL Certificates:

Having a SSL certificate is crucial for securing your website and is often included in hosting plans. 

This certificate basically tells search engines and people that your site is trustworthy – which contributes to its ability to rank in search and for people to actually use your website. 

SSL certificates are one of the foundations of good SEO, which is a topic we cover at length in our SEO and Blogging Course for Photographers!

Next up, website Backups:

Regular backups are essential to protect your data. 

Many website hosting platforms will create backups for you in the event your site went down and needed to be restored. 

The most common reason for needing a backup is if you made a change to your website (like installing a new plugin) that caused a major error and crashed your site. 

Another (but it’s less likely for a photographer website) would be if your website was hacked or attacked – but the likelihood of this happening is pretty low. 

Because of these reasons, backups are especially important for WordPress websites, since they are more prone to problems due to so much third party support and spam. Platforms like Showit, Squarespace, Wix, and such are less likely to have these problems. 

Going along with site backups will be malware scans:

One nice feature most website hosts will include are regular scans for malware to help keep your website secure from threats.

And now for one of the most popular add ons…domain privacy:

Often this will be an upsell you’ll run into, but in our experience it’s worth the extra cost. 

Basically, this feature helps keep your personal information private. The way internet regulations are set up is that anyone who operates a website will have certain personal data made available publicly. 

Domain privacy offerings like this basically are the domain registrar (the company you’re buying your domain from) listing their information in this record, and hiding yours. This can save your personal data like your name and address from being publicly available – something I (and many others) find really valuable. 

Conclusion

Whew! 

That was definitely a lot of information packed into this article!

In practice, getting your website hosting and domain name hosted are not difficult, but I understand it can feel a little overwhelming, especially if it’s your first time doing something like this. 

Like I said before, for most photographer websites, using a Shared Hosting plan will likely be sufficient for your needs as it’s cost-effective and provides the necessary resources to get started. 

Sometimes, you can also purchase your domain name and web hosting from the same company, which can make your life easier in more ways than one when it’s available to you. 

If you need more help with setting up your website, check out our Website Course for Photographers, a part of our larger Business Course Suite for Photographers.