The development of the Internet means that more and more work is more oriented to the possibilities it brings with it. In this article I will explain how to get free domain and hosting to create a website that allows you to grow in your business or create a unique and personal site for you.
What you need to have a domain and hosting
To have a website you need two things: a name (domain) and a place to host your Page. The name is important, it has to be representative of what you offer, or you can use an alias that you have used on the internet. It is important that that name, the domain, is unique.
By another band, you’re going to need a hosting, a place to host your website to make it available 24 hours a day. There will be a server where a folder will host your website. That hosting if we use content managers like joomla, drupal or wordpress will need to be supported for databases.
Content managers have two parts: the file part and the data part. The files come in the content manager itself. The data is stored in a database and when there is a request on your website the information is read from that database.
Types of domains used on the Internet
The domain is the name of your brand. It’s how you want to be known out there. There are many domains available in the world, most of them identify countries such as .es (Spain), .pt (Portugal), .fr (France) etc.
In total there are 6 types of internet domains that you can use for your website, business, project or company. These are:
- Top Level Domains. There are 6 top-level domains:
- .com : comes from the term “commercial”.
- .edu: This domain is used for schools or educational institutions.
- . gov: abbreviation for “government”.
- . thousand: abbreviation of “military”
- .net: its meaning is network.
- .org: comes from the word “organization”
- Internationalized country code top-level domains (IDN ccTLD). Used for domains with internationalized characters.
- Geographic/Territorial Domains or ccTLD (country code Top-Level Domains). They’re the ones about the countries. Example of the comments above .es, .pt, .fr, etc.
- Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). They are domains related to those of other higher levels. Such as .app, .auto, .club, .digital, .futbol, etc.
- Second Level Domains (SLD)
- Third-Level Domains (TLDs)
And within these categories there are subdomains. Subdomains are branches of a parent domain. For example, gmail is a subdomain within the domain that is google.com. When you access gmail you see this in the address bar: mail.google.com. The domain would google.com and the subdomain would be mail.
Searching for free domains
Now we start searching for a domain that is free. For that we use google and get this result. Many internet service providers offer free domains for one year. After that year you have to pay for that domain.
The one we’re going to use is the .tk domain, which gives you that domain for free for a year but you can also renew it for free after that time. This domain is associated with an archipelago of islands called Tokelau territory administratively dependent on New Zealand. The address for hiring the domain is http://www.dot.tk/es/index.html but we can also go directly to freenom.com which is where the process actually takes place.
We search for the teamgalicia.tk and after clicking CHECK AVAILABILITY we hire it. We will use a page to which you redirect the previous freenom call. Here are the steps:
1. Register a free freenom account and search for domain
We go to Freenom.com and enter the name we want to use for our .tkdomain. If the domain is not registered we will be able to register it. We register in freenom so that we can register our domain. The domain we are looking for, teamgalicia.tk is available and we select it and click FINISH PURCHASE.
2. Complete domain data
Now we choose how long we’re going to want that free domain. The maximum time period is 12 months, but can be renewed.
This concludes the first part. We have purchased a free domain with .tk extension. Now we are looking for a free hosting for our website that will be made in WordPress.
Looking for free hosting
Likewise we will hire a free hosting. Hosting is going to be the house in which we are going to place our website. There are our free hostings that a simple google search will help us to choose from.
Free hosting has many drawbacks:
- They’re usually very slow because servers host thousands of pages like yours.
- Your website may disappear overnight.
- Many plugins that you want to install, especially those of a commercial nature, are prohibited and will give you an installation error.
- Sometimes you install a plugin and suddenly your page gives an error that only resolves by creating it again from scratch.
- They usually have invasive advertising on your Page as well as on the backend (admin area).
We choose webhost hosting. In the registration process on this website we can register with a gmail account. Once the account is created we can create a page (it only allows 1 unless we improve the plan and move on to premium).
Now we have a page that is available all day without having to pay anything. Just one step away, redirect our domain to go to the url (the web address) of our new page.
How to link your hosting and domain to your website
We return to freenom.com and make a redirect to our website hosted on a free server.
It would already be done, anyone who puts teamgalicia.tk will be redirected to a free hosting where the website we have created is hosted.
I do not recommend using this domain or this free hosting for commercial purposes. This hosting and domain can help you get on the road. But it is highly recommended to start seeing how a wordpress, joomla or drupal website works as well as know how internet domains work. It’s time for you to make the move now and decide to start in this world of personal websites with your own domains.
References
- https://mx.godaddy.com/blog/conoce-tipos-dominios-de-internet/.
- https://tipsonblogging.com/2017/04/how-to-get-free-domain-for-blogger-tk-and-link-to-blogger/
- https://my.freenom.com/
- https://es.000webhost.com/
