When I decided to start the blog “A Generalist Mind,” I had no clue about all the technical stuff behind setting up a blogging site. I only knew that I didn’t need a perfect (the best) solution; I just wanted it to be quick with a bit of upfront investment.
And, once again, my generalist mind was at play. So, I started exploring what it takes to set up your website (a blogging site, to be more precise). Before going into the finer details, I decided I wanted this to be a quick process without incurring a lot of upfront investment.
After spending a few hours, I understood that at a high level, I needed three things:
- A website (common sense!): There are a lot of great tools available out there that can help you build your website. WordPress, Ghost, Medium are the most preferred ones.
- An address for the website: First, you need to decide what address you need for your site. In technical terms, this website address is called “domain name”. Then, you need to find out if that address is available and then register it under your name. There are Domain Registrars who help you with this process. Google, GoDaddy are some of the many options.
- Infrastructure (servers etc.) to host the website:
I decided to use WordPress for website design and GoDaddy for domain registration and hosting services.
Why WordPress? Because it offered a lot of free designs that can be customized and used quickly. Also, it is the most preferred option for a blogging site.
Why GoDaddy? Because it offered both domain registration and hosting at a meager price (3 years economy bundle at ~8k INR) with a one-click option to connect with WordPress. You can check out the plans at this link: https://in.godaddy.com/hosting/web-hosting.
Once I decided to go with GoDaddy, it took me less than 30 minutes to create the account, purchase the plan (domain & hosting), search and select the domain and check out. Immediately, after this I received an email on my registered email address to verify the email – once confirmed, I had access to the domain on GoDaddy.
Thanks to detailed instructions, I connected my GoDaddy account to WordPress, and I had my first website ready. All of this in less than 60 minutes. So far, pretty impressive!
Then came the shock. I realized that GoDaddy didn’t include SSL and BackUp options in the standard bundle, and I needed to buy those as add ons.
SSL: GoDaddy’s SSL service is super expensive (~7k INR for a two-year bundle); this is more than the domain and hosting plan bundle cost. BackUp: It will cost another ~1.5k INR for each year.
So in effect, the total cost for three years will be ~30k INR (Domain & Hosting: 8k, SSL: 12k, Backup: 4.5k, Email: 3k).
After researching the alternative, I found that you can obtain SSL for free, but that requires some workaround. I have parked these additional investments for now, and currently, I am focusing on creating the content for the website. Starting with this post 🙂
I will be back with another post with more details soon.
Cheers,
Mitesh
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