Why not accepting a free domain?
Many web hosting companies now offer one free domain or more for life. Never accept one. If you accept one, you will be stuck with the same hosting company for life. That's why they want you to have a free domain.
Finding the best hosting company for your needs is not easy. We MacHouse ourselves have switched our hosting companies several times. What we have learned is not to accept a free domain but to register one of our own. Actually, you can accept a free domain from a hosting company, but don't use it. What we suggest you to do is to register a domain separately. After signing for a web hosting plan, forward the domain you have purchased to the account at your hosting company.
But forwarding a domain is not so easy for those who have never done it. At least, you must understand how the system works. What is domain forwarding? What is DNS propagation?
In our case, we had our website hosted by StartLogic a few years ago. A mistake we made is that we accepted a free domain. We didn't sign up the following year. So we lost the domain. Next, we had to start from a scrach at a new hosting company. We had to establish fame, search engine ranks (Google, Alexa...) and links from other websites pretty much out of nothing all over again. We purchased MHOUSE-J.COM at cheap-domainnames.com. Then we signed for one year at HostMonster. We never accepted a free domain at HostMonster. After purchasing another domain (MHVT.NET), we moved our websites this time to Lunarpages. At Lunarpages, we accepted a free domain, which we don't use. The domain is MHVT6.COM. All we have there is a QuickTime movie, which one can click on to go to MHVT.NET.
MHVT.NET and MHOUSE-J.COM are identical twins. Or we call them dual domains. Whichever you access, you will see the exactly same content at any time. Right, we use MHVT.NET and MHOUSE-J.COM as add-on domains.
Again, what is the mistake we have made? Never host a website with a free domain from your hosting company, right? |
