Steps to take when starting out

[juststarting]

Hello all,

So I got myself a domain a couple of years ago from NetworkSolutions and finally finished coding my site last month but now I'm wondering what steps do I need to take to go live.
My site will have a lot of images and eventually a lot of pdfs so I think I need a cdn. Please let me know, if the steps below sound like the right way forward.

Get an email like [e-mail] from NetworkSolutions - $21.00/year
Get an SSL Certificate fromThawte - $149.00/year
Get a cdn at CloudFlare - $240.00/year
Get some sort of hosting from DigitalOcean - $120.00-150.00/year

Is that more or less the right recipe to be able to go live? Or am I going for options that are unnecessarily costly? Don't get me wrong, I'm willing to pay for the things I should have but I'm not willing to pay more than I have to because I just don't know any better. This is my first web site ever and I don't feel like getting taken advantage of. Any suggestions or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[not2easy]

Hi juststarting and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

I have memories or such questions from over 20 years ago. There are many opportunities for unnecessary spending.

Since you own the domain, the next step is to choose hosting. We do not discuss hosting here due to something like a 900% increase in drive-by spammers. You can ask trusted acquaintances if you are seeking recommendations.

I found that these forums are like a library you can look up what you need to know and find answers. You just need to remember that things evolve and 2005 advice on email setup aren't much use any more, but there is a ton of information that a selective person can find answers or start discussions to ask about.

Once you have a host for your domain you will also usually have a lot of useful tools with a CPanel that comes with most hosting. At the place where you bought your domain (your Registrar) you have an account for domain management where you can add the DNS IP addresses that your host gives you. Once you have registered the DNS you are live so you might want to complete the setup part before you deal with DNS.

You can create your own domain's email addresses using tools in CPanel. Most hosts offer a 'Knowledge Base' with basic setup/getting started articles on how to set up email accounts and add SPF and DKIM to them. Some older discussions here can help you learn more about that:
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CPanel also offers free (LetsEncrypt) SSL so you would only need to buy a certificate if you intend to have an eCommerce site and accept payments online. That is a different discussion though.

This is not an exhaustive step by step. It helps to hear what things you are hoping to do rather than write out everything you might possibly run into. Then others can step up and assist. It helps to know whether you are using a CMS like WordPress or hand coding html, or some other basis so we don't go off explaining stuff you may never need. You are in the right place.

[tangor]

Unless your content and intended audience is super-charged, one can start smaller (as noted above) and grow the site as needed. One also needs to determine what is the desired measure for success for effort/expense.

More specifics in what you WANT to do will produce better answers, as everyone has an opinion on how to get started.

[juststarting]

Thanks for the replies,

My site is really pretty simple. It's basically a bunch of "static" pages generated from a few json files.
There will not be any shopping carts and definitely no e-commerce. No Wordpress or any other blog software will be integrated into it.
There will not even be any interactions with databases. And no user logins for now. If ever I go in that direction, I'll probably use FireBase.

But it is multilingual (5 languages to start) with a sub-domain for each language.
And it'll have wikipedia-style urls so I'll need to be able to access apache2 to do some rewriting.
It will hopefully be accessed by users from many continents eventually with everyone experiencing the same page response time ideally.
I want it to be snappy and as quick to respond if you're in Hanoi, Hong Kong, Paris or New York.

Thanks for the tip about being able to setup my own email and ssl from CPanel when I get some up with my hosting provider.

Please keep the advice coming ...it really helps

[not2easy]

That extra information helps to understand what you might want to know. It can help to read up on the use of localization via the use of hreflang tags. Google's recommendations here: [developers.google.com...]

It can be confusing getting the various settings for subdomains in various languages. Here are a few discussions that you might get ideas from:
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