Getting Started: Domain, Hosting & Images
Three practical decisions to get right before (or just after) your new page or website goes live – including our actual recommendations, not just theory.
This guide is part of your Getting-Started package. It covers the three things most people get stuck on early: choosing a domain name, choosing hosting, and finding images that actually look like your business rather than generic stock photography. Guidance only, throughout — you own and control your own domain and hosting accounts; I’m on hand to help at any step.
1. Choosing & Registering Your Domain Name
- ✓Keep it short, memorable, and easy to say and spell aloud
- ✓Match your business name where you can; avoid hyphens and numbers if possible
- ✓Prefer .co.uk for a UK-facing business, or .com if you want to look more international
- ✓Register it yourself, under your own account — you should always own your domain outright, not have it registered on your behalf
- ✓Turn on WHOIS/ID privacy protection (usually free) to keep your personal details off the public record
- ✓Register for 2+ years if you can, and turn on auto-renew so it never lapses by accident
- ✓Keep your login details somewhere safe — you’ll need them to point your domain at your hosting
Our recommendation
Namecheap — our default pick. Competitive pricing on both .co.uk and .com, free WHOIS/ID privacy included as standard, and a straightforward account setup that doesn’t require any technical know-how.
Prefer to keep everything under one login? 20i (see Hosting below) also sells domains alongside hosting.
Worth knowing: GoDaddy and 123-Reg are well known, but both are built around a penny-cheap first year followed by a steep renewal jump. If you already have a domain with either, just diarise the renewal date so you’re not caught out.
2. Choosing Hosting
- ✓One-click WordPress install, so your site is easy to set up on day one
- ✓Good uptime — look for a guarantee of 99.9% or better
- ✓Fast servers, ideally UK-based if most of your visitors are in the UK
- ✓A free SSL certificate included as standard (not a paid extra)
- ✓Daily backups, so you can roll back if anything goes wrong
- ✓Real support — live chat or phone, not just a ticket queue with a multi-day wait
Our recommendation
20i — UK-based, budget-friendly (roughly £5–£8/month), one-click WordPress installs and a beginner-friendly control panel. A solid fit for a QuickStart LeadGen or Growth-tier site.
Kinsta — premium managed WordPress hosting (roughly £25–£30/month) built on Google Cloud’s premium network. Worth the extra cost once you’re relying on the site for serious traffic or lead volume — a natural fit alongside a Scale-tier build.
This is guidance, not a managed service — the hosting account stays in your name and under your control. I’m glad to talk you through setup, including pointing your domain at your hosting once it’s ready. Pricing and deals change often, so treat the figures above as a rough guide and check current pricing before you commit.
3. Sourcing Suitable Images
Our recommendation
Start with Unsplash — the largest, most consistently high-quality free library, and our default first stop. If you can’t find the right shot there, try Pexels, then Pixabay. For compression before upload, use TinyPNG as your go-to, or Squoosh if you want more control.
- ✓Choose images that reflect your actual industry or service — skip the generic handshake-and-laptop clichés if you can find something more specific
- ✓Keep a consistent colour tone and mood across your images — search using the same lighting/style keywords each time
- ✓Avoid images with visible text, logos, or watermarks baked in
- ✓Pick a decent resolution for the space it’ll fill — at least 1600px wide for a full-width hero image
- ✓Compress before you upload — large, uncompressed images are one of the most common causes of a slow-loading website
Worth knowing: free stock sites don’t guarantee the people in a photo consented to commercial use, or that branded products/buildings are cleared to appear in an ad. For general decorative or lifestyle images this is low practical risk. But avoid using a free-stock photo of a recognisable individual, a distinctive branded product, or a well-known building in anything that reads as an endorsement.
If a page genuinely needs that kind of image (e.g. a testimonial-style photo), it’s worth the modest cost of a paid stock site like Adobe Stock or Depositphotos, which do provide those releases. (General guidance, not legal advice.)
Not sure about any of this?
If anything here doesn’t make sense, or you’d like a hand at any step, just book a call and we’ll walk through it together.