Welcome to 1997

June 2, 2017 8:38 PM

Twenty years too late, probably, I have decided to set up a family domain. But, really, I have no idea what I'm doing. Basic, basic questions below.

I want to register a family domain (for example, chinagrover.com), so that the family all have emails (like, [e-mail]). I would like to access GMail for these (for familiarity purposes).

Is this as simple as using Bluehost (or whomever is a quality hosting company) to purchase the domain, and "host" the website? What am I not considering in purchasing a domain, and allowing my family to use these services? Can I put artwork or pictures on my domain, or more accurately, how easy is that to do?

I am on a budget, but around ~$100 per year is doable for hosting.

(Bonus question: when purchasing a domain through these companies, will I own the domain, or will I be licensing it through the domain? My business got burned on that back 15 years ago.)

Thank you for any and all help you are able to provide!!

posted by China Grover to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

You will probably get a more complete and more technical answer from someone else but as someone as awkward with technology as you, I purchased a domain name (from NameCheap because it had a good reputation on metafilter at the time). I followed the direction in the google mail help pages to enter the line of code that told the domain service where to forward all of my mail (to my gmail account). It was a little tricker to set up the gmail to show my private mail name as the reply to address but do-able. The cost was just the cost of domain name - it is mine as long as I keep paying for it. None of that involved hosting a website - it was strictly email and very very cheap.
posted by metahawk at 9:18 PM on June 2, 2017

Once you own the domain it's yours as long as you pay for it. Sign up for email alerts from your hosting company or better yet set it up to auto-renew.

In my experience Dreamhost is pretty cheap. I have 4-5 domains hosted with them and pay maybe $200/yr.

Dreamhost makes it super easy to change your DNS settings for mail to gmail. You can set any domain up to use gmail in a few clicks.

(I'm not paid by dreamhost but I've been a happy customer since 1998.)
posted by bendy at 12:57 AM on June 3, 2017

You can, however, manually check for mail by going under Settings/Accounts and Import/Check mail from other accounts and clicking "Check mail now." But that's a pain in the ass.

You can also just hit the Refresh button that's right above your Inbox. (Works as long as you have no messages checked.) I've been doing this for years with several email addresses fetched by Gmail. No pain in the ass at all.
posted by beagle at 5:57 AM on June 3, 2017

The absolute easiest way to purchase a domain and build a website is through Squarespace. With a 10% off coupon for a year it's about $130. For the email hosting, they integrate with Gmail for another $50/user/year which is pretty steep though. I use Zoho for free email on my domains, but I'm not sure how to set that up with Squarespace. Their support is good though, they can probably help you out.

There is definitely cheaper ways to do this (ie Bluehost, etc), but I currently don't have anybody else to recommend that I've been happy with recently.
posted by cgg at 8:12 AM on June 3, 2017

One thing not mentioned so far is that the domain can be from a different company than the web site hosting. You buy the domain name from a domain registrar; I use Namecheap. The website hosting is (or can be) totally separate; you could even run your website on your own computer at home, though that's not really worth the effort. I use NearlyFreeSpeech for hosting sites that get little traffic, because the costs are so little (under ten dollars a year), but also have more-trafficked sites hosted on Namecheap for about $20/quarter.

That is, the domain is just the internet address, and the hosting is the actual "property" (i.e. files) pointed to by the address.
posted by anadem at 9:04 AM on June 3, 2017