New to the game, a little help?

[Chodarth]

I started a youtube channel a few years ago (youtube.com/thedrumdepartment) and now have almost 7k subscribers. I want to build a website/blog so I can write blog posts and interact with my viewers. In the future I'd like to sell lesson videos, e-books, and t-shirts etc. I'm kinda new to this so I have a few questions.

I've already purchased the domain name (www.thedrumdepartment.com) through namecheap.com but now I'm assuming I need to find a host because namecheap doesn't do hosting?

I've heard good things about bluehost but since all I need right now is something simple should I use something like 000webhost instead? Or should I think about the future and go with something that has more features.

I've tried Wordpress but I still need a host, right?

I'm not a complete idiot but this is my first attempt at trying to build a site. Should I just go with something like rapidweaver (suggestions?) now so I don't have to switch over when I want to make my site bigger (i.e. a forum, store, videos).

Let me know what you think.
Thanks!!!

 

[960design]

One way to have gone:
Wordpress.com click on the "Get a free blog" button to start.

You've already purchased a domain name, so skip that and find a host. There are many great and inexpensive ones. Try googling best webhost 2012 and look at a couple of reviews and pick the one that best fits your needs.

From reading your paragraph I can through out a suggestion that may or may not be best. JustHost dot com is pretty great and inexpensive. One click wordpress install, auto nightly backups, plus you would have gotten a free domain name.

Good luck in blogging.

just me

PS namecheap does do web hosting, main page, middle left, web hosting link

 

[-pete-]

If you are new to WordPress I would strongly recommend looking around for a host that will offer 1-click installs of WordPress, otherwise you're going to have to learn about setting up databases and tieing it all together, it isn't the hardest thing to learn but it introduces extra systems that you may not want to learn.

I'm not a complete idiot but this is my first attempt at trying to build a site. Should I just go with something like rapidweaver (suggestions?) now so I don't have to switch over when I want to make my site bigger (i.e. a forum, store, videos).

This depends on the scope of your site, WordPress is great because there are plugins for practically everything, which means adding a shop or tieing in with your youtube channel are much less of a hassle in the future, you can also learn to code "properly" in it (ie custom CSS and HTML templates) which can be optimised for search engines and will generally load a bit faster.

So I guess it depends on what you want to do, if you want to learn code and have something that you can add to in the future go for WordPress. If you want something that will get a site up quickly, look reasonable and you don't want to learn the code, go with rapidweaver.

 

[Chodarth]

Thanks for all the suggestions!!!