Domain Names 101
Everything a small business owner needs to know. Nothing they do not.
A domain name is your address on the internet. yourbusiness.com. That is it. It is not hosting, it is not a website, it is just the name. Here is what you need to know.
What to Buy
- Keep it simple. Your business name dot com. If that is taken, try adding your city. smithplumbingjackson.com.
- Always get .com. Yes, .net and .co exist. Your customers will type .com anyway and end up on someone else’s site.
- Do not get clever. No dashes, no numbers, no abbreviations that only make sense to you. If you have to spell it out every time you tell someone, it is too complicated.
Where to Buy It
Namecheap, Cloudflare Registrar, or Google Domains. That is it. Do not buy your domain from your web guy, your hosting company, or GoDaddy.
A domain costs about $10-15 per year. If someone is charging you more than that, they are marking it up. Buy it yourself and own it outright. You 100% want control of this.
How to Connect It
Once you build your site in Lovable, you point your domain at it. This means changing your DNS settings at your domain registrar to point to Lovable. It sounds technical but it is literally changing two text fields. Lovable walks you through it and it takes about 5 minutes.
If You Already Have a Domain
Great. You do not need to buy a new one. You just point it at your new Lovable site instead of wherever it is pointed now. Your domain stays the same, your email stays the same, just the website changes.
I will walk you through all of this on the call. Domain setup, DNS, the works.