In this free guide, weâll walk through the process of finding, buying and setting up a domain name for your fitness businessâ website.
Setting up a domain name should be a fairly straightforward process, but thatâs not always the case if you havenât done it before.
Letâs flatten the learning curve, shall we?â
Domain names are like car registration plates; only one person can own a domain name at a time.
This means that your first step should always be to check the availability of your chosen name(s), if you havenât already.
Note: You can do this via any domain name registry website, but our favourites are Google Domains, GoDaddy and Namecheap.
If your business name will be âJoe Bloggs Fitnessâ, you may search for âjoebloggsfitness.comâ. If itâs available, fantastic! You can skip ahead to Step 2.
However, if itâs not available (because someone else owns it), youâve still got a couple of options:
First, you can search for variations of that domain name, including other TLDâs.
TLD stands for âtop-level domainâ, and it refers to the â.comâ, â.netâ or any other ending of a domain name. The great news here is that there are many more TLDs than you may be aware of, and, although .com will typically be the most sought after, you can use TLDs to be a little more creative in your hunt for a domain name.
For example, if joebloggsfitness.com is unavailable, you could look at joebloggs.fitness instead! There is absolutely no functional difference between these domain names at all. Theyâll both work exactly the same way. Youâre just using the .fitness TLD instead of .com!
TLDs will typically suggest something about the business or website youâre running, but none of them will make any functional difference to how your website works.
>>> Hereâs a list of all the current TLDs (https://www.namecheap.com/domains/full-tld-list/) you could use.
Aside from experimenting with different TLDs, you can experiment with different versions of the name itself. This only becomes challenging if youâre already decided on a very specific name.
Once youâve found your domain name, youâll want to purchase it. Domain names usually donât cost much, but there are some exceptions.
Again, much like car registration plates, anything thatâs highly sought after will inevitably cost a lot more money.
Here are a few of the factors that may increase the price of a domain name:
Short answer: no.
However, you will find that there are variations in price between registrars, so itâs always worth checking the same domain from multiple providers if you want to be sure that youâve got the best deal.
Note: donât get caught out with a cheap registration fee and a less obvious but more expensive renewal fee. It can be tempting to register your domain for ÂŁ/$0.99, but if the annual renewal is much higher, you may want to reconsider.
When purchasing a domain name, you will likely be offered numerous âadd-onsâ, which will likely cost a little extra money. So, what else should you include, if given the choice?
The most common add-ons for your domain name are:
Letâs run through each of these to understand if we should fall for the upsell.
This will typically refer to a service where you can setup your own professional business email address, using your new domain name. For example, name@business.com.
This will always trump a name123@gmail.com, of course, but do you need to add this to your purchase right now? What other options are there?
The short answer is no, you donât need to include this right now, even if you would like a custom email address.
Most domain registrars will offer this service, and theyâre all often very cheap to sign up to at any point. However, you may find that you can get both your custom email address AND a whole suite of other tools through something like Google Workspace (formerly GSuite for Business).
This is what we use at FitMedia, and itâs what we recommend to many of our clients as well.
You donât need to setup your email with the same provider as your domain name. You can either shop for cheaper deals or better services (such as Google Workspace). This can be done at any point.â
In most instances, no, you wonât need this add-on.
If youâre building your website yourself then you will likely find that web hosting is included with your website builder.
Or, if youâre having your website built for you, then youâll likely find that your web developer already has their own hosting provider in place.
Again, you donât need to get your hosting from the same place as your domain name.
If you havenât started building your website (whether youâre doing it yourself or are having it done for you), this can be a tempting option. However, the website builders offered by domain name registrars are usually inferior to more mainstream and purpose built platforms.
>>> You can check this article for our recommendations on choosing a website builder here.
If you are choosing to build your website yourself, this decision is entirely up to you, but it is worth checking your options before you get too far down the rabbit hole.
You donât need to make this decision at the time of purchasing your domain name.
Adding privacy to your domain name can be a very good idea⌠especially if you care about privacy! (Well, duh!)
By default, anyone who registers a domain name will find that their details are publicly available via a simply âwhoisâ search. This information would include your name, organisation, address, phone number and email address.
If you add privacy to your domain name, all of this information will be kept private. Again, itâs purely personal preference, but we would recommend including it when possible.
Note: privacy isnât an option for all TLDs.
Often, when purchasing a domain name, you will be offered extra domain names with alternative TLDs. For example, this may be joebloggsfitness.com, joebloggsfitness.co.uk and joebloggsfitness.net. You may even get a discount for registering them all at the same time.
But do you need multiple domain names? What would you do with them all anyway?
Whilst itâs not necessary, you may like the idea of having a certain monopoly over your business name.
If you happen to own all the variations of Joe Bloggs Fitness then it makes it a lot harder for anyone to get lost or confused if they stumble across someone elseâs website with a similar name or different TLD.
You can very easily set up any secondary domains to forward all traffic to your primary domain.
Itâs totally up to you. Itâll just cost a bit more to renew all your domains each year.
Now you own your domain name, itâs time to connect it to your website.
To do this, weâll be venturing into the âDNS settingsâ. DNS simply stands for âDomain Name Systemâ, and this is where we âpointâ your domain name to the server that your website lives on.
>>> If you want, you can read this article for a non-technical explanation of how websites, web hosting and domain names link together (and why youâll need all three in setting up your website)
If youâre working with a web developer, then this wonât be relevant to you as your web developer will be able to set this up very easily.
However, if youâre doing it yourself you will want to simply follow the instructions provided by your chosen website builder.
In most instances, you will be asked to add a combination of âCNAMEâ records and âA Nameâ records.
Itâs difficult for us to provide specific instructions in this article as the exact records you add will be very much dependant on the platform youâre using, however, donât feel like you canât reach out to a support team for help, if needed.
Use their live chat, phone or email support, if available.
Once you have added the required DNS records, you will then need to wait for a process called âpropagationâ to take place. This is where the changes youâve made to your domain name will take a short while to fully update across the internet.
Sometimes this can happen very quickly (within 5-10 minutes), and other times it can take a number of hours or even up to a full day.
In our experience, if itâs taking more than a few hours, itâs possible something has gone wrong and youâll want to just double check that the records have been added correctly. This could also be a good time to reach out to the appropriate support team, if you havenât already.â
That concludes this free guide on finding, purchasing and setting up the domain name for your fitness business website.
I really hope that youâve found this to be a useful resource in setting up your website.
Feel free to save it and refer back to it later, or reach out to me directly if you feel any part of this isnât clear.
Also, finally, if youâre interested in having a professional website or landing page built for your fitness business, you can organise a chat with our team via fitmedia.net/apply.
To your success,
Jonah
GYFB / FitMedia
â
