How to Start a Christian Blog – Part 2

In our last article in this series on how to start a Christian blog we talked about Blogger and Wordpress.com as two free options for getting a Christian Blog started. While these options will be enough for some Christian Blogs, there are many who will be better served by purchasing a domain name and using a web host for their blog. This process is a great way to use free blogging software as evangelism software. In this article we will talk about the process of getting a domain name.

A domain name is your Internet address or URL. It will cost you about $10 a year to purchase and register a domain name. You will need to choose a domain name that is specific to your topic or ministry. You need to stay away from abbreviations or nick names that no one knows. A well chosen domain name can have a big impact on the search engines and draw a lot of traffic to your site. For example, let’s say we were starting a Christian Blog for the First Christian Church of Fairbanks. Do not get a domain name like FCCF.com. You would be better off getting “FirstChristianChurchFairbanks” or “FairbanksChristianChurch”. Why? It seems that it would be easier for people to type in FCCF.com than FirstChristianChurchFairbanks.com. The issue is about how people who don’t know your domain name find your Christian blog or ministry site. With the right domain name, people could find you by searching for Fairbanks Churches or First Christian Church or Churches in Fairbanks. Since your domain name contains those words it has the potential of showing up on the search engines.

After you have decided on what domain name you would like, you have to check and see if its available. To do this, I recommend using Good News Domains (www.goodnewsdomains.com).

Once you get to the Good News Domain site look for the “Start a Domain Name search” box:

Now just type in the domain name you would like to have, like this:

If the domain name you want is available, you will see the following screen:

It is not unusual for the first few domain names you try to be unavailable. If that is the case, Good News Domains will provide you with some suggestions. Once you have a domain name, follow the instructions on the Good News Domain site to get it registered. Once you have your domain name, you will need to get a web host. We will talk about that in our next article in this series on How to Start a Christian Blog.