The three things to settle before kickoff
Most website projects that go off the rails do so for the same reason: a fundamental decision was deferred to "we'll figure it out as we go," and "as we go" turns into rework, delays, and surprise costs three weeks in.
Here are the three decisions you should have firmly answered before a developer starts working — what platform you're building on, who owns your domain, and where your site will be hosted. Lock these down and the rest of the project gets dramatically smoother.
Part 1 — Know which platform your site will be built on
The first decision that shapes every other decision
What to do:
- Figure out what your website is actually doing: showing information (services, blog, photos, contact), selling products, or being an interactive tool people log into.
- Lean WordPress if it's mostly informational. Lean Shopify if you're selling physical or digital products. Lean React (or similar) if it's a custom app or platform.
- If you're not sure, read our guide on picking the right platform — it has a 3-question decision tree that lands 90% of business owners in the right spot.
- Have an answer ready before your first call with a developer. "I'm not sure yet" is fine; "I want the cheapest one" is not.
Why this matters first
The platform decision drives every other decision in the project — what hosting you need, what your monthly costs look like, what changes you can make yourself, what kind of developer can work on it, and how easily you can switch providers later.
Picking the wrong platform and then trying to migrate costs three to five times more than just picking the right one upfront. It's the single highest-leverage decision in the whole project.
Read: How to Pick the Right Website Platform
The honest catch
Don't let cost alone decide. The cheapest platform for the wrong job is always more expensive in the long run — usually within 12 months, when you have to rebuild on the right one anyway.
Part 2 — Sort out your domain (and who owns it)
You should own it personally, in an account you control
What to do:
- If you don't have a domain yet, buy it yourself before the project starts. We recommend Namecheap — it's cheap, honest, and easy to use.
- If you already have one, log into the registrar and confirm you can actually access it. If the password is "somewhere in an old email," fix that now, not on launch day.
- Make sure the domain is registered in your name, with your billing details and an email address you actually use.
- Be ready to give your developer temporary DNS access — or just be willing to make the specific DNS changes they ask for. Don't hand over the full account login.
Why this matters
Your domain is the single most valuable digital asset your business has. Every customer email, every Google search ranking, every business card, every link from another website — all of it is attached to your domain. Losing it is catastrophic and often impossible to undo.
Sorting this out before the project starts removes one of the most common launch-day disasters: discovering you can't log into the registrar, or that an old web developer technically owns the domain, or that the renewal email goes to an inbox no one has checked since 2019.
Read: How to Get and Manage Your Own Domain
The honest catch
Don't let a developer, agency, or hosting company "register the domain for you" as a favour. It feels easier in the moment and it's a nightmare to untangle later. You buy it. You own it. They get access when they need it.
Part 3 — Know where the site will be hosted
Hosting is where the website actually lives — and it's not all the same
What to do:
- If your site is being built on WordPress: we recommend SiteGround. Their "GrowBig" or "GoGeek" plans are what we put most of our clients on.
- If your site is being built on Shopify: hosting is included with your monthly Shopify subscription. There's nothing extra to buy or set up.
- If your site is a custom React (or similar) build: the developer usually picks the host — Vercel, Netlify, AWS, and Cloudflare are common. Ask them where it will live, and make sure it's set up under an account you can access.
- Whichever host you end up on, set it up in your own name and your own billing — same rule as the domain.
Why we recommend SiteGround for WordPress
SiteGround's servers are tuned specifically for WordPress, so sites are faster out of the box. They include daily backups, free SSL certificates, and a staging environment for safely testing changes — features that cost extra almost everywhere else.
Their support is the real differentiator. Most cheap hosts have outsourced support teams that read from scripts. SiteGround's support actually knows WordPress and can fix things quickly when something breaks at 11 p.m.
We've had bad experiences with GoDaddy hosting and the EIG family of hosts (Bluehost, HostGator, A2). They look cheap on the sign-up page, but performance and support both degrade over time. SiteGround is not paying us — we just genuinely use them and recommend them.
The honest catch
Don't pay for hosting before you know your platform. Hosting plans are platform-specific — WordPress hosting is useless if you end up on Shopify, and vice versa. Decide on the platform first, then pick the host.
A few extras that make the project go faster
None of these are blockers — but having them ready on day one shaves real time off the build.
- Your logo (the original file if you have it, not a screenshot off Facebook).
- Your brand colours and fonts, if they've already been chosen.
- A rough idea of the pages you want — Home, About, Services, Contact at minimum.
- The text and photos for each page (rough drafts are fine — better than waiting).
- Two or three websites you like the look of, and one or two you don't.
- Your email plan — are you using your domain for email (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365)? If yes, gather those account details too.
The mistake to avoid
Picking these pieces out of order. You can't pick hosting without knowing your platform. You can't pick a platform without knowing what your site needs to do. And you can't pick anything if your domain is locked inside someone else's account.
Settle the three big ones — platform, domain, hosting — in that order, and the rest of the project flows naturally from there.
Want help working through this list?
A 15-minute call usually settles platform, domain, and hosting in one go — and saves weeks of guesswork later. No pressure, no sales pitch.
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