I am just setting up a small business in Taipei. I have a website designed already but now need 1) to get a domain name (e.g. somename.com.tw) and 2) I need to find a company to host it at a reasonable price (its a very small site).
I also need to sign up for a DSL provider as I’ve just moved house - perhaps there is a company that can offer me a total package. Anyone have any ideas?
Do people really expect the “.com.tw” extension, or do they automatically try just the “.com” extension?
Anyway, if you want just a .com extension, GoDaddy.com is a well-regarded and very cheap registrar. If you need the .com.tw, I don’t know who the Taiwanese registrars are.
As for hosting, whoever you pick, try to dig up some of the other sites they host and look at them from an internet cafe to see how fast they serve up the pages. One ISP I used in the U.S. offered “free web hosting with your account”, but the hosting was utterly worthless – even a simple page took minutes to load, and their server was completely down about ten percent of the time anyway (once because the ISP owner’s cat got loose in the server room and tore out the network wires!).
For domains I’ve used:
godaddy.com $8.95/year
and
thriftys.com $9.95/year and I think they have a special for $8.00
I would suggest going with .com as opposed to .com.tw
For hosting, I use one in New Jersey for a site visited mostly by N. American customers; for parentpages.net I use ICD Soft.
Haven’t noticed any downtime with them since December when I started using them, and I check into the forum a couple of times a day. Great service, easy to use control panel, cheap!
Unless things have changed in the last couple of years, .com.tw names can be acquired only by registered companies. There’s a relatively large amount of paperwork and hassle involved.
For hosting (even with a .com.tw), you’re probably better off with a company in the States. They tend to be cheaper and have better service.
I’ve used GoDaddy. Now I’m with NameCheap (namecheap.com). GoDaddy simply was too glitzy for me.
Edit: And NameCheap also offers cheap hosting services (starts at 3.95/month). Unless you’re willing to go to a lot of trouble, avoid the .tw domain name.
if you want actual web hosting service as well as just domain registration, you might want to check out the yahoo web hosting offers… webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/wh/prod/ they have three levels (and prices) of hosting services, and all include domain registration. Also you can purchase/rent extra space, bandwidth, services as you need them. I’ve just set up our companies website and e-mail using the “business professional” service for the last couple of months, and so far no complaints, and pretty good support.
oh… and getting a .com.tw extension is as easy as selecting that option off the list…
Really? I doubt it.
I went to the page you gave. I tried entering a variety of domain names in the box labeled “Free domain name with Yahoo Web hosting.” No .com.tw names will work.
I’ve lookd at the Yahoo stores. I thought they were kind of expensive at the time, at least for micro/small businesses. At the time I think I would have been paying about $100/month but my hosting and domain reg cost less than that for the whole year, and my shopping cart is already provided by my credit card processor.
On the other hand, I’ve also heard that having a Yahoo store gets you more traffic (and purchases) because of people who are actually going through the shopping directory as opposed to just doing a search. Have you found that to be true?
Really? I doubt it.
I went to the page you gave. I tried entering a variety of domain names in the box labeled “Free domain name with Yahoo Web hosting.” No .com.tw names will work.[/quote]
I think you misunderstood. Yahoo isn’t a Taiwanese registrar, so you can’t buy a .tw domain from them (which is what you’re doing when you get a “free domain name with hosting”). But you can buy a .tw domain elsewhere (following whatever the procedures and restrictions are) and then have Yahoo host it for you.
AFAIK, there is no way for any authority to block a given hosting provider from hosting a domain after it’s been purchased, since that’s just a matter of pointing the DNS service at a given server. Unless they have centralized control over all of the permitted DNS services, which may be the case in China and other dictatorships, but doesn’t appear to be the case in the free Republic of Taiwan.
Yes, I’d thought you were talking about using Yahoo as the registrar for a .com.tw, which won’t work.
But I agree that there’s no problem in having a company in the U.S. or elsewhere host a com.tw site, as I noted in my initial post.
I’ve registered a “dot-com-dot-tw” before. It requires that you have a registered business in Tawian. You will will need to find the right registrar with these guys:
You can fill out the online forms with whoever you go with to register, but you will need the company number, and to finsih registration fax in you company license and pay through bank transfer. It cost me 2000NT for a two year registration when I did it.
After it is registered, you can point your domain to any IP address you want, including servers in the US.
I hear there are services out there that will “rent” you a “dot-com-dot-tw” address for a fee, meaning they are the actual registrant since they are a Taiwanese company, but they will do it for you. I don’t know who these services are.
An alternative to the .tw extension is to take an example from what I did.
I was thinking about setting up a human rights website as www.alien.org.tw but getting that name involved some complications.
However, making registration of www.alientw.org was no problem.
ah… as to whether yahoo hosting would generate more traffic, i can’t say… our company doesn’t do sales off our website, it’s just to save the hassle of sending our catalogue to every new inquirey we receieve ( we are a large OEM bicycle manufacturer for European, North american, Australian and Japanese bicycle brands/franchises)… i’d say you’d probably get beter traffic through yahoo than some fly by night ‘hack-hosting’ company though… as for costs, the “business professional” option we use only costs US$40 a month, which is negligable, but maybe the yahoo stores cost more…
oh… and by the way… during the registration process the last step before you submit your application to the approved, you can choose the “geographical domain extension for your country” ie. .tw .us .uk off the list… it’s that easy…