To begin an online business, having your own website is a priority. You
can begin without one. But you will soon learn that you should have one.
Steps to setup your own website.
1 - Get a Domain Name.
While it is not
absolutely necessary to own a domain in order to get hosted, it is the
smarter business choice. The less expensive hosting usually requires
that you have a
domain name. Buy one from a domain name Registrar.
You’ll get
username and password to access your Registrar account here so that only
you will be able to make changes to the domain.
2 - Get a Hosting Account
A hosting account
is really just your getting some space reserved for your webpages on a
computer called a webserver. This computer will usually have a direct,
“always on” connection to the backbone of the Internet. This allows
access to the pages by anyone on the Internet.
There are some
free ones. Some ISP's make some space available for users. The free ones
do not usually use domain names. You could however get some benefit of a
domain name by redirecting it to a free website account. The better way
is to get your own hosting account and your own domain name. They will
want the name of your domain.
Note: You can pick
an inexpensive host to start with. It is easy to change later if you
want to.
3 – Give Your Registrar
The Host’s Nameservers
You are the person
who has to make the connections here. You see, neither the domain name
registrar nor the webhosting company know that they are going to work
together to show your website to the World.
Your hosting
company will give you the names of their dns nameservers. It is usually
in the form of
nameserver1:
ns1.myhost.com
nameserver2: ns2.myhost.com
You simply provide
this information to the domain name registrar, usually by entering it
through your browser. The registrar then places the
information into the Internet's Domain Name database where it is passed
from router to router throughout the internet. It all happens
automatically. This takes about 24 to 48 hours.
Note: If you get
the hosting account FIRST, you will have the nameserver info and can
sometimes input that when you make the purchase of the domain name.
4 - Upload your webpages
to your your space on the webserver.
Your hosting company will give you the URL (internet address) to log
into and your user name and password. This prevents anyone else from
making changes to your pages. Uploading can be done by a File Transfer
Protocol (FTP) program from your computer. Try NVu to
create the pages. Try SmartFTP to upload the pages.
It is easier DONE than SAID.
Recap:>>
Get a domain name from a Registrar and get a hosting account.
Tell the Hosting account the name of your domain.
Tell the Registrar the Nameservers of the hosting company.
Put your pages on the hosting account webserver.
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