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At Hostchart.com we are often asked what is involved in the
setup of a new hosting account. This article reviews the basic
steps of: 1. domain name setup 2. login to a control panel to
manage the hosting account 3. set up of new email accounts 4.
upload of a website to a hosting plan.
These are the first things a new web hosting customer needs to
accomplish, and in a lot of cases they will not need to adjust
their account again, except to view website traffic statistics.
This article covers these four steps, as well as a couple of
other important tasks needed to get a website up and running
with your hosting plan.
Let us start by defining what a hosting plan consists of: A
hosting plan is memory space on the hard drive of a server, it
is internet bandwidth, and it is a control panel of features to
manage your site.
Step 1: Domain Name Setup The first step in getting your website
up and running is to purchase a domain name. Current prices
range between $8 to $20 per year. This will be the actual name
of your website. No one else will be able to use your name once
it is registered. Examples of common domain names you have heard
of may include ebay.com, mapquest.com, etc. Once you have chosen
a domain name, it needs to be pointed to the server that holds
your hosting account, so when someone types
www.yourdomainname.com into a browser, it will find the website
files you will upload to your hosting plan.
Every domain name has at least 2 DNS settings that map the
domain to an actual computer. The Domain Name Server (DNS) is a
server that has a look up table of domain names and the IP
address they belong to. The IP address is the internet address
of a computer connected to the internet. There are thousands of
DNS' throughout the internet, which help with its flexibility.
When you order a new hosting account with a web hosting company,
they will send you 2 DNS settings. There are at least 2 DNS
settings for each domain. This allows for a backup in case the
primary DNS setting is unavailable. This is one of the beauties
of the internet. Each DNS contains only a handful of domain
names, and each domain name has a backup. This makes it
virtually impossible for a hacker to bring down all websites, or
the entire internet for that matter.
You will need to login where you registered your domain name and
change the DNS settings to the ones that the web hosting company
has given you. Note that you will have a control panel to manage
your domain name, as well as a control panel to manage your
hosting plan. New customers to hosting are often confused about
the difference between registering their domain name and hosting
the website for that domain name. Once you make these DNS
changes, it will take 24-72 hours (1 to 3 days) for your domain
name to propagate, at which time your domain name will start
pointing to our servers and to your new hosting account. The
time delay is caused by the distributed nature of the internet.
A hosting company cannot tell you exactly how long it will take
for your domain name to propagate across the whole world. It is
dependent on all of the Internet providers in the world picking
up the new results.
Step 2: Logging in to your Control Panel You'll want to login to
your control panel to do such things as view web traffic
statistics, set up email addresses, set up databases, do
backups, etc. Every web hosting company offers a control panel
to manage your account (cPanel, Plesk, Helm, and Hsphere are the
most popular control panels offered by web hosting companies,
but some have even built there own to customize it to their
services). They all offer basically the same features. In the
control panel you can read your email, or set it up to be read
through an email program like Outlook. You will also manage
databases here, view your website's performance, backup your
website, install pre-built scripts, etc. You can use the control
panel to upload your website's files, but a lot of programmers
prefer to do this through a separate FTP program. There will be
more on this later. You should have a way to login before your
domain propagates. This will allow you to get started on your
control panel while propagation is occurring.
Step 3: Setting up Email accounts Once you are logged in to your
control panel, you'll want to setup at least one email address.
Even if you do not want one, it is good to at least define one
as a catch all to make sure you do not miss any emails sent to
your domain.
Email Forwarding- If you want to simply "forward" all email to
an outside email address (like your ISP email address), then
simply set your Default Address (a tool in the Mail Management
section of your Control Panel) to your ISP email address.... or
to any email address where you want the emails to automatically
be forwarded to. That way, any email sent to
'anything'@yourdomain.com will be automatically (and
immediately) sent to you. If you want to forward some emails to
one address, and others to other addresses, you can do this with
the Email Forwarders tool in your control panel.
Email Accounts (POP3 Accounts)- If you want to create a new
email address with its own account (or email box; this is called
a POP3 email account), then use the Add / Del Email Accounts
tool in your control panel. From there you can add POP3 email
accounts, assigning each one it's own unique password. You will
then want to go to your own email program (like Outlook, Outlook
Express, etc.) and configure it to receive the emails sent to
the new account you created.
For example: let's say your new hosting account is
yourcompany.com and you created an email address in your control
panel called you@yourcompany.com and assigned it a password
called yourpass. The details you'll need to setup your email
account(s) are as follows:
Account name: you@yourcompany.com Password: yourpass Incoming
POP3: mail.yourcompany.com Outgoing SMTP: mail.yourcompany.com
Here is a video tutorial that shows setting up an email account
in Outlook,
http://www.roundberry.com/tutorials/email/email_outlook2002.htm.
Step 4: Uploading your Website/Files Once your domain name has
propagated, you can upload your website and files to your
account using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program like
WS_FTP. If you do not have an FTP program, you can download a
free version of WS_FTP... it is one of the most popular FTP
programs in use today. FTP is the most common way to move files
around on the internet. If you are going to build and publish
websites you will become very familiar with FTP. It is a simple
protocol and there are a number of good FTP clients available
for free. With FTP you connect to another computer and drag and
drop files between them. In this case the "other computer" is
the server where your hosting plan is located.
Microsoft FrontPage- If you are using FrontPage to build your
website, then you do not need an FTP program. Instead, use
FrontPage's "Publish" feature to publish your website to your
hosting account, using the username and password for your
account (provided in your welcome email).
Prior to Domain Propagation- Another way to upload your files to
your hosting account is by using the File Manager tool in your
control panel. In fact, you can do this prior to your Domain
Name propagating, so that your website will be functional prior
to your domain name working. All of the common control panels
have a File Manager tool or at least an FTP client. Viewing your
Website/Files Prior to Domain Name Propagation- You may want to
view your website prior to your domain name working, to make
sure that it looks and works the way it should. You can
immediately view your website prior to your domain name
propagating by using the following link:
http://IPaddress/~username
Where IPaddress is the primary nameserver IP address given to
you by your hosting company, and username is the username for
your new account which is also given to you by your web hosts.
So for example, if you are assigned the IP address of
12.123.12.123, and a username of "youracct", then you would
simply browse to:
http://12.123.12.123/~youracct
If you want to view a specific page in your website, say
contactus.html, then you would browse to:
http://12.123.12.123/~youracct/contactus.html
Of course, you will first have to upload your website to be able
to view the pages.... and you can do that from within your
Control Panel.
Congratulations! After completing the above steps, you will have
setup your domain name, created email accounts, and uploaded
your website to your web hosting account. You are now in
business!
About the author:
About the Author: Rodney Ringler is President of Advantage1 Web
Services, Inc., which owns a network of Web Hosting
Informational Websites including HostChart.com,
ResellerConnection.com, FoundHost.com, ResellerForums.com, and
HostingKnowledge.net. Rodney has over 15 years industry
experience from programming to internet marketing.
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