How
to Set Up A Hosting Account
in Just 5 Minutes
SolveYourProblem.com Article Series: Web Site Design
Once you've chosen your web hosting, you'll
often find that you're given a set of passwords and technical
details, before being left to more-or-less figure it out on
your own. If you haven't started a website before, that can
be a daunting experience.
Point
Your Domain at Your Host
The email you received should have contained the addresses
of some nameservers. Nameservers look like this: ns1.yourhost.com.
If you can't find it, take a look at the help section of your
host's website.
Once you know your host's nameserver, go and log in at your
domain name registrar's website. They all work differently,
but somewhere you should see options to configure your domain.
Replace the registrar's default nameservers with your host's
nameservers.
Try going to your domain by typing www.yourdomain.com into
your web browser. If it's working, you should see a page telling
you that your configuration was successful. If it doesn't,
then you should take a break for a day or two – nameserver
changes can still take a while to spread across the whole Internet.
Test
Your FTP Account
The next step is to try uploading a page to your website by
FTP. Before you can do that, though, you need an FTP program
and a test page.
The easiest way
to make a test page is to open Notepad and write "this is a test".
Save it as index.html. When it comes to the FTP program,
you have a lot of choice. There's
something for everyone: some good free ones to consider are
Cute FTP (cuteftp.com), Smart FTP (smartftp.com) and Bulletproof
FTP (bpftp.com).
Once you've done that, open the FTP program and ask it to
connect to your host's FTP server. This is usually ftp.yourhost.com,
although you might also now be able to access it through your
own website by using ftp.yourdomain.com. Once you're connected,
you should browse through the folders looking for any existing
index.html file – it'll usually be in a folder called something
like 'public' or 'public_html'. Upload your own index.html
over this one, and say 'yes' when you're asked if you want
to overwrite it.
Now, go to your website in a web browser. If everything's
worked the way it should, then you'll see what you wrote in
that file right there on your website! You can get started
straightaway writing real content to replace that little bit
of text – it's always exciting when you realise that your site
is out there and ready on the web right now. If you don't see
the text, on the other hand, then you might want to refer to
your host's support pages.
Set
Up an Email Address
Almost all web hosts allow you to configure your account using
a program called cPanel. The host your email sent you should
tell you how to access it: it'll usually be something like
http://www.yourdomain.com:2082/cpanel. If you know the address
but you can't get to the page, you might need to disable any
firewall software you have running on your computer.
If you've got the cPanel address right, you'll be asked for
your username and password, and then you'll be presented with
a screen full of icons. Which icons you have will depend on
which features you got with your web hosting. Look for the
icon called 'email', and then create any accounts you want
there.
To check your email, you need to add an account in your email
program. This shouldn't be too much trouble: look for an option
called 'Accounts' in your email program's 'Tools' menu, and
then tell it you want to add an email account. You'll be asked
for POP3 and SMTP servers (your host can provide these), as
well as the email address and password you just configured
in cPanel. Try sending an email to your new address from one
of your other accounts, to see if it works.
Other
Things to Do with cPanel
It varies from website to website exactly what you might need
to do with cPanel. It makes it easy, though, to do whatever
you might need to do, whether it's adding new FTP accounts
or creating databases. Don't worry: cPanel is designed to stop
you from messing anything up, so it's fine to experiment with
it a little.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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