Once you’ve bought your domain name and purchased hosting for it, you need to be able to get your domain name and your hosting company talking to each other in a process called pointing your domain to your webhost or changing your domain nameservers. If you don’t take this crucial step then your web hosting and your domain name can never become one and you will wonder for the rest of your days why you typed in your domain name in your browser address bar and all you ever saw was an error message. Here’s how you do it:

Shortly after you bought your blog hosting they sent you a welcome email with important information regarding how to access your cPanel, your username and passwords, and some information about your nameservers that looks something like:

Keep that email on hand while you follow these steps to change your nameservers with Godaddy:

1. Log into your Godaddy account
2. Hover over the tab marked “Domains”
3. From the dropdown menu that appears select “My Domains”
4. From there you will be sent to the Godaddy domain manager interface
5. You will now see a listing of all the domain names you own with Godaddy
6. Click on the domain name that you would like to forward the nameservers for

7. Your nameservers are clickable links so click on them to change them
8. A menu drops down and there are three choices: Parked nameservers, Hosting nameservers, and Custom nameservers. Make sure that you select custom nameservers as you will be hosting your blog elsewhere.
9. Now you will see that two Nameserver fields have information in them but we are going to change both of them with the information you received regarding your nameservers from your new web host.
10. Enter your web host’s first and second nameservers in the appropriate fields and once you are done click the OK button

That’s it…you’re done!

Keep in mind though that while it took you two minutes to change your nameservers to your blog host servers, it can take a few hours for that change to take effect in a process known as “propagating”. You will know when it has finished propagating to your new blog host by typing in your domain name in your browser address bar. Once you see some sort of placeholder page from your web host then it is done and your website is now live on the Internet. It shouldn’t take more than 6 to 12 hours for that to happen.

Now you will need to start the process of setting up your blogging platform so that the world will see your blog and not some hosting placeholder when they reach your domain…but that’s in the next lesson.

If you don’t have Godaddy as your domain name registrar then the instructions outlined above will be different depending on your registrar but should be the same general process using your domain manager to change your nameservers.

Guaranteed Uptime

Your blog host needs to be able to guarantee that your site will be available to your visitors 99% of the time barring any server upgrades.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Every bit of data that is transmitted from your site to your visitors is called bandwidth and if you have a limited monthly amount of bandwidth with your host then at least make sure it is high enough to support how many site visitors you expect to have every month. While someone just starting out a new blog may not need tons of bandwidth to get started, having unlimited bandwidth means you never have to worry that you’ve used up your monthly quota and your visitors won’t get an error message until the month changes over.

Host Unlimited Websites

While you may only ever want or need one blog or website, you may become bitten by the blog bug and want to open a second, third, fourth, or even fifteenth blog. But if you took the most basic hosting from your provider they may have restrictions on how many websites you can host with them unless you upgrade. Since the difference between getting 5 websites or unlimited websites with your web host is probably 2 or 3 dollars per month it just makes sense to choose the plan that offers unlimited website hosting.

cPanel

What is cPanel? Well it’s the interface that you will be able to log into to administrate your blog and it’s workings. In a previous post I mentioned that I like buying domains from Godaddy.com but they do not have a cPanel for their customers so I buy my hosting elsewhere. What is so hot about a cPanel? Well if you’re not too technically inclined then a cPanel will allow you to visually operate your blog behind the scenes with a nicely layed-out graphical interface. You will have access to setting up your blog email addresses, your MySql databases, add-on domains if you want to host more than one website on your account, and of course you will have access to many great scripts that allow you to set up your blog in under 5 minutes. Most cPanel hosts will have Fantastico scripts running in them and will offer several choices of blogging platforms in their blog hosting packages.

Options to Pay Monthly or Semi-Annually

When I first set out to get hosting a long time ago I didn’t know what I was doing and I took hosting with a company for a ridiculous charge that I was billed a year in advance for. It wasn’t until the dust settled that I realized that my host didn’t even have a cPanel for me to use and their service was shaky at best when I tried to access my site. When selecting a host look for the option to pay by Paypal as they should also allow you to pay monthly then in case you change your mind. Don’t get stuck with a host you can’t live with for a year or more depending on their hosting plans, so try to limit your upfront hosting costs to no more than 6 months in advance.

Money Back Guarantee

It’s always nice to get your money back if it turns out blogging wasn’t for you after all and while most companies offer a two week guarantee there are one or two hosts out there that offer 30 to 45 days money back should you change your mind.