- Image by telex via Flickr
Today is a big day. Today you have to make a decision. It’s an important decision. It’s a decision about what direction your business is going to take.
Are you going to host your own sites ~ or are you going to keep using free platforms?
Understand this. Either one will work. But hosting your own sites is much better.
1. You have total control over your content, ads, everything else about your site.
2. No one can arbitrarily decide your site isn’t good enough and delete it.
3. You have sooooooo many more options.
4. You can do a much better/easier job with onsite search engine optimization.
5. It’s yours. No one can take it from you, and later on down the road you can sell it if you want/need to.
While free sites will work (blogger probably being the best option for this), the pros of hosting your own sites FAR outweigh the cost so I am going to continue the tutorials from here assuming you are hosting your own site.
What the heck is hosting?
This was a huge step for me when I took it. I had no idea what hosting was, how to do it, what it entailed. I had no mentors or friends that were doing this, the only friends I had with hosting had a hosting company that didn’t even have fantastico so I had no help.
You have help. It’s gonna be much easier for you. 
Hosting is a place where your sites/content live. While thus far we have “hosted” our content on free platforms like squidoo, and blogger, this hosting is a place you own, where all your stuff lives.
Hosting is quite inexpensive these days ~ it was MUCH more when I got started. You can get a hosting plan for around 10 bucks a month now. Your hosting company choice is really important. You want to choose someone who is very reliable. If your hosting goes down ~ ALL of your sites go down. Luckily there are hosting companies who can boast they have over 99% up time. ~ which is a good thing.
The other thing you want to look for in hosting is good customer service. You want to be able to get ahold of a real person, day or night if something goes wrong with your sites, and at some point in time something will go wrong ~ be it small or big. It’s nice to be able to get help from a real person.
I personally use Hostgator (disclosure: affiliate link) for most of my hosting needs. This site and all my niche sites are hosted with Hostgator. I find they have an excellent up rate, and the customer service has been stellar. (
I pay my hosting bill annually. I hate to pay monthly fees for stuff. This year my hosting cost me $107.00. For this I can host unlimited sites and it has been great. Lunarpages offers 3 month, 6 month and annual payment options.
I recently switched this blog to Bluehost. (disc: aff link) They are another excellent option when it comes to hosting. You’ll find Bluehost is a little cheaper than Hostgator. I’ve found it to be quality service, and the customer service has been quite good as well.
Those are the two hosting companies I use and recommend, and believe they will serve you well.
** Task one. Order a hosting package.
You will need a domain name to put your hosting on. It doesn’t really matter what it is. So understand they will ask you for a domain name when you go to order.
Once you’ve ordered your hosting you will receive an email from them. This email will have a LOT of information in it. It’s very important. Star it, highlight it, save it somehow, somewhere where you can find it when you need it, because you will need it.
Nameservers
In the email you receive will be 2 “nameservers”. These will be letters and numbers and that is the “code” that points to your server. You will need those two numbers for the next step in our niche blogging journey.
If the domain on your hosting account is different than the domain name you’ve chosen for your niche site you will have to change your nameservers. If your domain name was bought through your hosting company you won’t have to do this step this time.
You have bought a domain name at Godaddy. Right now as it is it points to Godaddy. You want it to point to your hosting company.
To do this we are going to go to GoDaddy. Take with you the two “nameserver” numbers you got in your welcome email.
Steps to forward your nameservers:
1. Click domain manager at Godaddy.
2. click the box next to the domain name you want to work on.
3. click the “nameservers” box along the top navigation bar.
4. Choose the last option ~ host yourself.
5. Enter your namerservers (there will be two)
6. Click ok.
Now when you install wordpress you will be able to see your site. yay. good work.
*** task 2: Forward your nameservers.
Adding an Addon domain to your hosting account.
The last step we are going to do today is add your domain to your hosting account. Again ~ if you ordered your domain through your hosting account when you ordered hosting you won’t have to do this part. If you ordered your domain somewhere besides your hosting company you will.
ie. if your hosting is with hostgator and your domain is at godaddy you will need to add it to your hostgator account.
Go to your hosting account and log in. (this information was sent in your welcome email.)
Once you are logged in you want to look around for “add on domain”.
If you have hostgator hosting it will look different than my images ~ the icons are all the same, they just have used a different template to show them to you, so just look around and find the one that says “add on domains”
Once you click the addon domain button you will see some boxes to fill in.
Fill in your domain name ~ no http:// or www. just the name. Then you will need to create a password for yourself. My hosting fills in the username/directory part and I believe hostgator does too.
Once you’ve filled those in just click “add domain” or ok or whatever it is that says do it, in your hosting account.
That’s it. Once you’ve done that you will receive a message and it will show you your FTP access address, and your password. This is your hosting password you will need to keep track of this. Make sure you save the information in that message.
*** task 3: Add on your domain to your hosting account.
That’s it for today~ Good work.
Tomorrow we are going to install wordpress!! You won’t believe how easy it is
As always ~ feel free to ask questions in the comment section. Please understand, hosting is not really my strong suit. You may be better off calling your hosting company’s customer service and asking them to help you. I’ll do my best though.
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