Let’s drive into this Website Hosting Tutorial by discussing what exactly is Website Hosting.
Hosting is a service that allows your website to be viewed on the internet. Once you purchase hosting you will be provided with a server that has a certain amount of space for your website, if you go over the space or disc allowance then your website will most likely go down or you will then need to purchase more server space. A hosting provider can host your website and/or email address on their server and depending on what type of information is on your website/emails will depend on how much space you need. If you have a basic business website with a dozen images and regularly get business emails without large image files then a server space of 500mb is suitable. If you have a large website with a large amount of traffic or images added daily, such as directories, job boards, classified sites, ecommerce websites or large blog sites then you will likely need more website space.
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As a do-it-yourself(er) for this Website Hosting Tutorial, you are best to start with say 500 MB to 1 GB and upgrade as you need to. The other thing you want to look at is the type of website hosting. There are many types of hosting from shared, dedicated, managed etc. Dedicated hosting is more expensive and unless you have a large business then you are best to start with basic ‘shared’ hosting. Dedicated hosting is extremely fast as it has almost all the products required to optimize your website and you have complete control over the server. If you’re going to go down this route, I would recommend Amazon Web Services. Shared hosting can be a little slower, but you can definitely speed your website up with a good hosting provider and a few website hacks. For most websites then shared hosting is completely fine.
Okay, now let’s get started with this Website Hosting Tutorial and purchase your website hosting.
STEP 1, Jump onto the Siteground website. I have used many hosting providers and helped clients improve their website speed and I believe Siteground is one of the best for people who want to manage their hosting themselves.
STEP 2, Click on WordPress Services on the menu and choose a plan.
STEP 3, choose the ‘Startup package’, this gives you plenty of space to start with. It’s usually on special for around $5.99 per month plus GST, for the first 12 months.
STEP 4, now go ahead and click Get started. You are then asked if you have a domain name or if you want to purchase one. Click on, I already have one and type in your new domain name you bought through Crazy Domains. (The reason why I didn’t get you to buy your domain name here is that it’s a little cheaper through Crazy Domains and I believe it’s best to have your domain name and hosting separate.) Now compete your personal and payment details. Again there are add ons they will suggest you to buy such as ‘SG Site Scanner’. During the set up, I will walk you through installing a free program to handle this for you, so this is not needed.
STEP 5, once you have made payment, you will receive confirmation of your website hosting via email. You need to login and find your nameservers (DNS). If you go to ‘My Account’ at the top of the page and click on cPanel, then on the left hand side you will see the name servers which are normally something like. ns1.sgp30.siteground.asia and ns2.sgp30.siteground.asia (see next page for picture) If you don’t see the cPanel to start with click on the Launch setup wizard and click on Don’t need any help and then click Confirm, agree with their terms and complete then the cPanel will appear.
STEP 6, now go ahead and open up another web browser internet tab and login to your Crazy Domains account at www.thomaswebdesigns.com.au/crazydomains. Go to ‘My Account’ and click on Domain and then <your domain url>. Scroll down until you see Nameservers and delete the 2 or 3 that are currently there and replace them with the ones you found from your SiteGround account and click Save. You can now log out of Crazy Domains and close that tab so you are only seeing your SiteGround cPanel.
STEP 7, you should have the SiteGround ‘cPanel’ opened up for this Website Hosting Tutorial, if you accidentally closed it, that’s okay, log back into siteground.com, click on My Account at the top of the page and click on cPanel. On the cPanel page you need to scroll down and click on WordPress Installer.
Keep moving onto step 8 of this Website Hosting Tutorial.
Click on install now (see screenshot on the next page).
Where it says “Choose Protocol”, just stay with http:// for now and choose your domain
name and leave the directory blank. Add your site name and description (note this can be changed later) choose a username and password, (when picking a username I would advise you to either use your name, your full name etc, or your email address, don’t use common usernames such as admin or administrator, or the name of your website) add your email, you don’t need the Multisite or the plugins limit login attempts or the contact forms plugin or any theme (I have better options I will show you later) so leave these and everything else unticked or as none. Now go ahead and install.
STEP 8, once WordPress is installed then you will be able to access your WordPress website. Make sure you write down and save your username, password and login link. Please note if you can’t access it, you may need to wait up to 12 hours as sometimes it takes a bit longer to connect your domain and hosting together. Still stuck? Remember you can contact SiteGround customer support at any time or ask in our Facebook group anything about this Website Hosting Tutorial.
About Me
Hi there, I’m Jacinta, Australian web designer, digital marketer, mocha lover, mother, wannabe digital nomad, and an introvert at heart.
We help small & medium-sized business owners like me, in Australia and New Zealand by providing affordable website and digital marketing solutions and help them conquer their website worries and turn them into secure money-generating machines.
We aim to work with our clients in an encouraging and supportive way.
We start by sending you a list of things we need to start your website or by doing an audit on your website and breaking it down into actionable steps to make it secure and start earning you more money than ever before.
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