Ohmystinkinheck

If you currently have a free hosted weblog at Blogger, or similar - you are using free web hosting. The files that make up your free weblog are hosted on the company’s server. A server is a large computer aptly named because it “serves” your website files online to those who request to see them by typing in your web address or url.

Purchasing your own domain name and seeking out a web hosting company to host your own blog works much the same way. The company will have a server that you will rent space on to store your files.

Think of it this way: You want to build a house you’ll need some land to build it on. Your house is your website, the land is space on the server you rent or purchase from the hosting company.

Right now, you may have a url that looks something like this: www.mycoolsite.blogspot.com or www.wordpress.com/mycoolsite

The first web address is a situation where you have some free space on a subdomain of blogspot.com. The second web address is where your free site is listed in a directory or folder on wordpress.com.

Once you purchase your own domain name, you can actually set up your own subdomains and directories or folders. So if you wanted your blog to be at www.blog.mycoolsite.com or www.mycoolsite.com/blog you certainly could. This is useful if you’re using the domain for other purposes, such as an online store. But most just install their blogs in the root directory, so: www.mycoolsite.com would take you directly to the blog.

You can have a domain name without a web host, and you can even have a web host without a domain name - but you must have both together if you want visitors to actually be able to view your website.

Back to our little house analogy. You want to build your house (website) on a bit of land (rented or purchased server space from a web host) but you’ve got to have a road out front so people can visit your house. Think of your domain name as your road. People can type in your web address and visit your “house”. We’ll talk a bit later how to set up your domain name so it knows where to look for your house.

What to look for in a hosting company

1. cPanel - This is a very easy to use, yet powerful client control panel. It affords you, the client, a lot of control over your website and makes it easy to do things like set up e-mail accounts (ie: yourname@mycoolsite.com) that would normally be difficult for a beginner. While there are other types of control panels, this is the one we use and recommend.

2. Fantastico - Fantastico is a program often bundled with cPanel. It makes installing programs like blogs or discussion forums as easy as pie. Seriously. Even people like us who have set up websites and blogs for a living use Fantastico. It also helps ease upgrading your software, but be sure to ask if your web host offers Fantastico auto updating.

3. At least PHP version 4.3 or greater - We’re recommending you find a host that offers this as it is what Wordpress requires for installation of version 2.5 or higher. You don’t even need to understand it or know what it is. If you decide on another weblog program, make sure your web host has the recommended version of PHP.

4. At least mySQL version 4.0 or greater - We’re recommending you find a host that offers this as it is what Wordpress requires for installation. You don’t even need to understand it or know what it is. If you decide on another weblog program, make sure your web host has the recommended version of mySQL.

5. Linux / Apache server - Windows servers (don’t confuse this with Windows computers versus Apple computers, servers are completely different) don’t play nicely with Wordpress and some other blogging tools. We recommend using a Linux / Apache server, but if you’ve got a guru nearby who is familiar with Windows servers, be our guest. Just make sure you ensure the weblog program you want to use is compatible with the server you choose.

Recommended Hosting Company

You’ve probably seen them linked around the blogosphere quite a bit, and there is good reason for that, they are excellent at what they do. Liquid Web offers all of the above, offers fantastic customer service, and many different hosting packages to suit your needs.

They are not the cheapest web hosting out there, but you truly do get what you pay for. With Liquid Web, you have full control of your website. Which is very helpful, even if you don’t know your way around your own server, if you ever hire a designer or a programmer to help you, they’ll be very appreciative of your cPanel, Fantastico, SSH, etc. These tools will save them time, and in the end, save you money.

Setting Up a Hosting Account

Once you decide on a host, you are faced with some options that may feel somewhat confusing. Many hosts offer things like Dedicated Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Shared Web Hosting. What do you need?

Unless your website is gigantic and you plan on hosting a lot of extra sites, Shared Web Hosting is likely for you. Prices vary, but again, don’t be lured by the cheapest place, compare their features and what they offer.

How much space do you need? If you’re going to take our sage advice and go with Liquid Web, you’ll want their Shared Standard plan. To give you an idea of what to look for if you’re going with another host, here is what that plan comes with for $14.95 a month:

• Two Free Domain Names **
• 1000 Mb disk space
• 60 GB’s Transfer
• Site Studio Software
• cPanel
• Fantastico Auto Installer
• Plus lots more (click link on site)

** Yes, some webhosts offer domain registration. You can skip the Domain Registrar steps explained here along with the DNS steps we’ll explain later if you’d like to opt for convenience instead. As a rule, we like to keep our Domain Registrations separate from our hosting accounts, it just makes things a lot easier if you ever need to move your website to a new server.

If you take our advice and go with Liquid Web, there will likely never be a reason to move, but if you use another web host, well, you just might wish you had your Domain Registration separate down the road.

For comparison’s sake, another web host, Site Ground, which I have used, offers the below for $5.95 per month:

• FREE domain
• 750 GB web space
• 7500 GB traffic
• 99.9% server uptime
• Fast support response
• 24/7 top customer care
• cPanel and Fantastico
• Immediate activation
• FREE SiteBuilder (save $99)
• Unlimited MySQL DB
• Unlimited email accounts
• Unlimited subdomains
• Unlimited FTP accounts
• FREE blog application
• E-commerce solutions

Now, it looks like they are offering more, their list is longer, after all! But let’s take a closer look. One free domain (and I absolutely would not use them to register my domain), 7500 GB of traffic looks like a lot, but they’re providing half the web space (the space you need for your files) that Liquid Web provides and they are listing a bunch of stuff that comes with Fantastico which they already mentioned. Stuff that Liquid Web hosting comes with too.

Let’s dig deeper still, oh! Look at that, you only get the $5.95/month price if you pre-pay 2 years in advance. So, you’re dropping over $140.00 at the get-go. Then, if you ever decide you want to move your website, while Liquid Web allows you to back up your website and do so, Siteground asks that you pay them a fee of $29.95 to $49.95 to backup your files so you can move to a new host!

To sum up, read the fine print, ask around, and don’t balk at the monthly price of a good web host with an excellent reputation.

Now, once you select and order a hosting account package, your web host will likely send you a welcome letter of some kind with usernames and passwords. KEEP THIS LETTER. When we used to run a hosting company, we were continually amazed at how often people would delete their welcome letter. Print it, save it. Frame it. Seriously.

Inside your welcome letter (if the host is a good one), you’re going to receive usernames and passwords that will allow you to access the files on your server via FTP (we’ll go over that a bit later), cPanel access, Domain e-mail set up, and your DNS address, which we’ll talk about next.

All of this information is very important, the welcome letter may feel a bit overwhelming, but trust us. Hang on to it.

Written by Jessica as part of the Ditch Your Blogging Training Wheels lab segment from the Blogher ‘07 Transitioning to a self-hosted blog.

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