How to Start a Website Basic Tutorial Part 1 – Picking Your Domain Name

How to Start a Website Basic Tutorial Part 2 – Hosting

If you’ve already done that and are ready to start creating a webpage, we’re on to the next step: Installing WordPress. If you are new to creating websites and dont have much knowledge in the way of HTML or CSS I highly advocate working with WordPress. It is easy to use and configure, and as this guide will show, is amazingly easy to install in any provider that has a Cpanel configuration. If you aren’t sure if you have Cpanel, but you signed up with one of the hosting providers we review on this site, then you more than likely have Cpanel. (Dreamhost and Lunarpages can be an exception, which we will cover the install for at a later time. Both are still very easy to install Worpress on.)

The first step is to log into your hosting control panel (Cpanel) and for look the icon that says Fantastico and click on it. It will more than likely be a smiley face icon. See the screenshot below: 

(Click on the Fantastico Icon)

Fantastico will open, and you will be presented with the following screen, where you want to click on the WordPress menu option on the left as seen below:

(Click on WordPress)

Almost there! The installation window will come up next, and you will have an option to create a new isntallation in your hosting directory as seen below:

 
(Click on New Installation)

Now the last step! You’ll need to do a few things on this screen. First, is to make sure your site is selected in the first dropdown at the top. Leave the “install in directory” box blank at this point if you are installing WordPress in your main website, which you probably are. Below that are two more boxes. You will need to create a username and password which will be used to access your WordPress configuration panel. Don’t worry about the next four boxes. It should fill in any information that is needed, so take note as to what gets assigned. You can verify the site name and make changes as needed. Finally click on the “Install WordPress” button.

(Fill Out Fields, Click Install)

That’s it! You installed WordPress in about five minutes. Not bad! To log into your new WordPress install, you will need to type into your browser your domain name, followed by /wp-admin. So for example if you site was www.johnandtimsautorepairshop.com you would go to  www.johnandtimsautorepairshop.com/wp-admin and you should be presented with the following:

(Enter Your Credentials)

You should be able to enter the username and password you set up during the install, and will be logged into the WordPress control panel.

Check back soon for our next article where we will cover basic WordPress configuration for new users.

Part 2 – Hosting

Now that you’ve bought you domain name, you need to find a company to host it for you. Hosting allows your website to be stored and backed up, and enables it so that people can access it via the internet. While you can find many companies to host your site for you, we recommend choosing one that will give you excellent customer support, as well as great uptime (meaning your website is always accessible). Many people are too cheap to pay the extra for a quality host, and instead are left with headaches down the road. Personally, we think it is worth an extra few dollars a month for quality hosting. Just make a decision to buy one less cup of coffee every month, and you’ll have the difference paid for. The following are our top choices for excelling quality hosting, as well as great English speaking tech support:

• HostGator
• DreamHost
• JustHost
• Hostmonster
• BlueHost
• LunarPages

We think that  Namecheap and GoDaddy are great for cheap domain names, but honestly I think Godaddy hosting isn’t near the quality you will get from the companies above. They have all been reviewed at some point on this site, so if you want to read more about them, just select the one you want from the main page of our site.

Check back soon for part 3 in our series, Installing WordPress.

Part 1 - Picking Your Domain Name

The first thing is to figure out what you want the website address of your site to be. That is called the domain name. You can decide whether you want your name to be somewhat related to the work you are doing, such as www.nedandjonsautopartsstore.com, or something totally off the wall, like www.crazygorillamonkeybananas.com. Obviously those are just examples, but you get the idea what a domain name is. You can register a domain name with any hosting provider you sign up with, but usually they will charge you a premium price for it. What we recommend, is to register your domain name somewhere cheap (Namecheap or GoDaddy are usually the cheapest). Personally we prefer Namecheap, as Godaddy can be a pain to deal with and can be more expensive at renewal. Then you can choose to have another company host it for you if you want. Once you register a domain name, you own that name for as long as you pay for it. That means you can go to any hosting provider you choose, and the name can be hosted with their company for no additional fee.

Check out part 2 of our series - Hosting, here.