How To Connect Your Domain To WordPress

Choose The Best Domain Name

WordPress.com makes it easy to set up your domain name, but choosing one can prove more challenging than it sounds. Even if you already own a business with an established brand, it might be more effective to use a different name for a domain. How do you choose? Luckily, there is a set of golden rules that you should know and follow:

Check The Pricing Tier Of The App Service Plan

App Service Free hosting plan does not support custom domains. To connect a custom DNS name to your app, the apps App Service plan must be a paid tier.

Should I Point Dns Using An Ip Address Or Cname Record

As a managed WordPress host, WP Engine may migrate your site to another server, either by request or in an emergency. While migrations are quite rare, its important to understand how this possibility may impact your peace of mind down the road and set yourself up for success. Because WP Engine is not a DNS host, if you site is migrated, the task of updating your DNS records will fall on you or your team. There are ways to prevent the need for DNS updates later on, however.

To understand how to point DNS, youll need to know the various types of records and why theyre significant to WP Engine websites.

The non-www version of your domain is also called apex or the root domain. This specific version of your domain is where the different configurations we describe below become relevant. The www domain and any subdomains can always be pointed using a CNAME, so these records can be configured like you would with any other host.

If the root domain is pointed with an A record, it will use a static IP address . Think of this IP address as the street address of your server. If your website moves to a new server, information can forward for a while, but there will very likely be deliverability issues until you update your IP address again at the DNS host.

You May Like: How To Transfer Squarespace Domain To Godaddy

What Do You Need To Start An E

Create a plan: Before you proceed with creating your shop. You must conduct in-depth market research to know your niche, have an idea about what sells, select your products, and adjust your branding strategy accordingly. Get all your papers done: to avoid issues with the authorities and make sure to register your business. Packaging and shipping: Before you start working on your eCommerce website, youll need to figure out how to stock and ship your inventory. We advise you to customize packaging for original branding as well.

Install WordPress Manually Via Ftp

Even though setting up your blog using an auto installer is easy, FTP, File Transfer Protocol, is such a big part of running websites that it can be very useful to learn.

FTP is a method of transferring larger or numerous files from a computer to another computer. That could be desktop to server, laptop to the cloud, or in this case, your computer to your web host.

To use FTP, youll need an FTP client. A piece of software that handles the file transfer for you. You will also need a copy of the latest version of WordPress.

There are a lot of steps in this process but well break them down into distinct sections. There is a lot to do but none of the steps are that difficult.

Filezilla is a free FTP client for Windows and is well worth using.

Heres how to install WordPress using FTP.

1. Download and install an FTP client if you dont already have one

3. Navigate to where you downloaded WordPress and unzip the file

4. Log into your web host and select Site from the left menu

5. Select FTP Accounts from the submenu under Sites

6. Make sure there is an active FTP account or create one

7. Open FileZilla

8. Copy the FTP Server, username, password and FTP port into the entries at the top of FileZilla

9. Select Quickconnect to the right of those entries

10. Watch the top window for the connection message

11. Navigate to the public_html folder in the right pane of FileZilla with Remote Site in the top left corner

14. Make sure files are being copied

Don’t Miss: What Is Io Domain Used For

How To Configure The Official Cloudflare WordPress Plugin

Once you connect your WordPress site to Cloudflare, you can manage a number of features from the Cloudflare dashboard.

However, to make life easier for WordPress users, Cloudflare also offers its own official WordPress plugin.

You do not need to use this plugin to use Cloudflare with WordPress you could do pretty much everything from the Cloudflare website instead.

However, the plugin helps with two things:

For those two reasons, I recommend completing this section to set up the Cloudflare WordPress plugin.

Heres how to do it

Add A Cname Record On WordPress

1. Click “Add New DNS Record”.

2. In the “Type” field, select CNAME

3. In the “Name” field, enter www

4. In the “Alias of” field, enter www domain + .s.strikinglydns.com

5. Click “Add New DNS Record”.

Tip: If you can’t add a www CNAME record, look for existed CNAME and A records for www and delete them .

You May Like: Google Domain Access

Why Keep Your Domain And Hosting Providers Separate

It might seem like extra unnecessary paperwork to sign up with two different companies and manage two different accounts when you could let your web host take care of registering your domain name.

But the main reason why I like to keep these two services separate is that when it comes to upgrading your web host, or changing hosts, being able to control your domain name independently of your web host makes it very easy to link it up to your new web host, without incurring any extra costs or delays.

If youve opted for a low cost shared hosting account from a web host such as HostGator, then hopefully you will need to change web hosts sooner than later, due to the success of your website.

Once your site gets more popular and receives more visitors it will soon outgrow the entry level shared hosting packages. While this low cost, few dollars a month packages are OK for getting started, especially for those on a budget, they wont last you forever.

Also, if it turns out you arent happy with your web host, whether its an entry level shared host, or a premium managed WordPress hosting company, being able to instantly point your domain name to your new web hosting account is much more preferable than trying to haggle with the company you are leaving, asking them to help you reconfigure the domain you registered through them.

So with all of that in mind, you can see why its a better idea to keep your domain registration and your web hosting accounts separate.

How To Setup A Database For WordPress

WordPress stores all of its text-based content in a database, a tool for storing and organizing information. This means that when you post a page or post, all of the content of that post gets saved into a database.

The process to setup a database changes depending on hosting providers. However, most hosts use the software tool known as cPanel for managing the process of setting up databases. If your hosting provider does not have cPanel, you can search their knowledge base for how to create a database. For our example site, using Bluehost, we login and then click on Hosting and cPanel.

To setup a database, login to your cPanel hosting control panel and search for and click on MySQL DB Wizard.

The first step of setup process involves naming your database. You can choose your own short name with no spaces, however, for this example were going to use wp to designate that the database is for WordPress. Note that the wp is appended to the end of a unique username for your hosting account. So, although we only enter in wp, the actual database name is going to be wordprz4_wp. Make sure to write down the database name because you will need it later.

In the final step you grant the user access to the database. Click the checkbox for All Privileges and then Next Step. You should now have the following:

• Your database name
• Your database username
• Your database password
• Granted user privileges to the database

Also Check: What Is The Io Domain Used For

Test The Nameserver Changes

Now that youveconfigured your domain provider to point all requests for your domainto your web hosting account, and youve configured your web hostingaccount to server your web files from a specific folder, its timeto test that those changes work.

Logged into yourweb hosting account, open cPanel. Under the Files section,select File Manager.

For the directoryto open, select the document root for the domain that youve justconfigured. Select Go.

Youll see thatthis directory is currently completely empty. To test that the siteis working properly, youll create a test HTML file with just asingle line.

To do this, select New file from the top menu.

Name the new file index.htm. Select the Create New File button. Now youll see the new index.htm file listed in the root folder for this domain. Index.htm is the default web page that people land on when they first visit a website.

Right-click the file and select Edit to start editing the file.

You dont haveto do anything special for this file to display in the browser whenvisitors enter your site. All you need to do is type a single line.

This website is currently working correctly.

When youredone, select the Save button. Then select the Closebutton.

Finally, to testthat everything is working properly, open a web browser and type yournew domain into the browser URL field.

You should seethat single line youve created show up inside the browser.

Change The Domain On My Managed WordPress Website

You can change the domain name of your Managed WordPress account.

Note: It can take up to 24-48 hours for any DNS changes to take effect.

Don’t Miss: What Is The Io Domain Used For

Use A Domain From Your Bluehost Account

To begin, you will need to access the Bluehost Builder Editor. Once you are ready to publish your site:

The WordPress Install Script

The WordPress install script is a series of pages where you select and set options for configuring WordPress. Once you have your files uploaded and database created you can access the install script by using your browser going to the URL where you have the WordPress files uploaded . It will redirect you to the Install page.

First, select your language and click Continue. Next youre presented with a screen asking for your database information. You should have all of these values from the previous steps, so enter the information and click on the Lets go! button to move forward.

First, enter in the database name, username and password we created earlier. The database host will likely be localhost and you can leave with this value. Some hosting providers, like MediaTemple, make you use something different . The Table Prefix is something that you will want to change for security reasons. Makeup something 3-6 characters followed by an underscore. For our demo we choose myexm_ as the Table Prefix.

Once you have the form complete, click on Submit and it should take you to a screen that says it was able to connect to your database and is ready to run the rest of the install.

Click to Run the Install.

The Privacy checkbox adds the code to your site like a robots.txt file that gives search engines instructions on whether or not to index content from your site. While building a site you should uncheck this.

Also Check: How To See Who Owns A Domain Name

Connecting A Domain To An Existing WordPress Website

If you have not yet connected your Managed WordPress website to a domain and want to do this after installation, click Connect Domain on the IONOS App Center overview page. Select an available domain or subdomain from your contract and click Connect Domain. The domain will then be connected to your website.

To change a domain that you previously connected to your Managed WordPress website, click Change Domain on the IONOS App Center overview page. Select an available domain or subdomain from your contract and click Change Domain.

Connect Your Domain To Square Online

Note: Using a custom domain name requires an upgrade on your Square Online site.

Whether you have a custom domain name registered here at Square or with a third party, you may connect it to Square Online so that anyone searching the domain in a web browser can view your site.

Note: Transferring a domain moves domain hosting and billing from your current host over to Square. When a domain is transferred, it means you handle everything for your website from one account, including domain hosting and billing. Connecting a domain keeps domain hosting and billing with your current host. When a domain is connected, it means domain hosting and billing are in a separate account from your website.

You May Like: Domain Costs Per Year