How To Register Your Website’s Domain Name
When you register a domain name for your site, you make it a lot easier for people to find you, ensuring that you reap the branding and marketing benefits of having an online presence.
A domain name is the address that visitors type into their browser address bar to arrive at your website. It replaces an IP address: a random, unique string of numbers that specifies where your sites files are located. While a website domain can be an investment, you can also find one for free, especially if you purchase it with hosting.
In this post, youll learn everything you need to know about registering your websites domain name either for free or for a low cost.
How Do I Keep My Site Secure
Like anything else you own or care about, your website data needs to be protected. Safer sites mean more confident customers and a more trustworthy brand for your organization or business. And since everything on the web is connected, your online security contributes to a safer Internet, like a link in a chain.
Here are three things you can do right now for a safer website:
Protect your site with HTTPS, encrypt your data, and verify where it comes from and where it goes.
Assign the right nameservers to your site to keep the connections between your domain and hosting provider clear, and your data running smoothly.
Keep your connection encrypted and anonymous when on-the-go i.e. browsing non-secure and open networks like public WiFi.
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Renew The Domain Name
Whether you purchased the domain through a registrar or purchased it from another person, you will eventually need to renew your domain. When you renew it will depend on the terms of your subscription: whether its monthly, annual, biannual, or triennial.
Renewing your domain name is critical to ensure 99% uptime and prevent any user experience hiccups. If youre afraid of missing the renewal date, dont fear most registrars will email you to notify you of the upcoming renewal.
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Create Email Accounts With Your New Domain
Using an email address with your new domain name, such as email@yourdomain.com,will increase your credibility, whether you use it as a contact address or to communicate with business partners.
If you use Hostingers hosting service, you can easily create an email address:
If youre looking for a more premium email service, feel free to check out Titan business email hosting here.
Pro Tip
Use a password generator like LastPass to create a random and secure password for your business email address.
Create A Website With WordPress
Another way to create a site is by using a content management system , which is a piece of software that enables you to create and modify website content.
There are several CMS platforms to choose from, such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. That said, we recommend using WordPress for creating a site as its the most beginner-friendly CMS and has the most themes and plugins.
1. Install WordPress
You need to install WordPress on your web hosting account to get started. If you use hPanel, the WordPress auto-installer makes the process much simpler.
If youre using another type of control panel, the process should be similar using the Softaculous auto-installer.
Alternatively, install WordPress manually by downloading the software and copying its files to the hosting account using an FTP client or file manager.
2. Choose a Theme
Customizing the websites appearance requires a WordPress theme. Its a pack of files containing code, style sheets, and custom elements to construct the websites design and basic functionality.
When you install WordPress, it comes with a default theme called Twenty Twenty-One. However, there are more than 8,000 free WordPress themes in the WordPress theme directory to choose from.
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Avoid Hyphens In Domain Name
Another mistake that most people make when trying to buy a domain name is adding hyphens to their domain name to ensure that they can get what they think is good for them because someone else might have bought the intended domain name before them.
Never create a domain name with hyphens. Hyphens can be a sign of spam domains you do not want to be associated with.
Hyphenated domains are also prone to typos. If you choose a domain name with hyphens because the part you want is already taken, your users will likely end up at your competitors site if they forget to type in the hyphen.
Suppose your marketing game is evolved around search engine optimisation. In that case, you need not worry about the hyphen because most of your traffic would be referred by search engines, but as time goes on.
You begin to get famous your users might have a hard time trying to visit your website directly from their browser.
Find Your Domain Name A Home Aka Find A Web Host
First things first youve bought a domain, and now you need someplace for it to live. In other words, you need to choose a host and a hosting plan.
You have two options. Look for a stand-alone web hosting service or use a domain registry and web hosting combo service.
Odds are you purchased your domain name from a service that also offers hosting plans. There are a lot of companies that offer combined web hosting and domain name purchase. Buying both from the same service offers a lot of advantages.
First, you wont have to worry about connecting your domain and your hosting service theyll sync from the get-go. Second, a business that offers combined domain and hosting services will often include extra package perks that will make your life easier in the long run.
For example, Namecheap is a popular web hosting and domain registry service.
You can register or transfer a domain name, host your website, and even create business cards all on a single platform.
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Use Your Domain For A Custom Email Address
Youre a professional, so why are you still using that personal Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN email address you created 10 or even 20 years ago?
If the email youre using to communicate with customers isnt branding your business, then its time you kick that free email to the curb and set up a custom email using the domain you just purchased.
If you register a domain, you can set up a personalized email address such as YourName@yourdomain.com. Thats so much better than YourFirstandLastName_1975@gmail.com, right?
You can put that custom email address on your business cards, the side of your car, everywhere you promote your business.
With Professional Business Email from GoDaddy, not only will you get 24/7 customer support, but youll also get as many email aliases as youd like .
Youll look more professional, credible, and with so many email address options, you can guarantee that emails are going to the right people.
Related: How to use a custom domain name for email
S To Take After Your Domain Name Registration
Your domain name registration is the first step towards having a website that can generate business revenue. After doing a domain name search and agonising over possible names for your website, domain name registration makes sure that nobody else can swoop in and steal your perfect domain name. But youre not done yet. Now, its time to start building your online presence by taking 6 easy steps.
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Ive Signed Up For A Transfer Hosting Account Whats The Next Step
Once you have signed up for a Doteasy transfer hosting account, our system will send you an email containing all the necessary steps you need to take to complete the account activation. These changes will act as a notification to your domain registrar that you will be using Doteasy as your domains web host. They will then need to update all your domain records to reflect these changes.
Submit Your New Website To Search Engines
Since search engines use web crawlers to find new and updated content, they dont rely on manual submissions to find a new site. However, submitting your site gives it a better chance of appearing on the result pages.
To do that, you need to create a sitemap to help search engines find your website pages and content. It lists the pages, videos, images, and other relevant content on your site, as well as the relationship between them.
Most search engines use links to discover new pages and index them. This can be an issue if you have a lot of pages that are not linked to each other, as they can be invisible to the crawlers.
Thus, submitting your site is a great idea when you change the websites pages and structure. It tells search engines that they need to crawl the website again.
We have a complete guide for submitting your site to search engines. However, to sum up, here is what you need to do:
Submitting your website to search engines is only part of the work. For the website to rank high, youll need to optimize it. Here are some of our SEO tips:
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Get Your Web Host’s Name Servers
The first thing you’ll need to do is to find out the list of name servers used by your web host.
“Name servers”, or “DNS servers”, loosely speaking, are the things that translateyour domain name to the actual location of your website. A little example will make this clear. Let’s say you type adomain like “thesitewizard.com” into your web browser. In order to display the website associated with thesitewizard.com,the browser needs to know the real address of the site. Appearances to the contrary, the underlying machinery of theInternet does not actually use names for addresses, but series of numbers, like 127.0.0.1, called IP addresses. Name servers translatethe domain name you and I use to the actual numeric IP address used by the computers on the Internet.
When you sign up with a commercial web host, they will configure their name servers so that they furnish yourwebsite’s real IP address when there is a query for your domain name. As such, in order for your domain to befound on the Internet, you must link your domain to your web host’s name servers.
The easiest way to find out the name servers used by your web host for your domain is to ask them.A faster way is to look for the information yourself in either the email sent to you by your host when you first signed up with them, or fromthe documentation on your web host’s site. If you have no idea where to get the information, contact your web host and ask themfor the “DNS servers” or “name servers” to use for your domain.
Create A Website With A Domain Name You Already Own
If you already have a domain name, it is quite possible to keep it, by creating a website on our platform.
All you have to do is connect your domain name to your website.
This is to be done, just like registering a new domain, in your website dashboard.
My websites> Settings> Search engines> Update or add more
Once there, you will be guided through the process of registering a domain name.
First, click on Connect a domain name:
Then you can connect your current domain name to your website, by entering it in the appropriate field:
Two options are then possible:
Connect with transfer: you remain the owner of your site and we take care of the configuration and renewal of your domain. You only need to request a transfer from your previous provider.
Connect without transfer: your domain name stays at your current registry. You will then receive instructions on how to set it up. You will be responsible for the annual renewal and you can set up your email address with your domain provider, if they offer this service.
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Bluehost Free Domain Name And Hosting For WordPress
Bluehost is a recognizable leader of the niche and the number one hosting provider officially recommended by WordPress. The platform comes with lots of advantages that distinguish it from the competitors. These include one-click WordPress installation, abundance of integrable scripts and plugins, strong uptime rates, fast page load speed, affordable pricing, eCommerce features, localized SEO and content marketing options, widgets and apps for business websites and many more.
Bluehost provides extensive free domain name connection options included into its subscriptions. The choice of the most suitable plan should depend upon your website type, complexity, structure and some other crucial aspects like storage space, bandwidth, extra SSL connection options, email accounts, security options etc. Whatever plan you decide to pick, you will get a domain name as a bonus without having to pay for it.
Its up to you to choose the most suitable solution that works best for your project and comes up to your individual web design needs. Whatever option you eventually pick, you will get a possibility to get a domain name absolutely for free.
How To Create A Website
An Easy, Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners
Nick Schäferhoff
I wrote this SIMPLE guide to help anyone from bloggers to small business owners make their own website without having to learn code. You don’t need to spend money on web developers and designers. Believe it or not, most of you will succeed.
If you get stuck, contact me and I’ll help you out for free.
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How To Add Pages And Content In WordPress
A blank website without any pages or content isnt much use to anybody, so in order to make the website accessible and interesting, we need to add some pages and blog posts. There are pages that most websites need, such as a homepage, services, about us, contact us, and blog among many other pages.
How to add pages and content to WordPress
In order to add pages to WordPress, you need to navigate from the left-hand menu to Pages and from there click the button Add New.
This will take you to the WordPress block editor which is also called Gutenberg Editor. If its your first time visiting this, then it will display a quick step-by-step tutorial on how it works and where certain things are. Its quite easy to work everything is block-based, which means if you want to add something to your page, you just need to choose the correct block from the menu and fill it in.
On the left, in the content block section, there are multiple content blocks to choose from. Each serves a different purpose and adds different visual elements to that page.
And on the right-hand menu, you can change some page-wide settings like the author, what the permalink is, the featured image, and more. Or on the top, you can click on the Block tab and open up the block settings for any block that youve selected on the page.
How to organize the navigation menu
In order to change that, you need to go from the left-hand menu to Appearance followed by Menus.
Customizing website
Adding blog posts
Install A Theme & Essential Plugins
WordPress comes up with a default theme that can be changed.
There are plenty of WordPress themes out there. Whether you are going to create a personal blog or an eCommerce site, you will get available WordPress themes for that.
You can get a free theme from the WordPress Theme Directory or you can buy a premium theme. If you have a budget, its better to go with a premium theme.
Here are some recommendations for you :
- Astra: It is the same theme that we are using here at RoadToBlogging.com. Its a multi-purpose theme that can be used on any website.
- GeneratePress: Its another great WordPress theme that we use on our other blog WPLeaders.com. Its also a multi-purpose theme.
- Elegant Themes: It has a variety of WordPress themes like Blog, Business, eCommerce, Magazine, Multimedia, Portfolio, etc.
Once youve chosen and downloaded your desired WordPress theme, you need to install it on WordPress.
Now lets talk about essential WordPress plugins. Heres a list of must-have WordPress plugins for a new site.
- Ultimate Blocks: Its a custom Gutenberg blocks plugin specially designed for bloggers and marketers.
- Rank Math: Its an all-in-one solution for WordPress SEO developed by the team at MyThemeShop.
- Social Snap: Its one of the best solutions for adding social sharing buttons on your blog.
- Contact Form 7: Its the most popular contact form plugin.
- Jetpack: Its a multi-purpose WordPress plugin by Automattic.
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