Choosing a Domain and Hosting Service

One of the first steps in becoming an Internet marketer is obtaining a domain and hosting account. If you have not read my post on choosing a domain, be sure to read it before buying your domain. The host is the service which provides and maintains the server where your site resides. Hosting packages range in price from a few dollars per month to $19.99 and higher.

There are few reasons a beginner would need any features that a $5.00 or $6.00 per month plan doesn’t provide. Now days, even the basic accounts supply a LARGE number of features and plenty of bandwidth. Later, if more features are needed or more bandwidth is required (what a great problem to have!) it is a simple matter to upgrade the account.

• Host Gator is a leading host which offers excellent hosting. Their prices are $4.95 per month for one site and $7.95 per month for unlimited domain hosting. They have excellent telephone and chat support. Plus, you will have the conventional cPanel to work with. If I had to choose, I’d prefer a host which uses cPanel.

In no case do I suggest “free” hosting. For example, GoDaddy offers this with each domain purchase. It is a limited account and has THEIR advertising at the top of YOUR page! It simply makes no sense to do this. If you are not committed enough to invest a few dollars per month for your own hosting, I question whether you are committed enough to make Internet marketing work for you.

Do You Want to Switch to Lower Cost Hosting?

Here’s How:

Changing hosting accounts – Did you sign up with an expensive host and now you want to change to Host Gator, or some other high-value/low-cost host? No Problem!

Here’s how to do it:
1. Go ahead and open an account with another host. You will need to tell them what the domain name is that you will be hosting. The host will send an email with all of your login information. The information will contain your FTP information. (If you are using a high priced host because they make it easy for you to publish your site without FTP, you will need to download a free FTP program and learn how to use it. The process of FTP is very easy.)
You will need to configure your FTP software to connect with your host via its IP address. The IP address will look sort of like this (but your numbers will be different) 120.21.218.8 instead of the normal www.yoursite.com or ftp.yoursite.com. You will need to FTP to the IP address instead of the domain address because the domain is still pointing to your old host.

2. Upload your site to the new host. Read the email very carefully as to where the files should go. Some hosts require the files in the “www”, “html”, “public”, etc. folders.

3. When the site is uploaded, login to your domain registrar’s account (where you bought the domain…not necessarily where you have your hosting) and change your domain’s name server information to what was supplied to you in the new host’s email. The name server addresses will look something like this:
NS28.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS29.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
There will always be two name servers.

4. After you change the name server information, make a slight change to your home page and upload it to the new server (you still have to use the IP address connection for now). Make sure it is a change you can easily see.

5. In a few hours (it could take up to 48), go to your site in your browser (www.yoursite.com) and look for that change. You will not see the change right away because the DNS servers around the world still are pointing to your old host. Eventually, they will become updated with the new name servers you supplied. At that time you will see the minor change you made on your page.

6. Now you know for sure that people are visiting your site on your new host. It may take 48 hours to get all the name servers updated around the world. Therefore, wait 48 hours and then delete the other files on the other host. This is important because there could be server logs out there somehow indexed by Google (it does happen) which would have your old host’s IP address listed. This could cause duplicate content issues! Be sure to delete the files. Don’t forget to close the account too!

7. You may leave your FTP software configured to your new host account with the IP address or you may change it to your domain path…see your email for the FTP path using the domain name.

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