Registering a domain name might sound a bit complicated to people who are setting up their first website. If you are lucky and have a nice IT friend, things are easier.
Please note that if you have ordered our web hosting service, you don’t have to read this article. Just contact our support and we’ll sort it for you.
STEP 1: CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME
Making the decision on what should your domain name look like is often the hardest part of the whole process. It is generally recommended to follow SEO guidelines when putting a domain name together.
You also cannot choose a domain name that has already been taken. Most domain registrators offer the ability to freely check whether a domain name has been already registered or not.
STEP 2: FINDING A REGISTRAR
Once you find an available domain name that you would like to get, you can use any domain registrar to complete the registration. The domain availability check service is (also WHOIS check) is centrally managed by the ICANN organisation, so if one domain registrar shows that the domain is available, others will do so.
The fastest way to find a good and cheap registrar is to search Google for one. Perhaps you should check at least 3 or 4. Fortunately, it’s usually effortless to find the prices on their website to compare them. Prices for different top-level domains (TLD, e.g. com, org, net,…) vary. Besides the common TLDs, new kind of TLDs has been emitted recently. New TLDs, such as .website, .email, .company and hundreds more are usually a significantly more expensive than the common ones.
STEP 3: SETTING UP YOUR DOMAIN DNS RECORDS
Simply said, DNS is a thing that converts a domain name to a network address. When a user types your domain name in the web browser’s address bar, the web browser connects to this DNS place and will be told where your website is stored in the internet by IP, another kind of address. Then the web browser connects to your web hosting by this IP address and displays your website to the user.
Since the IP addresses are basically a set of numbers, it’s a bit harder to memorize them. That’s why domain names exist, for us people. IP is there for the purpose of machines.
DNS records can do more than just pointing to a web server. For example, they can be used to deliver your domain mail to the right email server. If you want to know more about this topic, you might want to see our article on How to Setup Company Emails for Free.
The IP address(es) of your web server is usually mentioned in your web hosting administration area. In these days, there should be at least two of them: IPv4 a IPv6. IPv4 should look something like: 46.28.108.157. IPv6 should look more complicated, e.g.: 2a02:2b88:2:1::2331:X. Once you find these, log in to your domain administration area and try to find a place that is called DNS or DNS records or edit DNS. There should be a list of DNS records looking something like this:
What you want to do is editing these DNS record and change the default IP address to match your web hosting IP addresses.
Be cautious while editing the DNS records if you already have some services dependent on your domain name, such as a web hosting. Wrong DNS settings may break them.
You may need to wait up to an hour to have these changes applied and visible throughout the internet. Some domain administration interfaces may further require to press a special button to apply the changes made in DNS.
And that’s it. Once the DNS changes propagate trough the network, you should be able to type your domain name in your web browser and be able to see the website that is loaded on your web hosting.
Please note that if you have ordered our web hosting service, you don’t have to read this article. Just contact our support and we’ll sort it for you.
STEP 1: CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME
Making the decision on what should your domain name look like is often the hardest part of the whole process. It is generally recommended to follow SEO guidelines when putting a domain name together.
You also cannot choose a domain name that has already been taken. Most domain registrators offer the ability to freely check whether a domain name has been already registered or not.
STEP 2: FINDING A REGISTRAR
Once you find an available domain name that you would like to get, you can use any domain registrar to complete the registration. The domain availability check service is (also WHOIS check) is centrally managed by the ICANN organisation, so if one domain registrar shows that the domain is available, others will do so.
The fastest way to find a good and cheap registrar is to search Google for one. Perhaps you should check at least 3 or 4. Fortunately, it’s usually effortless to find the prices on their website to compare them. Prices for different top-level domains (TLD, e.g. com, org, net,…) vary. Besides the common TLDs, new kind of TLDs has been emitted recently. New TLDs, such as .website, .email, .company and hundreds more are usually a significantly more expensive than the common ones.
STEP 3: SETTING UP YOUR DOMAIN DNS RECORDS
Simply said, DNS is a thing that converts a domain name to a network address. When a user types your domain name in the web browser’s address bar, the web browser connects to this DNS place and will be told where your website is stored in the internet by IP, another kind of address. Then the web browser connects to your web hosting by this IP address and displays your website to the user.
Since the IP addresses are basically a set of numbers, it’s a bit harder to memorize them. That’s why domain names exist, for us people. IP is there for the purpose of machines.
DNS records can do more than just pointing to a web server. For example, they can be used to deliver your domain mail to the right email server. If you want to know more about this topic, you might want to see our article on How to Setup Company Emails for Free.
The IP address(es) of your web server is usually mentioned in your web hosting administration area. In these days, there should be at least two of them: IPv4 a IPv6. IPv4 should look something like: 46.28.108.157. IPv6 should look more complicated, e.g.: 2a02:2b88:2:1::2331:X. Once you find these, log in to your domain administration area and try to find a place that is called DNS or DNS records or edit DNS. There should be a list of DNS records looking something like this:
What you want to do is editing these DNS record and change the default IP address to match your web hosting IP addresses.
Be cautious while editing the DNS records if you already have some services dependent on your domain name, such as a web hosting. Wrong DNS settings may break them.
You may need to wait up to an hour to have these changes applied and visible throughout the internet. Some domain administration interfaces may further require to press a special button to apply the changes made in DNS.
And that’s it. Once the DNS changes propagate trough the network, you should be able to type your domain name in your web browser and be able to see the website that is loaded on your web hosting.
No comments:
Post a Comment