Whenever Ashley C. tells the story of the first website she set up, she explains that she had no idea how it actually worked. She figured you could purchase the name of the site, put something together on front page, hit publish, and it would immediately show up on that webpage! It made perfect sense to her. Now, if any of you know how it really works, you’re probably shaking your head right now. If any of you are thinking “You mean, that’s not how it works?!” Then you’re in the right place.

1. Hostnine is a great inexpensive hosting site that provides Cpanel (this will be important later) and great customer service. (This is critical when you are learning the ropes!) You simply follow this process:

• Click on Sign Up:

• Enter the domain name of your choice:

• Choose how often you would like to pay. The longer you host your site for, the less you pay, but the more you pay up front. Your choice.

• Choose where you want the website hosted (these are the locations where the servers are located. It really doesn’t make a difference where you have the site hosted, just pick your preference!)

• Click “Update Cart” and you will move on to the payment screen!

2. Liquid Web is a little pricier, but we have found that their staff is willing to go the extra distance to help you when it is needed! We consisently host our sites with this company, they are worth the extra few dollars.

• Click on Web Hosting

• Select the Standard Hosting to start. You can always upgrade if you need to, but this is a good place to start.

• Add to Cart

• You will now go on to the payment sreen.

3. Host of your choice. If you would like to go with a different company, make sure they have Cpanel, Fantastico, mySQL of 4.0 or higher, and a Linux/Apache server. You don’t have to know what they mean, but you’re going to want them!

Because you are just starting out, you can choose the standard shared hosting, you will always be able to upgrade if necessary (and we hope it will be necessary, that means you’re getting a lot of traffic and business on your website!) As you move through the process, there will be a place to enter your desired url. Once you have paid, you will receive an email giving you further instructions. It often takes a web site 24-48 hours to “propogate” or become visible on the web, so you’ll have to wait for that before you can start working on it.

Take a deep breath and celebrate! You’ve just completed your first step to having your own online business!

Watch the Video if you have questions: