Tutorial: How to get your own Paid Hosting
After being asked by several people who wanted to know how they could get their own paid hosting I
decided to save myself some explanation time and just write this tutorial.
Requirements: Access to a working Credit Card (yours or your parents)
Paid Hosting isn't as expensive as most people think. And then some of the bigger sites really make you think it must cost a lot with all of their pleading to "donate to us" buttons everywhere. Well unless you have a enormous site with lots and lots of media/graphics hosting will not cost you much. I'm going to walk you through the steps of getting your own paid hosting.
1.)First you need a domain which you will have to buy from a Domain Name Seller. Personally I use GoDaddy.com but you can use whatever you want. If you are paying more then $12 for a year you are getting ripped off. Sometimes you can even get them on sale for $5.00.
2.) Once you find a domain that isn't taken you can buy it (using a credit card). It will take a few days to activate but that's fine since our next step will take awhile to activate too.
3.) Now you need a hosting service. You can try searching for one, and there are some sites that post reviews of the better ones. Or try asking other webmasters who they use (which will usually clue you into the cheaper hosting providers). I use xehost.net but I wouldn't necessairly recommend them since they have given me problems.
4.) When you find a hosting service then you have to decide on a package. Don't get too ambitious with the amount of bandwidth and space you buy since then you will probably get stuck paying for more then you need. I have the silver plan on xehost and I only use about 1/2 of my space and bandwidth. (at least that is how much I use as I am writing this). Unless you have a lot of stuff that will be downloaded you don't need that much bandwidth.
5.) Ok so you bought a hosting plan (which you payed for with your credit card again) Now you have sit and wait a few days for it to activate too (like a minimum of 2 days). Before I go on I suggest you just purchase a month of hosting rather then a year. After a month you will know if you like the company or not and then you can commit to a year with them.
6.) Your hosting company will send you a welcome email with the addresses of their nameservers. You need to log into the place where you bought your domain name and enter those nameserver addresses. That way your domain will point to your webpage on your host's server. If you can't figure out what your hosting company's nameservers are just email them and they will tell you. (and just to let you know, you can technically point your domain to any address but unless you have a hosting account with that company it won't do a darn thing.)
7.) Yay! So You have your domain and your space. Once your space is active you can start to upload your stuff. Most hosting services use the C-panel interface. You can log into it and check how much space and bandwith you are using, set up subdomains, change your password, set up FTP accounts, and other stuff like that.
8.) In order to upload your webpage to your new space you have two choices. You can use the upload files options that C-panel has (if your company uses the C-panel interface) but that is really slow so I instead suggest you get a FTP program. Many of them are free and some are better then others. Most people (myself included) use Smart FTP simply because it is free and easy to use.
End $$$ = $10 domain for a year + $60 for hosting for a year(average cost) = $5.83 a month
So there you go. I bet most of you can handle $5.83 a month, heck a year subscription to Newtype
costs waaay more then that, so it's quite afordable in my mind. Now good luck convincing your parents
that it is a good idea if you have to use their credit card. ;)
 |  |  |  |
| -More Link Exchanges- | |||
Layout Design Copyright 2008 by MyrrhLynn. Shining Wind Copyright and property of Nextech and Amusement Vision and Sega, and Tony Taka. Image from Minitokyo.net
