How to Get Started With Your Hosting Plan

A hosting plan is space on the hard drive of a server. It is also Internet bandwidth and a control panel of features to manage your site.

Firstly, to get started with a hosting plan there are a few things that a new web hosting customer needs to achieve and in many cases they will not have to adjust their accounts again. Here are the four steps that are needed to get a website working with your hosting plan.

Step 1: Domain name setup

The first step would be for you to purchase a domain name, which can cost you anything from $8 to $20 per year. Since this will be the actual name of your website, no one else will be able to use your name once it is registered. When you have selected your domain name, it needs to be pointed to the server that holds your hosting account. This is so that when someone types www.yourdomainname.com into a browser, it will be able to locate the website files that will be uploaded to your hosting plan.

Step 2: Logging in to your control panel

To view web traffic statistics, you will need to login to your control panel. This would also apply when it comes to setting up email addresses, databases or do to backups, etc. Every web hosting company, including www.planetonline.net would offer you a control panel to manage your account. The most popular control panels offered by the hosting companies are cPanel, Plesk, Helm and Hsphere. Some companies have built their own to customize it to their services. The control panels offer more or less the same features. You can read your email with the control panel, or you can have it set up to be read through an email program like Outlook. You will also be able to control databases in the control panel. On top of it all, you should find a way to login before your domain propagates. It will allow you to get started on your control panel while propagation is taking place.

Step 3: Setting up email accounts

When you are logged in to your control panel, you will want to set up not less than one email address. In the case that you do not want one, it will be necessary to at least define one so as a catch all to make sure that you don’t miss any of the emails sent to your domain.

Email forwarding

If you want to forward your email to an outside email address (e.g. from your ISP email address to your Gmail account), then you will be required to set your Default Address (a tool in the Mail Management section of your control panel) to your ISP email address or any other address. In this way, any email sent to ‘anything’@yourdomain.com shall be automatically sent to you on your other account.

Step 4: Uploading your website/files

Your website and files can be uploaded to your account using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) like WS_FTP. This of course is done once your domain name has propagated. In case you don’t have an FTP program, you then have the option of downloading a free trial version of WS_FTP or you can use internet explorer as well for file uploading. All you will be required to do is to type ftp:// instead of http:// followed by the domain name. WS-FTP is one of the most popular programs in use today.