A D V E R T I S E M E N T
In one of my previous posts, I discuss the theories and concepts on how to start your own website. In this post, you will be guided with specific actions. What to do first and what to do next in building your own website. There are four things we need to accomplish for us to run our very first web page.

1. Register a domain name for your website.
2. Get a web server to host your files.
3. Point your domain name to your server.
4. Upload your web pages.

The four steps above must be accomplished to successfully run your first website.

Step 1: Register a Domain Name

Domain name is your address in the internet. Example of domain name is google.com. If you type google.com in the address bar of your browser, you will land to the front page of Google. To register a domain is very simple. You can easily do it by following some instructions. If you know how to register an account at FaceBook, then you have all the skills to register a domain name. To register a domain name however, involves payment, you can only accomplish this step if you have the capacity to pay online. You can use credit card, debit card, or PayPal to do the payments. I wrote an article detailing the process of doing domain registration. Go to this article for complete step by step tutorial.

• Step-by-step guide on how to register a domain name at GoDaddy

If you're confident enough to do it without reading that article, go directly to www.GoDaddy.com and register your domain name.

Step 2: Get a Web Server to Host Your Files

Getting a web server is like renting a house in the offline world. A webserver will house your files so that it is always accessible at all times. Web server is a computer that is turned on 24/7. To find a web host is easy, I already wrote a post on how to get one.

• Step-by-step Guide on How to Buy a Web Hosting Plan from HostGator

Or you can go directly to www.HostGator.com if think you can handle it.

Step 3: Point Your Domain Name to Your Server

You may notice that our domain name registrar is GoDaddy while our web server is at HostGator. What to do is to point the domain name to our webserver. This can be accomplished by simply changing the name servers of our domain registrar. I wrote a step-by-step guide on how to do this.

• How to Change Domain Name Server at GoDaddy

Take note that you may not get an instant result to this. You need to wait for your domain name server (DNS) information to propagate over the internet. It will take time, so be patient. This step is actually not necessary if you bought your domain name also from HostGator (HG) and you host your files also at HostGator. HG will do this for you.

Step 4: Upload Your Web Pages

After doing the first three steps, we are now ready to upload web files to the server. We can upload any files that are allowed by your web hosting provider. There are restrictions of course, we cannot upload coffee, sugar, and creamer to our server ;=). What I mean is that restricted files are very obvious like copyrighted materials. In rule of thumb, anything that violates the law (illegal) are not allowed.

In my next post, I will write an article on how to do the upload step-by-step. I will discuss how to upload files via cPanel and via FTP client. So make sure you will not miss it. You can subscribe to my mailing list so that every post I make will be delivered directly to your inbox.

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