OK, you now have a Domain Name and a Hosting account. Now we need to point your Domain Name to that Hostgator account so the magic can begin.
Many people get a bit confused with this part of the plan, but it’s really easy.
Click the link inside your Hostgator email that sends you to your cPanel. This will be in the email you signed up to Hostgator with. The cPanel link will take you to your log-in page for your cPanel, Enter your details and say hello to a whole new world!
The cPanel platform has just been updated and it’s still a bit slow. But it looks a lot better than the old one.
There are tons of tools in here, most of which I don’t use! Don’t get alarmed with all the stuff you see here…you will only need one or two things to get your website up and running. You can explore this wizardry later when you’re more comfortable.
As I’ve said, I hardly use any of the things in cPanel.
Now we have to get our hands dirty here and do a little work. We need to get those GoDaddy Nameservers changed to Hostgator Nameservers..
So, hopefully, you’re inside your cPanel after clicking the link from your email. (Bookmark the log-in page). The first thing you want to do is add your domain to the cPanel.
Look for the symbol below called Addon Domains and click it.
For this example, I’ve got hold of a free domain name to walk you through this process. I get free domains from Freenom.com – Now, you may think having a free domain is a good idea, but these are not your usual domain names. They don’t look the part for a business to be using. They’re great for practicing though, and I have used one or two on PPC campaigns…but that’s another story.
Also, some, like this one below, are only good for a year. You then have to pay for it if you want to carry on with that domain.
Clicking the ADD DOMAIN button you will be taken to a form just like the one below. Follow the image command and you’re good to go.
Next, you will see the the website has been created.
Click ‘Go Back’ and you will see your new domain in the list below with data complied beside it.
Now we’ve done that (simple, wasn’t it?) we need to find our Nameservers for Hostgator so we can replace the ones over at GoDaddy.
Your Hostgator Nameservers are situated in cPanel on the Server Stats to the panel to the left. Click it and cPanel will open up the info.
To the right, you will find DNS INFO. Then, there are your Nameservers.
You only need to copy the first two, Primary and Secondary. Copy and paste them onto Notepad and CAPITALIZE them. I’ve seen people not do this, but I’m old school and ALWAYS capitalize these.
Copied them to your notepad? Good.
Now we head over to GoDaddy, log in and move to the Domains section of your account.
Click the + button next to Domains and that will give you a drop-down with a big green button to the right that says MANAGE DNS. Click it.
On the next page, you will see NAMESERVERS and a button in green that says change. Here you will just need to click the button and choose ‘custom’.
Paste those two capitalized Nameservers that you got from Hostgator and click save.
If you don’t see ‘custom’ then click Add Nameservers and do the same as above.
Click Save.
OK, you’re done!
Your Domain name should now be pointing to your hosting account. This means we’re ready to install WordPress!
Sometimes it takes a small amount of time for the Nameservers to ‘marry up’, but on most occasions, it only takes a few minutes. At the worst, a few hours. Many times it’s instant.
The next step, installing WordPress, is also easy and won’t take longer than making a cup of tea.
So, if you’re ready, we’ll move on to the next post. Installing WordPress.