How to start a website from scratch in 15 minutes?
For beginners, who want to start their website and still confused about how to proceed, we will tell you what all web hosting options do you have and how to choose the right website hosting for your website.
Step 1 – Register a domain name
Use our domain name finder and register a domain name for your business. Refer to – How to choose a domain name to select the keywords for your domain name.
We have plenty of domain tools available to choose from while registering a domain name.
Step 2 – Set up Website hosting
Choose the website hosting plan as per your requirements. To define requirements you need to answer the below questions –
Web Space
Space required for your website. Starter packages for basic websites have more than 1 GB space for static websites with 4-5 pages. For a CMS blog or website, you should have at-least 10 GB of web-space to upload images, videos and other files.
Do you need a email service. Sometimes, web hosting companies provide email with the package. Normally this email should be sufficient. But for medium to advanced users, we recommend to buy separate email plans that will give you specialized email hosting designed for emails only. This will keep your emails separate from your web servers.
CPU Usage/RAM
This will give processing power to your server where your site is hosted. On shared hosting it will not matter. But if you have pretty big site or blog with thousand of users per month, you should think about at-least 2 GB RAM configuration. If you are getting few hundreds of users than even 512 MB or 1 GB RAM would be suffice.
Bandwidth
This will ensure that your website is being served without any hassles and impacting resources. You can calculate this by taking few simple calculations – Size of webpage – 2MB, no of users accessing it – 1000 in a month. That’s 2GB of data in a month just by users. Now add search engines and other bots like feed generators, who will crawl your website daily and every few minutes. This would be more than 10 times the amount of users. There will also be loss of data packets during downloads. You will also show videos and images. Let’s suppose you are showing 200 MB videos to 1000 users. This will require 200 GB bandwidth just for one video. This way you can safely assume that you would require 200-300 GB of bandwidth for this site. To conserve this you offload few items to other services like use YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion for video hosting.
Based on the above parameters, you have multiple options like –
- Shared Website Hosting
- Business Web Hosting
- VPS – Virtual Private Server Hosting
- Dedicated Servers
- Managed WordPress Hosting
Shared Website Hosting
Business Website Hosting
VPS – Virtual Private Server Hosting
Dedicated Servers
Managed WordPress Hosting
Step 3 – Set up DNS Manager to link hosting and domain
Now you need to setup DNS records of domain to map domain to hosting server. Add A records and Cname records to the web host.
What is DNS?
Domain Name System, or DNS, is the backbone of your online presence. Every domain name uses DNS to control how visitors find your website and how you receive email. You can think of your domain name as a street address, and DNS acts as your GPS. Visitors won’t be able to find your address if the GPS isn’t able to provide the correct directions. This means that if your DNS isn’t correct, your website and email won’t work the way they should.
When you type in a domain name in your internet browser, DNS works to find the information for that domain. Domains are a friendly way for us to remember how to get to a website, but underneath that friendly name, computers talk to each other using numbers. These numbers form Internet Protocol, or IP addresses, which act as the street address of your website working under your domain name.
When you type a domain name in your address bar to visit a website, your computer is looking for the IP address of that website so it can load the website for you. This is DNS in action — you type in the street address (the domain name), DNS finds the directions using IP address (the GPS), and the internet loads the website you’re visiting.
In order to get you to your destination, DNS contains three main pieces to work properly: nameservers, zone files and records. Nameservers hold the zone file and the zone file holds the records. The records are the part of DNS that explains where your website lives or where you get your email, using IP addresses, but the records won’t work if the nameservers aren’t set up correctly.
Managing DNS Settings?
How and where you add, edit or delete your DNS records depends on where your DNS is hosted. This is determined by where your nameservers are pointing. There are three possible options for where you’ll manage your DNS:
- Your domain is registered with Iwebslog and is using our nameservers: you’ll manage DNS settings in your Iwebslog account.
- Your domain is not registered with Iwebslog, but is using our nameservers: you’ll manage DNS settings in your Iwebslog account. This is usually the case if you’re hosting a website with us, or using DNS Hosting.
- Your domain is registered with any company, but is not using our nameservers: you won’t manage DNS with us at all. You’ll need to work with your DNS and/or website hosting company instead.
If your DNS is with us, you can add, edit or delete DNS records within your DNS Manager.
- A record: The primary DNS record used to connect your domain to an IP address that directs visitors to your website. Add / Edit / Delete
- Subdomain: Any DNS record that’s on a prefix of your domain name such as blog.coolexample.com. A subdomain can be created using an A record that points to the IP address (the most common), a CNAME that points to a URL, or even an MX record. Edit / Delete
- CNAME: A type of record that also adds a prefix to your domain name and is sometimes referred to as a type of subdomain. A CNAME can’t point to an IP address. It can only point to another domain name or URL address. For example, you can create a CNAME for store.coolexample.com that points to a different URL, such as a store built with Shopify. Add / Edit / Delete
- MX record: Manages your email address and makes sure your email messages get to your inbox. Different email services use different MX records, and email with Iwebslog is automatically set up for you. Add / Edit / Delete
- TXT record: Allows you to verify domain ownership and setup email sender policies. Add / Edit / Delete
- SPF record: A type of TXT record that lets you set up email sender policies. This is an advanced type of DNS record. Add / Edit / Delete
- NS record: Contains information about your nameservers. Use these records to identify which nameservers you should use if your domain is not registered with Iwebslog, but you want to manage your DNS with us. This is an advanced custom DNS record. Add / Edit / Delete
Step 4 – Set up Email on Domain
Choose any of our email plans as per your requirements. For personal blogs, we recommend a personal type email and for business you can use business email id, that provides more powerful features to you.
Step 5 – Set up Website Backup
Don’t forget to backup your website at regular intervals to secure it.
Step 6 – Add Website Security
Don’t forget to backup your website at regular intervals to secure it.
By using these basic steps, you can setup your website or blog and get your business ready for online venture.
