How To Start A Blog: What To Do After You Buy Your Domain

Continuing on in our how to start a blog series, here’s what to do after you buy your domain name.

The first thing you have to do is find a blog or site host. Many tech people recommend that you have a separate domain and site host. That way if something happens with one it doesn’t affect the other. This is a matter of opinion because I’ve also heard it doesn’t matter that much. I chose to keep them separate just in case but you should choose whichever you feel is right for you.

There are a wide variety of site hosts out there and here are a few that start off with low monthly prices:

• Hostgator
• Blue Host
• Dreamhost
• A Small Orange

These are great to start with as there are a number of video tutorials you can find online about any of them and the price is great for testing the waters of blogging. If you know you are going to blog long term and you are going to work hard to drive lots of traffic to your blog, you may want to consider a hosting service with a larger plan. There are many out there as well.

You’ll pay more each month but if one or more of your blog posts go viral, they are more likely to handle the increase in traffic where the others above won’t be able to handle it on a small plan and your blog will crash. You can also always transfer your blog from one of the hosts above to a host below. Sometimes the host you transfer to will do it for you, or sometimes you have to find and pay a tech savvy person to do it, or you can look up tutorials and try to do it yourself. Either way here is a short list of options for hosts that offer larger packages, dedicated servers, etc.

• WP Engine
• Web Synthesis
• RFE Hosting
• WiredTree

There are others in both categories, you can do an online search to find the one best suited for you.

Now that you bought your domain name and paid for hosting, the next step is pointing your nameservers. It sounds scary but it isn’t difficult. In fact, I’m guessing your site host will have photo or video tutorials for you or even walk you through it over the phone or live chat.

Here’s a video showing you how to point your point your Nameservers on NameCheap to Hostgator.

See, that was easy! All of the other companies make it fairly simple as well and you can do a YouTube search for a video tutorial if your company doesn’t offer one.

What’s next? Well typically it takes a while for nameservers to propogate or fully be accessible. This can be anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours. But once they are all set, you are on your way!

The next steps are a bit more fun, installing WordPress and picking a theme. Stay tuned for the next post walking you through those steps.

For other posts in this series visit: How To Start A Blog Series

If you liked this post you may also enjoy our other Blogging & Social Media Tutorials here.