Introduction
Before you can setup your own website online, you\’re going to need a hosting account. Web Hosting is a service that makes your website available and reviewed by other people on the internet. It\’s a service that serves your pages, blog posts, landing pages, sales pages and anything else that you build with OptimizePress or anything you personally create on your website.
Getting Started
First things first, there are many web hosting solutions available on the internet that you can go with. Some of which we\’ve personally reviewed, recommended and listed on our blog. We strongly advise reading it to give you an idea of the different ones you can use and to pick one that best suits your business needs.
For your convenience, we\’ve linked the direct URL to the blog post here:
https://www.optimizepress.com/10-powerful-trusted-hosting-solutions-to-boost-your-website/
For this tutorial, we\’re going to use a hosting company called
www.siteground.com when walking through the setup process. However, the process of setting up a host will be similar with other hosting providers, so we strongly recommend following on and using this as a reference.
Signing up for an account
When you first log into SiteGound, you will be greeted with their homepage with a list of options. On the main menu bar, click on \’
Web Hosting.\’
You will be shown a list of web hosting options. For this tutorial, we recommend \’
Shared Hosting\’.
Please Note: If you\’re a larger company and are already getting lots of traffic and exposure to your business, then you might want to consider a \’cloud\’ or \’dedicated hosting\’ solution. But if you\’re completely new, a shared hosting plan is generally enough to get started with.
Once you\’ve selected the hosting solution you would like, you will be shown a price plan of the package to select from. For this tutorial, we\’ve chosen the
\’Grow Big\’ package.
Once you\’ve clicked the
\’Get Started\’ button, you will be asked to enter a domain name. You will be given 2 options here, you can either register a new domain or use an existing domain that you\’ve already registered elsewhere. If you followed the tutorial on registering a domain name, you would simply select your own domain and type in the name of your domain in the field provided.
Please Note: We recommend using your own domain as it keeps everything separate and independent of each other in case you later decide to move hosting providers.
Once confirmed, you will be taken to the checkout page to fill in your payment details and complete your order.
Once you\’ve confirmed your payment details, SiteGround will send you a confirmation email with your login information and provide you with your \’
nameserver\’ addresses that you will need in order to point your domains to your new web server. We will get into this process shortly.
Assigning your domain to your hosting provider
To point your domain to your hosting provider, log into your domain registrar and navigate to the domain settings of your domain. For this tutorial, we\’re using
www.namecheap.com.
Head to the \’
nameserver\’ area. Copy the nameserver addresses your hosting provider sent you earlier and paste it into the fields provided.
Please Note: If you\’re unsure where the nameserver options are in your domain registrar, please refer to their documentation or contact their support staff.
Once you\’ve pasted in and pointed your nameserver addresses, save the changes.
Installing WordPress
Next, we need to install WordPress on your new website as we will need this in order to install OptimizePress and get started with the software.
Log into your hosting provider using the login details they provided. and navigate to the main dashboard.
Look for the \’
WordPress\’ icon in your list of apps. If you\’re using CPanel, this should be easy to find as they\’re all listed in categories.
Click on the icon and you will be taken to the WordPress setup process.
Here are the following options to focus on:
Choose Protocol – Select the \’https://\’ option.
Please choose the domain to install the software – Select your domain from the dropdown.
Site Name – Give your website a name (You can change this later in your WordPress settings.)
Site Description – Give your website a description (You can change this later in your WordPress settings.)
Admin Username – Use the one provided you type in a memorable username (Avoid using the word \’admin\’ as it will make it easier for hackers to potentially hack your website.)
Admin Password – Note down the password by copying it somewhere on your computer (You will need this to log into your WordPress site\’s admin dashboard.)
Admin Email – Assign your WordPress site with an email address (You can change this later in your WordPress settings.)
Select Language – Select the language you would like your WordPress site to be in.
Once you\’re happy with the settings, click on the \’
Install\’ button. CPanel will now go ahead and install WordPress on your domain.
Quick House-Cleaning
If you\’ve followed the tutorial up to this point, you should now have a hosting account with a WordPress website assigned to your domain name and ready to go.
The final stages is to now log into your WordPress admin dashboard and remove the base plugins it\’s installed. Head on over to
Plugins >> Installed Plugins and remove all the plugins.
Lastly, install the OptimizePress Plugin and SmartTheme to your site.
Click here to viw the tutorial, which will walk you through the process of setting this up.
Once you\’re done, congratulations! You\’re now the proud owner of a brand new website, ready to start building your pages and attracting visitors and customers.