Hosting And Cpanel Access-The Muscle Behind The Scenes
Yesterday I talked about how to register your domain. And that your domain is like having your own piece of ‘virtual’ real estate. And once you get your real estate it is time to build your house on it. Your hosting account is what your house is.
Hosting Accounts Allow You To Customize The Build Of Your House
Directories are all the main rooms within your home. Folders are all the items that help you organize what’s in the directory, or the room. For example, you have a directory called kitchen, and within that, you have some folders called cupboard, utensils, pantry and refrigerator.
In the cupboard folder, you have plates and bowls, in the utensils folder you have forks, knives, and spoons, in the pantry you have staples, in the refrigerator you have milk, eggs and cheese.
Those folders make it easy for you to quickly select the items you need. If you didn’t have these folders, when you went into the kitchen everything would just be sprawled out all over the place because there would be absolutely no organization.
You can choose whatever names you want for the directories and the folders. You get to lock some of those rooms with a key so that no one can go in but you, which is password protecting the folders and directories. You get total control over your hosting (house).
Requirement: Cpanel Access
You control all of this through what we call ‘Cpanel’. This is usually the first thing you see when you login. When you login you type in your domain name and whatever designation your hosting provider gives you.
My provider simply calls it Cpanel. So you would login at www.mydomain.com/cpanel. You enter a username and password and the first screen you should see is Cpanel.
Cpanel is the cockpit of your home
From here is where all control is taken. You can create email addresses, forward your domain to another domain, setup blogs, add users, etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg but I don’t want to overwhelm you because you need to learn all the basics first before learning advanced skills.
So before you pick your hosting service, make sure that it has Cpanel access.
Domain Registration And Hosting Account Providers Don’t Have To Be The Same
When you purchase your domain, you have the option of purchasing the hosting elsewhere. You are not required to buy your domain and hosting from the same place.
In other words, you can purchase your land from one company and select another company to help you build your house.
If you do purchase these two separately, you have to point your domain to the hosting account’s server. It is done by way of setting your name servers. It is simple to do and shouldn’t pose any problem for you. You just login to where you purchased your domain and type in some text into a field and voila, it’s done.
All reliable hosting services should provide documentation and instructions on the use of their system. They are all basically alike except the interface may ‘appear’ different.
One last bit of advice on hosting. DO NOT go for a free service. Sometimes free is great but not with something as critical as hosting. You can do as you wish but you have been warned. The cheap or free can become VERY expensive sometimes.
Tips On How To Register A Domain
Picking a domain name is one of the most fun, and sometimes stressful parts of planning your online business. It is also one of the most important steps in branding yourself and your products. Your domain name is the web address or URL that your visitors will type in the address bar. Your business name on the other hand won’t come into play as much because you are going to be recognized by your brand, name, or website. Decide before you register any domain name what image or brand you wish to project in your online business.
If you are having trouble deciding on a brand, just use your name for the domain. For example, www.JohnDoe.com. You should register this domain anyway.
Dot Com Should Be Your Domain Of Choice
I registered my name with a dot com, dot net and dot name. I also registered the same extensions with hyphens, for example www.John-Doe.com. I did it this way because I don’t want anyone taking advantage of me when it becomes a total success 
Try selecting a domain name that’s memorable. Trying to find a name that is easy to remember and that has one or two words that are easy to spell may be quite difficult. Many of those domains have already been taken. You will have to be creative to come up with the one or two name domains. After you find one that you think you will be happy with, ask your friends or business associates if it sounds sticky BEFORE registering it.
A great tip to keep in mind is that when people think of sites they always type in a dot com. So select your domain with dot com extension. You can also register the other extensions (dot net, dot biz, etc) so that you won’t be taken advantage of later.
Private Registration
During the registration process, you are asked about private registration for an extra fee. This service protects your identity from the prying eyes of others. It can be quite expensive to add this on because the fee is about $9.00 per domain. If you are registering 5 domains that would be an extra $45 dollars. That option is up to you, but if you have a business address then you can just use that instead of your home address.
I would also suggest you register the hyphen version of your domain. For example, register www.DomainName.com and www.Domain-Name.com. For an extra $7 – $10 a year for registration, I recommend this method because the first time you create a winning product, experienced marketers will quickly jump on a closely related open domain. This would mean easy sales for them if a customer accidentally types in the wrong domain.
Where you land in the yellow pages…
Both online and brick and mortar business names are listed in alphabetical order. Many directories and links pages place websites in alphabetical order just as the phone books list businesses. Don’t try to cheat your way to the top by putting an A in the name. If your domain name is widget.com, you won’t get to the top by saying your business name is “A Widget”. The search engines are too sophisticated for that trick.
Registering a domain is like buying a piece of real estate on the internet. You get your own address and no one can take the land from you as long as you pay yearly for it. After you buy the real estate, you need to build a house on it, which is your hosting account…more on that tomorrow.
