cPanel - Registering a Domain Name Or cPanel - Getting Web Hosting Part- 03
cPanel - Registering a Domain Name
If you have a website developed locally or you have planned to make a website, then there are two things that you will need — a Domain Name and Web Hosting. A Domain name is the address of your website, which will be used by your users to access it. For example, tutorialspoint.com or google.com these are domain names.
A domain name has two parts, TLD (Top Level Domain) and SLD (Second level domain), for example in tutorialspoint.com, tutorialspoint is second level domain of TLD .com, or you can say it’s a subdomain of .com TLD. There are many top level domains available, like .com, .net, etc. and also country specified TLD like .in, .uk, .ae, etc.
Importance of a domain
Getting a domain name of your choice can be very useful. You can use it for many reasons, for instance, you can create the identity of your brand online or you can create a personal blogging website. If you have a business, people will be able to learn about your business remotely.Registering a Domain Name
Domain names are registered with a non–profit organization ICANN. It does not let you register your domain directly, but you will have to go with a domain registrar for this purpose. Domain name registrations involve a registration fee for a year, and you have to renew the domain every year by providing a renewal fee. Domain names cannot be purchased permanently at once, but you have to renew it every year, if you fail to renew the domain, it is automatically deleted from registry.
If you want to register your domain name, then you will have to follow these steps.
Step 1 − Choose a perfect domain name for your website. If it’s a business website, then you may want to go with a domain name, which is the name of your business.
Step 2 − Choose a good domain registrar company having good support infrastructure. For example, GoDaddy or BigRock.
Step 3 − In the registrar’s website, check if your domain name is available for registration. If the domain you selected has been already registered by someone, then you will have to think of some other domain name. If your domain name is available to register, then you can proceed further.
Step 4 − Provide your contact information and everything that the registrar asked for. It is mandatory that you provide correct information while registering a domain name, as it will be visible to everyone if the user looks for WHOIS information.
Step 5 − You can hide your contact details by choosing to be viewed by anyone by subscribing privacy protection service. This service hides all your contact information to everyone except the registrar, this service is provided by many domain registrars at some extra cost.
Step 6 − Complete the purchase by paying the registration fees. Domain name will be registered to you.
cPanel - Getting Web Hosting
If you have already registered your domain name, the next step is to get a web hosting for your website. Web hosting is a service, which provides space for your website on internet. If you want your website to publish online, then you will have to get web hosting service.
In a web hosting service, your website is stored in high powered computers called web servers, which are connected to a high speed network and they are powered-on 24/7. While purchasing a web hosting service, you rent a space for your website on these servers.
There are basically three types of web hosting −Shared Hosting − In this type of web hosting, a single server hosts multiple websites, sometimes thousands of them. Each account on this server has certain limits on using disk space to store websites, databases and bandwidth. This is the amount of data transferred through your website. This type of hosting is cheap and suitable for small and medium websites.
Virtual Private Servers − In this type of hosting, a Linux Server is divided into several parts and each part acts as a different server, each server has some limited resources given. In this, the VPS administrator has root access to his VPS and can then host single or many websites according to his need. These type of hosting is recommended for medium and large websites. Cost of VPS is higher than Shared Hosting, but lower then Dedicated Hosting.
Dedicated Server − In this type of hosting, a whole server is rented to the user, who can host a large website on this server or can use it to host multiple websites in this server, the server admin can create multiple VPS. Cost of dedicated hosting is much higher and it requires a server admin to manage this type of hosting.
If your website is new and it is not expecting much resource usage, then you can go for shared hosting. You can purchase shared hosting for hosting one website or multiple websites according to your need. In this tutorial, we will learn about hosting a website using cPanel, hence it is recommended that you purchase the hosting that comes with cPanel.
Setting Up Nameserver-
When you have purchased your hosting, you will have to connect your domain with the hosting that you have purchased. If you have purchased the domain and hosting from the same provider, then it is liable that your Nameservers are already setup. If you have purchased your domain and hosting from different providers, then you will have to manually add new Nameservers to your domain, so that it can point your domain to the right server. Nameservers are a part of Domain Name System. These DNS servers keep the records of which domain is connected to which IP address. Nameservers allow us to use a domain instead of IP address of the DNS server. When a visitor types the URL of your domain then the DNS server tells the browser that from which server it should load content from. In easy words, Nameservers define the current DNS provider of your domain. When you get the email of the Login details of your web hosting server along with it, you also get the details of your Nameservers. Most hosting providers use their own DNS servers. For setting up your Nameservers, you will have to login to your domain control panel, and update your Nameservers by replacing the old one. Each domain provider has its own application to do so, you will have to refer to your domain registrar’s documentation for further details. Domain Nameservers take time to propagate through different DNS servers around the globe, the change may reflect instantly or it may take up to 48 hours of time according to the DNS servers of hosting provider.
