Web Design

Setup your hosting account at GatorHost.org.

Next, decide on which hosting package is right for you. You have a choice between Hatchling, Baby and Business. For most businesses, the Hatchling package will be just fine.

However, I would recommend going with the middle Baby package for one main reason: unlimited domains.

More than likely, you’ll be adding more domains to your account as you grow your business for various reasons, mainly redirects to affiliate programs when you incorporate them into your business plan for multiple sources of income.

You can also use additional domains for tracking purposes. This is really good for print advertising when you want to send someone to a particular page but don’t want some long URL like www.mydomain.com/go-to/this-page. You could use a domain such as www.myextradomain.com and redirect it to that page.

Once you’ve chosen your package, go ahead and register your domain. The domain is an extra $15 and renews annually.

You’ll be able to add additional domains at any time once your account is set up.

Take some time to think about your main domain though. You want something that is both easy to remember and easy to read. Try to avoid hyphens because that makes it really hard to read off to someone.

Imagine trying to say, “my hyphen company dot com” all the time. I heard a radio advertisement one time with a hyphen in the domain. I was like, “seriously?!”

Once you click on Next you’ll be taken to the order screen.

IMPORTANT – use coupon code hgc25 to get your first month of hosting free!

Once you’ve setup you account you’ll get an email like this one below. It’s going to take a bit of time for your new domain to actually be registered and active and found on the internet. Could take as long as 24-48 hours.

But you can get started in setting up your site using the host’s nameservers. Click on that link with /cpanel at the end.

Step 2 – Install Your Content Management System (WordPress).

I want to show you how to setup a small business Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress. This software makes it very easy to build and edit your website eliminating the need to call your webmaster to make a simple little change.

Why WordPress?

I’ve used all kinds of content management systems such as Joomla, Drupal, and Site Build It. I’ve even built sites using no CMS at all, just straight HTML and PHP.

WordPress started out as a blogging platform but has grown into so much more than that now. You can build extremely vast websites with a blog component. You can even turn it into a full ecommerce store if you want.

I can tell you that once I tried WordPress there was no going back. I just wish it was the first one I tried instead of the last. But then I guess I couldn’t give you such a definitive suggestion.

If you’re getting nervous at this point, don’t worry. It’s only going to take about 5 minutes. Seriously…

Ok, once you are inside your control panel or CPanel, scroll down to the Software/Services section. Look for the blue smiley face icon Fantastico.

This is going to create the database for you and install the WordPress software. After you click that button you’ll be taken to this page:

Click on WordPress then click New Installation.

Unless you have some reason that you don’t want WordPress installed in the root directory, like your adding a WordPress blog to an existing site, go ahead and leave the Install in directory blank.

Enter your Admin access data. This is what will be used to access the backend of your site. It’s a good idea to write this down.

Enter your Base configuration. There will be some info pre-filled in for you but you’ll want to change the email address to your current email address since it’s probably not setup yet. If you leave it the way it is, the confirmation email will just be sent off into cyberspace somewhere.

The Admin nickname is up to you. Sometimes I leave it as admin other times I use my name as I have here. You can leave the site name and description the way it is because you’ll be changing it later anyway.

Now hit the Install button!

This creates the database. Then click on Finish installation and this will actually install WordPress in the database.

The URL I highlighted here will be the URL you use to get into the backend of your site. They tell you to bookmark it, go ahead and do that. In case you forget, it’s always going to be yourdomain.com/wp-admin.

That’s it! Your small business Content Management System and website is setup. Not bad huh?!

Now if you’ve done all of that directly after setting up your hosting account, your not going to be able to see your site yet. You’re probably going to have to wait a few hours until the domain registration goes through, or what they call “when the DNS resolves.”

If you try now, you’ll get a page like this: