Putting a Website Online – Justin Stolpe

In this post we will be putting our website online for the world to see! In order to get our website online we need a domain and web hosting.

Step 1: Purchase Domain Name

Head over to godaddy.com and search for a domain name. If you find a domain name you like, and the name is available, proceed to checkout immediately as we only have minutes before it gets snatched up by someone else. Once you have purchased your domain, it will show up under My Products > Domains.

Step 2: Purchase Web Hosting

Now that we have a domain name, we need a server to host our website. The web hosting server is where our website will live. We will then point the domain we bought on godaddy to our web hosting server. There are many web hosting providers out there like hostgator, siteground, bluehost. I am going with hostgator since that is what I use but you can use which ever you prefer. For a simple website, they all will work just fine.

Step 3: Point Domain to Web Hosting

After you purchase web hosting, login to the cpanel (control panel) and look for the two name servers. No matter what provider you go with they will always show you the name servers. Here are a few examples of what to look for in the cpanel.

Hostgator example

Siteground example

Once you find the name servers in the cpanel, copy them, head back over to godaddy, and click on the DNS button for the domain purchased.

In the DNS Management section under Nameservers, update the two name servers with the name servers from the web hosting provider and click save. This tells the domain to serve up the website from our web hosting provider where our website will live.

Step 4: Create a FTP User

An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) user is required to transfer files to our web server. We can setup FTP users in out cpanel.

Find the FTP Accounts in the cpanel.

Fill out the Add FTP Account form and click Create. Now we have an FTP account we can use to access our web server and update files for our website.

Step 5: Connecting to Our Web Server

Using the FTP account we created we can now access our web server. To do this, I am going to be using FileZilla, it can be downloaded here https://filezilla-project.org/.

Once FileZilla is installed, run it, and click on the “Open Site Manager” icon right in the top left corner.

In the pop up, click on New Site, and enter the FTP account credentials we setup in Step 4.

Click connect and FileZilla will connect us to our web hosting server. The bottom right container will display the files currently on the server. The public_html folder is where our website files need to be uploaded. Click on the public_html folder to open it.

Once inside the public_html folder, drag and drop the website files from your computer into the public_html folder. FileZilla will begin uploading the files to the server and notify you when it has completed the transfer.