Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 4: Linking Your Domain Name to Hosting Account

26 Apr 2009

Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 4: Linking Your Domain Name to Hosting Account

Author: Jim | Filed under: 30-Day Blogging

We bought our domain name on day two, and purchased a hosting account from a reputable company like HostGator on day three. Go ahead and catch up on those steps if you are behind. Now, we need a way to sync the two together!

As I talked about before, a website is nothing more than a bunch of files on a server somewhere around the world. We can access this server (and the files on it) by using a domain name. The domain name essentially just tells your web browser where exactly those files are stored! So the question now is simple… how the heck do we get our domain name to go where it needs to go?!

The Name Server – What The Heck Is It?

You may hear the term “name server” thrown around on the internet. What exactly is this? Essentially, you can think of it like an internet’s version of a phone book. A name server is really a directory of domain names that match to certain IP addresses. All of these name servers around the world have their information stored in a central registry, which enables your browser to work more efficiently to find the websites they are pointing to. So in a nutshell, when you buy hosting… you will be given a domain name server, which is essentially an IP address to define the server you are hosted on!

Step One: Finding Your Name Server

Locating your name server can be a bit difficult, and is really a case by case deal. Normally, I would recommend that you simply look on your web hosting company’s website, especially in the FAQ section. The second best way to get this information would be to log into your backend control panel (most typically “cPanel” or “Plesk”), and browse for the information there.

You are going to be looking for two locations: the primary name server and the secondary name server. You will need both of them to link your domain name to your hosting account. For those of you that chose to use Host Gator web hosting, this is going to be a hassle-free! Simply log into your hosting account’s cPanel address (given to you in a confirmation email), and look on the left-hand side of the page. Right there in the “Account Information” section, you should see two name servers. Mine are “ns1005.hostgator.com” and “ns1006.hostgator.com”. As a rule of thumb, the one with the lower number is your primary name server (the other is your secondary).

Step Two: Telling Your Domain Name Registrar

By default, any domain name registrar will have their own name servers as the default. They do this because they want to have your website hosted with them… bringing in more revenue! You, however, will not be doing this (assuming you didn’t buy hosting and your domain name from the same place).

Now that we know our primary and secondary name servers, we need to log into our domain name registrar account and mess with the settings. Go ahead and go back to 1and1.com, GoDaddy.com or wherever you registered your domain name and log into your account. Then, get on over to your specific domain name that you registered. From there, you can “edit DNS settings” (or similar option), and will see the opportunity to switch things over from their name servers to your own. Enter in your primary and secondary name servers (leaving the third blank), and save your changes!

Typically, switching over your name server will take from 12-48 hours… depending on how good your domain name company is at passing through DNS changes. Wait this one out, and your website should be good to go in the morning!

Tomorrow, we’ll be installing our blog… so stay tuned!
-Jimvesting