Self Hosting Wordpress

WordPress is probably the most popular platform when it comes to blogsites worldwide. As it is an open source product, we can all use it for free including the myriads of plugins, themes and widgets that come with it.

But no amount of cool gadgets are going to help us if we can’t help to launch our blog I to start with. Many newcomers to blogging struggle to even get their blog off the ground and this post is to help them just do that.

To get started you will need your own domain name and my best bet would be to go over to the registrat and do that. One thing you should never do is to buy your domain name and host your site/blog at the same place. The reason being, if your host goes bum up, so will your site!

Go Daddy is by far the most respected domain registrar worldwide. I have held over 60 or so domain names with them over the course of my time online and I never had a single problem with them.

• Once you got a suitable domain reflecting your niche, you will need to get a website host. My recommendation here is Host Nine. Host Nine offer starter  account to get started for $9.95/month. Considering you can add unlimited email accounts, databases and sub domains it is a great bargain. I personally use them with my own sites and have so far not needed to upgrade (with over 400 actual visitors/day and several sub domains)
• Now we can get to the nitty gritty of getting started. The first thing you will have to do is to propagate your DNS. What this means is the you need to tell Go Daddy that they need to point your domain name to your server over at HostGator. This can be done within your admin panel at Go Daddy. You will need to login then navigate to - my domains - then tick the domain name you want to point to your server - Namservers - in the window that opens now fill the data you received from HostGator (or any other server) when you signed up in the welcome email. You will need to fill the first two fields like the following, replacing my numbers (not real BTW) with yours.

1.) NS123.HOSTTHIS.COM

2.) NS 234.HOSTTHIS.COM

then click - save!

 This will propagate your domain to your new server and generally it will take around 2-24 hours for that to happen.

These steps are the first in order to get up and running with your won WordPress blog on a self hosted domain.