Welcome to part two of my Fly Fishing Books domain development tutorial. If you missed the first post here it is for reference. In this weeks post I will be covering how to move your domain from being parked with your domain registrar, to hosting it on a server and then setting up a basic landing page to begin working on. The aim of my Fly Fishing Books posts is to give an insight into domain development and how by following these simple steps it can help you make your own scalable development strategy for your domains.
So you have registered your domain(s), now what?
The next step is to find a hosting package that you can host your domain so that you can begin developing it into a website. Your domain registrar will usually have various hosting packages. I would suggest using one of the larger names such as fasthosts.co.uk or 1and1.co.uk where packages are relatively cheap but more importantly reliable. I am using a dedicated server which is different to standard hosting through a registrar because it is my own server ie. not shared with anyone else. This costs £117 per month but you should be able to find simple web hosting packages for just a few pounds per month to start with and as you develop more and more domains increase the hosting/server package that your require accordingly.
Depending on whether you are using your domain registrar’s hosting services or an independent one you may need to change the DNS settings of your domain in your registrar control panel. You will find a named servers section where you should amend the settings to point your domain to your servers address, for example:
Name Servers:
- NS1.yourserver.co.uk
- NS2.yourserver.co.uk
Alternatively you can change the A-Record of the domain to the IP Address of the server you want to host it on:
A-Record:
- 12.12.123.12
Once you have done this you will be able to add the domain name to your server and create an account for it.
When you have created your domain account on the server:
You will have access to be able to change all aspects of the domain hosting, such as email accounts, file management, MySQL databases ect via the server control panel. My server comes with cPanel a fantastic back end system which is very easy to use. It is through the control panel that you will be able to upload pages of code, style sheets and content to develop it into a website.
For Fly Fishing Books.co.uk I wrote a very simple piece of code in HTML and uploaded it to the server, here’s how it looks in source code and web page format:
The basic landing page is up and running, what’s next?
Next I will need to add some relevant content including styling the page and adding graphics. Then begin some SEO (search engine optimisation) of course adding in some Adsense and any other affiliate banners etc which will help me to monetise the site.
Hours worked on the site so far from registration to current status = 0.5 hrs
Stay tuned for the next edition of Fly Fishing Books Domain Development Tutorial.
Thanks
Gary
