Setting up your blog…

Why write about web site design when this blog is about domains and I’m certainly no web site design expert?  The answer is simple – monetization.  With development your domain name you will get more traffic and more clicks and is more likely to sell and at a higher price.  Personally when I run into a parked page I can’t get leave soon enough and almost never click on the ads. 

At this point I have so many domain names that most will be parked – no time to develop 400 web sites!  But I’m excited about getting a few of them developed.   Fortunately improving web publishing technology means that you no longer need to be a geek to publish on the web.  The platform I chose was WordPress.  I liked a number of things about WordPress.  First its free!  Second I’ve heard lots of comments that its easy to use.  Third it can be used for either a blog or a web site or a combination of the two. 

In order to get your blog up and running you will need to sign up with a web host.  I signed up with HostGator for a couple of reasons. First with their ‘Baby’ plan they will host an unlimited number of sites/blogs and MySql databases for $9.95/month.  And for the first month you can use a coupon code on checkout – ‘wordpress’ – which offers a discount of $9.94 on the first month.  I paid the remaining $.01 by PayPal.  One of the things I liked was that I didn’t have to sign up for a subscription – so I didn’t even have to remember to cancel if I couldn’t get this thing to work. So my risk was a grand total of one penny.

A few minutes later an e-mail arrived from HostGator with log in details for my freshly minted account.

After a bit of perusing the web sites of WordPress.com, WordPress.org and HostGator.com I was ready to get started.

First step was to go to my domain name registrar and change my name servers for NameSlam.com to ns45.hostgator.com and ns46.hostgator.com as specified in HostGator’s e-mail.  The instructions for changing your name servers will vary depending on your registrar.  In this case my name is registered at GoDaddy.  To change your name servers at GoDaddy simply click on the “My Account” link after logging in.  Then select Domain Names/Manage Domains.  Then double-click on the name that you want to change the name servers for.  You should see the icons shown below:

Double-click on the Nameservers icon.  Click on “Custom Nameservers” and fill in the Name Servers as shown below:

The name servers provided to you by HostGator may vary – so make sure you use the Name Servers provided to you in HostGator’s welcome e-mail. 

Changing your name servers – tells servers on the web where to look for the content of your web site and where your e-mail should be sent.  The new name servers can take 24 to 48 hours to propogate.  The result is people typing in your web address make see content from the previous server for up to 48 hours.  My experience has been the new name servers work much more quickly than this and in some cases almost instantly. 

The next step was to set up an e-mail address for my new site.  I want to be able to receive e-mail at an address which contains the name of my web site.  The first step is to log on to the cPanel link contained in your welcome e-mail from HostGator.  Once logged in click on the icon labelled ‘Mail’:

This will bring you to a menu labelled ‘Mail Manager Main Menu’.  Click on the link ‘Add/Remove/Manage Accounts’. The next screen will be labelled Mail ‘Account Maintenance’.  Click on the link at the bottom labelled ‘Add Account’. You will then receive a message saying that your account has been successfully created. 

Of course you need to do more than create an account you need a way to read your e-mail.  There are many ways to read your e-mail.  One of the easiest is to use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. To set up Microsoft Outlook to receive your e-mail to your new web address:

- Open Outlook Express
- From the menu select Tools and then Accounts
- The screen shown below will display:

Click on the Add button and click on Mail.

Now select how you want your name to appear to user’s receiving e-mails from you:

Click on Next.  And type in the e-mail address that senders will be using to send you e-mail. 

click on Next.  And fill in the screen to indicate to indicate the name of the mail servers.  I have typed in ‘mail.nameslam.com’.  Nameslam.com is the domain of the domain that I’m using – Substitute the name of the your domain for ‘nameslam.com’. 

Once you have filled in your mail server names – click on Next. 

Now type in the same password that you used in setting up your e-mail account at HostGator – so in my case I type in ‘FakePassword’ as my password. 

Once you have filled in your HostGator Mail password – click on Next and then on Finish. 

One more step that I found necessary.  click on Tools in Outlook Express.  Then select Account and the account that you just set up – in my example mail.nameslam.com.  Then click on the Properties button and then on then click on the Servers tab.  Check the box that says ‘My server requires authentication’ and click OK. 

You are done – except for testing to see if it worked.  Test by sending an e-mail to your new e-mail address. You should also be able to send an e-mail from your new e-mail address to an existing e-mail address.  To test sending an e-mail from your new e-mail address to an existing e-mail address from Outlook Express – click on the ‘Create Mail’ icon.  From the pick list beside ‘From’ select your new e-mail address.  Under the ‘To’ select your old e-mail address and click send.  And try sending e-mail in the opposite direction to see if you can send an e-mail to your new e-mail address. 

If both tests work great – you are done.  If not here are some things to check.  First check that your name servers are actually resolving to the new address.  If your name servers are correctly resolving and e-mail still doesn’t work ensure that your correctly indicated that the mail settings indicate that the server requires authentication.  To check this in Outlook Express – click on Tools/Account and the name of your new e-mail account – in my case mail.nameslam.com.  Then click on the Properties button and then click on the Servers tab.  Ensure that that there is there is a checkmark beside ‘My Server Reqires Authentication’. 

If e-mail is still not working try changing the Outgoing Mail Port.  Click on Tools/Accounts/Properties and select the e-mail account that I had just set up – mail.nameslam.com – in my case.  Then select Properties and clicked on the Advanced tab.  I then changed the Outgoing Mail Port from 25 to 26. 

If all these things fail you should contact HostGator directly. 

Second step was to log on to the CPanel using the web address provided by HostGator in their e-mail.  CPanel is essentially a tool for managing technical aspects of your web site such as e-mail, databases, backups and many other tools.  Once logged on to CPanel click on the Fantastico Deluxe icon:

The purpose of Fantastico is to install complex functionality on your web server with just a few clicks.

Once in Fantastico click on WordPress under the Blogs category.  Once the information comes up for WordPress click on the New Installation link.

Fill in the screen as shown below:

A couple of things to note:

- as I have done you can leave the “Install in Directory” textbox blank.
- fill in passwords in the blanks indicated.

Click on “Install WordPress”.

In a few minutes the blog will be set up. When you are complete you will be given a web address that you can log on to make your first blog posting just as I am doing now.