Archive for domain name
Free Blog Consulting Part 4
Posted by: | CommentsIn this article on Free Blog Consulting we are going to install Wordpress as our content management system for the Cool New Inventions blog. In part three of this series I walked you through the process of getting a web host. Now that the account is set up I want to install Wordpress to run everything. Wordpress is a free CMS that I recommend for everyone who is starting a blog, for both personal and business use. We start the process by going back to Good News Domains. Under My Hosting Accounts you should see that the description has changed from New Account to that of your domain name.
Click on Manage Account so that we can begin to install WordPress. You should see this screen after you have clicked Manage Account:
Roll your mouse over the Content tab at the top of your screen and you should see this drop down menu:
Click on Value Applications and you will go to the Value Applications screen. If you don’t see Wordpress listed click on the Show All Applications tab. Scroll down until you see Wordpress and then click on it. Follow the instructions to install Wordpress which will include clicking on the domain name, which should show up, typing in a database description (use something related to the blog), and entering a password. Once your information is in click next and you should see this screen:
This is an important step. You want to install Wordpress in the root directory so you have to backspace the word Wordpress out of the field so it looks like this:
Now you can go ahead and hit next. When you are prompted enter an admin name (this is the admin name you will use to access Wordpress) and enter a password. Again make sure that you are keeping a written record of your passwords and user names. Enter a working email address and a title for your Blog (which you can change later) and click on Finish. That should do it. It will take anywhere from five minutes to 24 hours to get Wordpress installed. When it is done you will be notified by email. Then you can type in your domain name and you will see something like this.
In part 5 of this series I will get the Cool New Inventions blog started by adding a theme, some plugins and the initial content for the site.
Free Blog Consulting Part 3
Posted by: | CommentsIn the second article in this series on free blog consulting, I discussed keyword strategies and how to acquire a good domain name. In this article we will go and get a web host for our Cool New Inventions blog. I purchased the domain name coolnewinventions.net from Good News Domains (www.goodnewsdomains.com) for $12.17 yesterday. Today I am going back to Good News Domains to purchase a web hosting package. At the Good News Domains site roll your mouse over the Web Hosting tab and click on Hosting Plans. For almost everyone, all you will need is the linux economy plan.
The cost for this is a little over four dollars a month if you pay for the year so the total is $50.88 for the year. You don’t need to buy any of the other options that they will try and sell you. Just follow the on screen instructions until you have completed the purchase of the web hosting plan.
For this website our annual cost will be 12.17 + 50.88 or 63.05. We will also spend about 10 hours putting it all together and then about one hour a month after that, so we will have about 20 hours in it by the end of the year. For this to be worthwhile, we will need to earn back the $63.05 plus a reasonable wage for our hours. I would consider $75 an hour to be reasonable so this site will need to produce 1563.05 in the next 12 months. That breaks down to $130.25 per month or $4.28 per day. You could save the $50.88 hosting fee by using the free hosting service that Good News Domains offers (when you use the free service you get some ads for Good News Domains in the header). I use the free service for some sites, especially if I think I will just be selling the domain name and not the site in the future, but for these articles I am going to host the site and see what happens. From my keyword research in the first article, I wrote that we could probably make about $1 dollar a day from Google adsense on this site which will be well short of the $4.28 to make it worthwhile.
Once you have purchased the web hosting plan, go back to the Good News Domains home page, roll your mouse over Web Hosting and then click on My Hosting Accounts. You should see your new web hosting account like this:
Click on the Setup Account tab and you will be prompted to accept the hosting service agreement and then you will need to enter a user name and password. Be sure you write these down somewhere so you can find them in the future.
Next you will be prompted to associate your new hosting account with the domain name you purchased previously. This domain name should show up under existing domains:
You will then be prompted to select which PHP version you would like to use, (select 5.x) and the confirm the information that you have provided and click finish. You should see a screen that says your account is pending setup. This process can take anywhere from five minutes to 24 hours. We will take a short break and then get Wordpress installed as our content management system in part four of this series.
