How to set up an internet business? (Step 6-7)

Step 6: Configure website and DNS settings

After you register a domain name and sign up a web hosting account, you need to configure your website setting. There are 2 situations:

Situation 1: You register a domain name and sign up a web hosting account in the same company;

Situation 2: You register a domain name and sign up a web hosting account different companies.


Let’s first talk about Situation 1.

Situation 1: You register a domain name and sign up a web hosting account in the same company;

In most cases, if you are a new customer to sign up a hosting account, you can get a FREE domain registration. DNS setting has been already set up for you. It is also less confusing to manage your domain name and hosting account under the same company, with the same username and password.

For an instance, if you sign up a web hosting account via dreamhost.com, you will get one FREE domain registration. And this domain name remains FREE as long as you remain as dreamhost’s client.

Log in your website-based dreamhost.com control panel, click on “Domains”, and then click on “Manage Domains” to view, edit, add other domains/sub-domains and their services. You can also view and change your DNS information. Since you are going to use the same company to host your domain name, you don’t need to change any DNS information.

Now let’s take a look about Situation 2.

Situation 2: You register a domain name and sign up a web hosting account in different companies;

If you register a domain name and sign up a web hosting account in different companies, you have to remember usernames and passwords of both accounts. You need to log in the account of the domain name and configure your website settings there. You also need to change the DNS setting of your domain name account to match the DNS setting of your hosting company.

For example, you register your domain name via Yahoo’s $1.99/1st yr. domains program, while sign up a web hosting account via dreamhost.com.

You need to go to http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/, and put in your username and password to sign in. Click on “Domain Control Panel”, and then click on “View/Edit your Domain Registration” to manage your contact information and registration details, and click on “Forward your domain” if you want to send visitors to another web address automatically.

If you want dreamhost.com to host your domain name, you need to first click on “Edit domain locking” to unlock domain. And then click on “Manage Advanced DNS Settings” and “Change Your Nameserver” from:

Primary: yns1.yahoo.com
Secondary: yns2. yahoo.com

To:

Nameserver1: ns1.dreamhost.com
Nameserver2: ns2.dreamhost.com
Nameserver3: ns3.dreamhost.com

Your can repeat the above-mentioned step in “Change MX Records” if you prefer. Don’t forget to lock your domain name to ensure that no one can modify your name servers without your permission.





Step 7: Start to build your web pages

If you sign up an account with a whole package hosting company (e.g. ProStores, Yahoo!, and GoDaddy.com, 1&1 Business eShop, to name a few), you can use its pre-designed templates/themes and website builder to build web pages.

Take 1&1’s WebsiteBuilder for example. It helps you to design and build a website without programming experience or HTML know-how. You can select a template from hundreds of choices with different categories and subcategories, and then customize it to match your exact needs (e.g. change the logo, title, main image of the website etc.)

You can setup font types, sizes and colors. You can easily add other elements to your site, like feedback forms, a visitor counter, guestbook, forums, a flash-animated start page(depending on the package you have). You can add META tag keywords and descriptions within the WebsiteBuilder interface so search engines can find your site.

But WebsiteBuilder or similar pre-designed website tools have many disadvantages too. The biggest one is: if you choose to switch to a new web hosting provider, you will loose your website template and pages. You would have to manually copy and paste all your web content to a temporary place somewhere, and rebuild your pages when you setup your website at the new web hosting provider. Sometimes, it is even impossible or very labor intensive to copy the content from one website to another under the same hosting company!

Another disadvantage is: your freedom or control is quite limited. Once you choose a template/theme, you are locked into this format and cannot change it, you cannot put the logo wherever you want, the options for font types, sizes and colors are limited, you cannot build a certain amount of pages beyond the definition set by the website builders.

If you don’t want to use pre-designed templates/themes and website builder to build web pages, there are 2 major website designing tools available in the market: Dreamweaver and FrontPage. Sometimes the hosting company supports these third-party tools.

Personally, I prefer Dreamweaver CS3, which is truly a professional HTML editor for designing, coding and developing websites, web pages, and web applications. The visual editing features in Dreamweaver CS3 let you quickly create pages without writing a line of code. Dreamweaver CS3 includes many coding-related tools and features. It also helps you to build dynamic database-backed web applications using server languages such as ASP, ASP.NET, CFML, JSP and PHP.

You can build your web pages such “About Us”, “Privacy policy”, “Q & A”, “Contact Us”, and etc via Dreamweaver CS3.

Then you can upload these HTML pages onto your server via WS_FTP LE 5.08, a Freeware that allows you to transfer files quickly and easily using a graphical interface, view, select, sort, copy, delete, rename, refresh, create, change directories files in local and remotes sites in side-by-side directory windows. You can also upload files using WebFTP provided by your hosting company.




How to set up an internet business? (Step 8-10)