UPDATE: Due to so many complaints, I’m no longer recommending ThinkHost. However, lucky for us all, my past and still present favorite hosting company, HostGator, has gone green, so I can continue recommending it while knowing there’s an extra goodness in its greeness! So, ignore the rest of this and just know that I love HostGator.

A few days ago, a friend of mine had web hosting issues (and boy, oh boy, over the years, I’ve had plenty of those!). Because she’s an enlightened sort of gal, she decided to investigate using green hosting services. Since she brought it to my mind, I couldn’t help but go out and start doing a little investigating of my own.

There are a few nice choices in green web hosting, but the one I ended up choosing as the best “all ’round” choice for me or most people I know would be ThinkHost. Reasons I chose them as my green web host of choice:

Their services are powered by 100% renewable energy (solar/wind)
Plants a tree for every client
Good plan pricing with all the right plan features
Fast setup
Multiple payment methods available
Host unlimited number of sites for no extra charge
Lots of space and bandwidth offered
Been around for a long time
Sponsors many non-profit organizations and 10% of their revenue value is put back into community projects
Backed by a site I know and trust (tamingthebeast.net)
100% uptime guarantee – and they actually give you 1 day of hosting free for each 1 hour of service interruption
Backup generators in case of power outages

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve often recommended HostGator and I still do. I love that hosting company. But if you really want to move to an earth-friendly hosting company, then ThinkHost is who I’d recommend for you. If you decide to try them, I’ve even got a coupon code you can use. Just enter the following code on the secure package signup form to get $20 off any package you choose : THINKHOST20

Just wanted to pass along another hosting recommendation, in addition to the one I usually recommend. If you are interested in using a green hosting company, ThinkHost is the one to use.

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© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: For Us All, Good, green hosting services, green web host, green web hosting, hostgator, renewable energy, ThinkHost, web hosting
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Today, you’re going to install WordPress on your brand new site. What is WordPress? Well, it’s the coolest thing since ice. It’s a blogging system, that lets you easily become a blogger and have your very own web site without having to know how to actually make a blog or a website. How cool is that?

Ok, here are the super-easy instructions for installing WordPress.

Remember that email that HostGator* sent you with all of the information you need to know about your new hosting plan? Somewhere in that email is an instruction for going to your new control panel. It’s probably something like www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel/ . And the email also tells you what your username and password are to log into your control panel (CPanel).

So…do that. Go to the web address listed in the email for your control panel, and log in.

There? Good.

Now, click on the picture (icon) that is above the word Fantastico. See it? great.

You’ll see a long list of things you can install if you wish. One of the items in that list is WordPress. Click on it.

Now click on New Installation. Answer the questions it asks you. Don’t worry, these are easy questions. Here’s a sample picture. If I left something blank, you should too. And below the picture are some extra instructions for answering these questions.

Admin access data. Choose a username and password you would like to use in order to access the WordPress admin panel after installation is completed.

Base configuration. Type a nickname you would like to use. The nickname is used whenever you leave comments or write an entry on the blog, so choose something you don’t mind the public seeing. The admin email address is where information about the administration of the blog will be sent. Make sure to use an email address that you check regularly. Put in the site url and a short description of your new blog.

Email account configuration. Leave this blank.

Click on the Install WordPress button at the bottom.

Verify that the information you provided is correct and click on Finish installation.

Stand up, twirl around 3 times, sit down, and find your new WordPress blog installed and ready to go!

Admittedly, your brand new blog isn’t pretty at this point. Go ahead, look at it. Go to www.yourdomain.com. But we’ll make it pretty in the next lesson, and it will be easy. Ok?

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part One (The Introduction)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Two (The WHAT)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Three (The DISCLAIMER)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Four (The Domain Name)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Five (The Hosting Plan)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Six (Installing WordPress)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Seven (Your WordPress Theme)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Eight (Your Blogging Voice)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Nine (Making Money)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Ten (The Summary)

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© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: brand new site, fantastico, Finish installation, hostgator, installing WordPress, make a living in your pajamas, New Installation, web address, WordPress, www.yourdomain.com, www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel
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HostGator, like most hosting companies, has several plans to choose from. The cheapest is $6.95/month (called the Hatchling plan), but you have to pay for a year in advance for that plan. If you’d prefer to pay monthly, or in 3 or 6 month chunks instead, the next best plan is $9.95/month for the Baby plan. With the Baby plan, you also get to host as many sites as you want for the same price, so in the future that may come in very handy for you. If it were me, I’d choose the Baby plan, but the Hatchling plan will work as well. (Don’t worry about what all those numbers mean right now. Basically, that’s just letting you know how much space is available for your site under each plan. Any of the plans have plenty of everything for you right now, so that’s not a big consideration at this point).

Just click on the Order Now link in the column of whichever plan you choose.

You can see that the Order Wizard will ask you to choose a domain option. Since you already have your domain name, you’ll want to select I will use My Existing Domain and update My Nameservers only. Then, you need to type in the domain name you purchased (such as flykites.com) into the space that says Existing Domain:. Click Next and proceed to fill out the information requested to finish the purchase.

Once you’ve completed the transaction, you’ll receive an email from HostGator with information about your account. You definitely want to save this in a safe place. I usually save the email AND print it out. In any case, within this email will be the nameservers that have been assigned to your site. You’ll need to tell GoDaddy about these nameservers so you’ll want to look for them in the email that HostGator sends you. *

Ok, now let’s go tell GoDaddy about your new nameservers. Log in to your GoDaddy account and choose Domains / My Domain Names from the menu near the top of the page.

Select the domain name and click on the Nameservers button.

Copy and paste (or manually type in) the two nameservers that you received in the HostGator email. Save.

That’s it. You now not only own a domain name, but you’ve given it a place to live. It can take up to 24-48 hours for the rest of the world to be told about about your new domain name, so typing www.whatever-your-domain-is.com may not do anything yet. Eventually it will. (This is called “propogating” throughout the net).

The only thing missing now is an actual web site. In the old days, that would have meant hiring a designer and spending lots of money and time developing a nice-looking site. Those days, luckily, are gone. You can have a site up and running very quickly. You’re going to do this by installing a free WordPress blog. We’ll discuss this in the next part of the series, but rest assured that this is very, very easy to do. Once you’ve done this and a few more little things, you’ll be ready to roll.

Just a reminder. I’ve tried to make this process easy enough for anyone to understand, but if I still wasn’t clear enough, you might want to purchase a set of instructional videos that really step you through it as though you were watching it happen live.

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part One (The Introduction)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Two (The WHAT)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Three (The DISCLAIMER)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Four (The Domain Name)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Five (The Hosting Plan)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Six (Installing WordPress)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Seven (Your WordPress Theme)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Eight (Your Blogging Voice)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Nine (Making Money)
• How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Ten (The Summary)

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© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: actual web site, designer, hostgator, hosting, hosting plans, make a living in your pajamas, nameservers, nice-looking site, web hosting, web servers, www.whatever-your-domain-is.com
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.