Here is the second of 3 articles that will take you from the first step of a domain name registration to the final step of getting your website online.
Now that you have registered your domain name
you need to find a place where your web site will be hosted, unless the registrar already provides you with some kind of web hosting. (For more information about hosting you can visit our article section dedicated to web hosting)
What's next? Your hosting company should give you details about how to get your site up and running. This information includes your website administration username, passwords, FTP information, paths to directories where your files should be uploaded, and most importantly, what your domain name servers (DNS) are.
Domain name servers (DNS) provide the link between your domain name (yoursite.com) and your IP address (Internet Protocol address). The IP address is a series of numbers like this: 123.456.78.9. Every web server has a unique IP address which, in the case of dedicated servers hosting a single domain, is equivalent to the domain name. A site hosted on a dedicated server will respond to either 123.456.78.9 or mywebsite.com by serving the requested webpage.
It is common that websites are hosted on shared servers. This type of hosting, also called Shared Web Hosting, means that one server is hosts many different websites. All sites on shared server use the same IP address. If you type an IP address to access a website on shared server you will get an error page, access denied page or will be redirected to the web hosting company's web site. So domain names are the only way to request these websites - they cannot be accessed by IP address.
Domain Name Server Configuration
As you first register a domain name, it will be registered on the DNS of the registrar. Until you sign up for a web host, the registrar will usually redirect all requests for your domain name to an 'Under Construction' or similar page. Note that there is no time limit between registering a domain name and finding a host. There is a group of people who register domain names without ever planning to build a website. Most people, though, register a domain name with the intention of using for their web site. Now you need to point your domain name to your web host server. How do you do that? It's quite simple. All you need to do is to change the DNS configuration in your domain name administration page.
Once you get to the configuration page you will already see some name server entries which will most likely be the servers of your registrar.
An example of DNS configuration:
Primary Name Server: NS1.SOMESERVER.COM (205.50.14.2)
Secondary Name Server: NS2.SOMESERVER.COM (205.50.22.2)
Now all you should to do is to replace the original entries with the name servers provided by your web host. This information is available either in their informational package that they email to you, on their online setup guides, or on their FAQ section. If you can't find the DNS it's best to contact your web host and ask for it. If you have registered your domain name from the hosting company, they will usually make the necessary changes for you when they set up your account.
DNS changes should take effect within the next 24 hours. Once this process is completed, your site becomes accessible from everywhere in the world through the World Wide Web.
In the next article I will focus on the basic of getting your site published on the internet.
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