Glimpse into Building a Website

Do you want create your own website but fear that the process might be too complicated? No need to worry because the process of building a website could be as easy as 1-2-3. I know so because I am currently running 2 blogs with its own domain name and one of them is what you call “self-hosted”. To give you an idea on how easy it is to create a website, I will share how I was able to build my websites but I will focus more on my self-hosted blog – how to get your own domain, hosting and connect your domain & web host.

Initially, both my blogs were hosted by Blogger and with address that ends with the usual .blogspot.com. Well because my blogs at the time were still babies, I thought that investing in a domain name would be premature. Fast forward to a few months later, I decided that it was time to take my blogs to another level and get my own domain. Because I do not want to trouble myself with domain registration, I decided to take the easy path and acquired customs domain through Blogger. You can easily register a domain through sites such as GoDaddy though…It was just that since both blogs were hosted by Blogger, I opted not to bother myself with configuring the DNS settings and all.

Getting a custom domain with Blogger is relatively easy, all you have to do is:

• go to your Dashboard;
• click on the “Settings’ tab;
• go to “Publishing”;
• click the “Custom Domain”;
• check the availability of your desired domain name; and finally
• proceed to check out

You will have to wait 3 days at the most though before your custom domain becomes fully functional. Within this period, your blog will be in transition.

There came a time however when I had to get my own hosting and make my 2nd blog a “self-hosted” blog. In choosing a hosting provider, my number one consideration was the kind of customer service and the live chat facility. I am not an IT person and I know that I will need a lot of assistance which makes customer support was my paramount concern. After much thought and consideration, I finally decided to get the services of BlueHost as my web hosting provider. 

I was able to transfer the hosting of my domain from Blogger to Bluehost simply by clicking on the "Transfer Domain" icon under the Domain category of my Bluehost CPanel, enter the domain to transfer and hit "continue" button. To complete the transfer and make everything work, you must either update the IP address for the domain to that of the hosting account, or change the nameservers to those of your hosting provider. In my case, I chose the latter because I find changing the nameservers much easier and less complicated.

To sum it all up, building a website is really easy and a good customer support from your hosting provider and domain registrar will make everything less complicated.