Setting Up Your Web Hosting

After you have registered your domain, you need a server to host your website on the internet. In this article, we are going to set up your web hosting account with SiteGround. SiteGround is one of the best webhosts out there because of their performance, customer support, prices, uptime, and ease of use.

This article is part of the process in creating a website.

Getting The Best Web Hosting

SiteGround has a few different levels of web hosting to choose from:

Go Geek

If you will have a lot of traffic on your website, you should consider getting this plan so that it can handle all of the visitors. The typical monthly visitors that this hosting can handle is 100,000. You get other great features like on demand backups as well.

Grow Big

The typical user will get the best value out of the GrowBig plan because it allows multiple websites, priority support, speed caching options, wildcard SSL, and plenty of bandwidth for a medium sized site. You can easily set up multiple websites using your Namecheap and SiteGround accounts.

Start Up

Because you are limited to only 1 website for this plan, you won't be able to use the Startup plan and have your domain from Namecheap point to what is considered an add-on domain at SiteGround.

That is considered two websites: your hosting domain and your Namecheap domain and is not allowed on this plan. In order to use this plan, you would have to also register your main domain with SiteGround, which is not recommended as we discussed earlier.

Web Host Setup

Estimated time: 10 minutes

1. Go To SiteGround: Go to SiteGround's website by clicking here.
2. WebHosting Service: Click on the "See Plans" button in the middle of the screen. Or, if you can see it at the top of the site, on the menu, click "Web Hosting".
3. Choose Plan: Now you need to select the hosting plan. You want to choose the Grow Big plan, where we covered the major reasons why above. When you are ready, click "Get Started" under the Grow Big plan.
4. Domain Setup: For this part, you will need to set up a domain for the web hosting. You should register a new domain name for your web hosting, as we discussed in an earlier section. Remember that we registered your main domain with Namecheap earlier. What I always do with my sites is register my main domain with Namecheap (for example: empoweredowl.com), and then I register a throw away domain with SiteGround (for example: empoweredowlhost.com). That way, if you ever need to change your hosting, you won't have any problems losing your main domain. Go ahead and enter your hosting domain name (for example: empoweredowlhost.com) and then proceed.
5. Info And Payment: On the next page, you will need to enter in your contact and payment information. You will also review your setup choices to make sure they are correct. I always get the domain registration and the domain privacy with my webhosting. I don't get the SG Site Scanner, as we will be using a plugin for security in WordPress. You should decide if you want that extra feature, and keep in mind that you can always add it later after your account is created. When you have reviewed all of your info, choices, and the terms, then you can proceed.
6. Login First Time: After your order is completed, you will receive an email confirmation from SiteGround about your account creation, and they will give you your login username. You can then use that username and your password to login to your account.
7. Email Verification: SiteGround will send you an email requesting that you verify your email address for the domain registration. Simply follow the instructions in the email where you will click on a link to verify. You have to complete this verification in order for your domain to be fully registered to you.
8. My Accounts: After logging into your SiteGround account, you can click the "My Accounts" tab at the top of the page. On this tab, you can access:  a) info about your web hosting account, when it expires, how to renew or upgrade it, b) your account domain name servers (DNS), which we will need later, c) your web server IP address, d) cPanel access, e) FTP details, f) email info, and g) domain name: expiration, manage, and renew capabilities
9. Other Tabs: At the top of page, there are other tabs where you can access support, billing,  add services, and resources for tutorials and add-ons.
10. cPanel: The main way to set up your website for WordPress in the beginning is through cPanel. Here we will just have you access it for the first time so that you are aware of how to get to it for future steps. On the My Accounts tab, click the "Go to cPanel" button near the top. On the next screen, which is cPanel, there are some major things you will be using in future steps: a) Addon Domains, b) WordPress Installer, c) SuperCacher, d) Email Accounts, e) File Manager, and f) Let's Encrypt
11. Add-On Domain: Next, we need to add a domain to our web hosting server so that we can connect our Namecheap domain to it. This is the main feature in the GrowBig plan that is not available in the Startup plan. Login to your SiteGround account, go to My Accounts, then click the "Go to cPanel" button. In cPanel, click on the "Addon Domains" button under the Domains section. 
12. On the next screen, you need to type in your Namecheap main domain name into the "New Domain Name" text box (for example: empoweredowl.com).
13. When you do that, it will auto populate the next two text boxes. Do not change those. Enter in a password in the two appropriate boxes. Save your password in a safe place, and then click the "Add Domain" button. It will then tell you that it successfully created it. Click the "go back" button, scroll down, and verify that it shows up near the bottom of the page.
14. Problems: If you have some unexpected errors or problems arise, in order to address them, you may need to submit a ticket with SiteGround support or use the live chat. You can do this by logging into your SiteGround account and at the top, click the "Support" tab, then you can use the different options that fits your problem to get someone to help you. I often use the live chat and they have my problem solved in under 5 minutes. Their customer support is one of the many features that make them one of the best web hosting companies.