Welcome to the first step of our Up and Running series. These short, to-the-point articles are written to get you on the way quickly and painlessly! By the end of this series you should have:
- Your domain name purchased and configured.
- Your website set up and configured so that the rest of the world can find you. In this instance we’ll be using WordPress.
- An email address set up and configured based on your domain.
Key concepts to keep in mind #
There’s a couple of key ideas to get your head around to avoid repetition at every mention throughout this guide.
- Your domain. Your domain will become your website’s address. To used a geographical analogy, it’s the street address of your site, it’s how people find you.
- Web host. Your web host is the space where your website “lives”. To continue the analogy above, it’s the house or the apartment for your website: your domain helps people find you, and your web host is the real estate.
- Nameserver. A nameserver is like a junction box: it’s the link between your domain and your website. When someone dials up your domain in a web browser, there’s a complex set of things going on under the hood; the nameserver is one of the components that helps connect your domain and your website so the world can find you. For the most part, your nameserver is assigned by your web host; you don’t need to do anything specific, just know that it exists.
