In this third in a series of “Getting Started with Internet Marketing,” I’d like to show you how you link up the domain you bought in our first series article to the hosting company that you subscribed to in the second article. Though it’s a pretty simple process, if you’ve never done it before, you may not even realize that it’s important. But it is! Without having your domain pointed correctly no one will see your Internet marketing site at all. So, let’s fix that, especially for folks just getting started with Internet marketing..

When you hear the word “server,” it’s short for “domain name server or DNS” and what servers do is to translate domain names into Internet Protocol or IP addresses, which are a series of numbers that other servers can read. Because this can get pretty technical, we won’t go any further, just understand that servers connect every computer that’s online to the Internet.

Because you recently bought your domain name, it’s probably still pointed to your domain registrar’s server, and it will remain “parked” there, until you move it to another host’s server. The only time you don’t have to worry about moving it is if you got the domain as a perk for signing up with the hosting company’s service. That can be great, but never base your hosting decision on getting that free domain alone. (See article 2 in this “Getting Started with Internet Marketing” series for some things to consider when buying hosting.)

Let’s just say you’re going to have a separate domain registrar and a separate hosting company. You’ll need to “point” the new hosting company to your domain. So, go to your domain registrar and navigate to where your domains are shown. Usually nearby, you’ll find “change name servers.” Click on that.

When you arrive, you’ll see “ns1.registrar.com” and “ns2.registrar.com.” Both addresses will need to be changed. The way to do that is by first, going to your hosting account, and looking for “name servers (or nameservers).” If you can’t find it readily, do a search for the term both ways, and you should come up with them fairly easily.

You find your host’s name server addresses, copy them down. They’ll look like this: “ns1.yourhostingcompany.com” and “ns2.yourhostingcompany.com.” Both addresses will have to be changed at the registrar. Then, simply go back to the domain registrar, plug in the information from your hosting company and you’re done!

The Internet has become very fast and what used to take days now takes only a matter of minutes in most cases. So, if you’ve uploaded anything to your new hosting account it should appear within a short time. If that’s not the case, then you’ll have to contact your hosting company and find out what’s wrong. But first, check to see that you’ve entered in the proper addresses (it could be .net when you put .com, for instance).

By: Tellman Knudson