In the second step of my Beginners Guide to Create a WordPress Website, I will tell you how to easily purchase hosting using one of my favorite hosting provider, Bluehost.
From where to Purchase Hosting?
Having purchased your domain name for your website in the first step, now its time to purchase a hosting plan for it. With my 8+ experience with more than 10 different hosting providers, I have been able to satisfy myself with only two. Siteground and Bluehost are two of the best in terms of service and support. A web hosting does not need to be cheap, but secure, easy to use and provide good support. In this article, I will be telling you how to purchase a hosting plan for your WordPress website on Bluehost.
How to Select a Hosting Plan
Since I am writing this blog series for beginners, I am considering you need a simple WordPress website for your business where you will be creating some pages, adding some pictures, make a contact page, and a few other things. Don’t worry, I will be guiding you on all of this in my next articles. My point is, here, we are not talking about complex websites like ecommerce, web applications, etc. which have high server requirements.
Having said that, go to Bluehost website and go to hosting from the top menu. Here, you will see multiple options like shared hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, etc. For now, do not worry about other options and go with “shared hosting”.
I will be explaining all types of hosting in another article. But, let me tell you why I chose “shared hosting” and not “WordPress hosting”. This is because, a shared hosting gives us more control over our server space through a cPanel dashboard, however WordPress hosting does not.
For a single website, the basic plan of Bluehost is good enough. You can always upgrade your account whenever required. But if you are planning to start more websites, you can go with other plans. For now, lets continue with the basic plan. Click on the select button in the Basic column.
The Free Domain with Bluehost Hosting
When you purchase hosting from Bluehost, it gives you a free domain with shared hosting plans. So, you may get a domain here instead of from the first step of my guide. But, as I mentioned in my first step, since CrazyDomains gives a really good price for domain renewals, you may skip the free domain here.
Enter the domain name you purchased under “I have a domain” textbox and click “Next”.
However, if you have not yet registered a domain, you may take the advantage of the free domain for an year and then transfer it to CrazyDomains on renewal. In that case, enter the domain name you want to register under “new Domain” and select the extension (.com in most cases) and click “Next”.
Create Your Account
In the next step, you are required to create an account. Enter you details in the account information form. Make sure you enter a proper and working email address here because email address will be most important for your account.
Here, the message above the form saying “Congratulations! This domain you have requested is available” may confused you. Here, available does not mean that it is available for registration. It means that it has not been added to any other Bluehost account. Scroll down to select your package options.
Customizing Your Package
Now, if you register your hosting for 36 or more months, the price is really good good. I suggest going with 36 months because, if you are serious about your business and your website, you will be having it for 3 years. You will see more options, some of which are selected. For now, just uncheck all of them to reduce the cost. You can always add those addons whenever required. The best thing I like about Bluehost is that they provide free SSL. That means you can add SSL certificate to your website without paying anything extra.
Pay using your credit card in the next step, check the terms and conditions checkbox and click “Submit”.
After your payment is processed, you will receive a confirmation about your purchase. In the next step, you will create a password for your account.
Create a strong password and now you are all set with a fresh Bluehost web hosting for your website. Now it’s time to get your website up and running. In the next step, I will be giving you a brief overview of your web hosting and help you in setting up WordPress on it. By the way, Congratulations for the new hosting!
The longer you wait to take action, the more you fall behind.
