How to connect a domain to hosting: step by step guide

Hosting is fundamental to starting a website. However, there is one more fundamental thing that always comes with hosting – registering a domain name and connecting it to your website. After you’ve purchased a hosting plan, we can also help you with registering a domain name for your website. If you want to connect this domain name with your hosting yourself afterwards, the following reading is intended for you.

Understanding Domains and Hosting

You have definitely read a lot about hosting on our blog, so this term doesn’t need excessive introduction. Hosting your website means having it hosted on a special computing device dedicated to this purpose – a server, basically a computer that is housed in a special facility – data center – and is running continuously to run your website. There are different kinds of hosting – dedicated hosting, virtual private hosting, shared hosting, cloud hosting and some other more specific types, but hosting as such is always about the same thing.

Hosting is the main occupation of our company and on our website you can find dozens of affordable hosting offers that will provide your website with everything necessary for its efficient and stable operation.

When we talk about domains, we rather talk about the digital address your website has. Whenever you visit a website, you are going to see some text in the address line. This text – like www.hostzealot.com in the case of this page, is exactly what we refer to when we talk about domain names.

Domain names are necessary for starting a website. First, your website’s address without a domain name would be the IP address of your server, a sequence of numbers that will not make much sense for your site’s visitors.

Second, the domain name is the first thing the visitors of your website see when visiting it as it is shown even before the homepage of your website is loaded. It’s how your website is remembered, memorized, and shared and having a catchy yet simple enough and easy to recognize domain name for your website will be a significant investment of your website’s success as well as its SEO optimization, while a bad choice for your website's domain name may eventually lead to your website’s premature obliteration.

With all this in mind, the right choice of a domain name is a key task for starting a website, as the domain name is likely to stick to your website all along its existence

Why Linking Your Domain to Hosting is Crucial for Website Functionality

As we’ve mentioned, domain is indispensable for the mere existence of your website, so its probably useless to argue why it’s so essential. Nevertheless, it may be useful to be aware of the advantages that become accessible due to a domain and what particular things depend on it. Let’s see.

Accessibility and visibility 

Your website becomes accessible and visible to its potential visitors and search engines, being the primary way of identifying your website and accessing it. Unless you own a secret website, like a hidden service on the Tor network or just some technical website within a company, it’s likely that you want your website to be visible and for this goal there is no other way than acquiring a domain name.

Of course, there is often an option to get a domain name through the website builder you use in case you use a website builder, but this domain won’t likely look somehow impressive but rather a bit cheap. Unless this is a small blog that you are going to use to post something that just a few people are supposed to see, you definitely have to acquire a domain.

Website functionality

Domain is connected to numerous functions of your website. For instance, it has to do with the DNS configuration. That is, when your website is linked to a domain, you configure the DNS (Domain Name System) settings, which are responsible for directing your users to the right server where your website is hosted. This way, whenever someone types your domain into the address line, they will land on the right place.

Besides DNS, linking your domain to your hosting will allow you to create custom email addresses, for which you’ll definitely find numerous applications, particularly In the areas of branding and communication.

Search Engine Optimization

When your domain is used consistently, this points directly to your hosted website, which eventually has a positive effect on your SEO optimization. If this aspect of your website is configured in a wise and consistent way, this will have a highly positive effect on your SEO rankings. For instance, your website becomes more visible to crawlers, that is the search engine bots that are responsible for indexing websites. If, however, there are inconsistencies in your website’s domain configuration, this may significantly damage its SEO optimization.

How to Select the Ideal Domain and Hosting Service for Your Site

Now that you understand the importance of having a domain, let’s dedicate some attention to selecting a perfect domain as well as a hosting service for your website.

Keep it short and memorable: As for the domain name, one of the key characteristics it should have is being short and memorable. It should be easy to remember, type and pronounce. Make sure that you create a user-friendly domain name that is not easy to mistype or misspell, with no misspelled words  and ambiguous characters if possible.

Use keywords: Also, make sure to add some keywords that would characterize your business in the most precise way. This will not only be a direct thing for your users, but also for search engines.

Choose the right domain extension (.com, .org, .net, etc.): The domain extension is this kind of postfix at the end of any domain name, which indicates in fact the top-level domain (TLD). .com is the most popular and versatile TLD, that is used by the vast majority of sites. If your website is active in some specific area, you can get yourself a different TLD, like .org, .net, or .biz. If you are active in some specific geographic area, you can also opt for a geography-related TLD, like .io, .no, .th, or .gl. Also, make sure to consider the price of your domain, since different domains with different TLD can vary dramatically in prices.

Avoid numbers, hyphens, and other special characters: Numbers, hyphens, and other unpronounceable characters can also cause pretty much confusion, as users may just forget them or use a wrong character instead.

Check availability and trademarks: Make sure that your domain is available and doesn’t infringe on any trademarks, so as to avoid eventual legal issues in the future.

Consider future scalability: Make sure to change a flexible name that you’ll be able to modify in the future in case of changes in your business’s scale or branding.

Selecting your hosting service is a separate topic to which a large part of our blog is dedicated. Nevertheless, let’s refresh this aspect.

The main aspect you have to keep in mind when looking for a hosting service is the scale of your digital business and the website you are going to deploy as well as your budget. Based on this aspect, you’ll be able to figure out first the type of the hosting you need as well as the amount of resources to be included into your plan.

Shared hosting is the most affordable hosting type where you can host your website just for a few bucks a month. However, its so cheap for a reason. Shared hosting doesn’t offer dedicated resources and comes with numerous limitations, like limitations to the scale of your website, the rate of the consumption of resources, and being much more vulnerable in terms of security.

Dedicated server hosting and VPS hosting are much more flexible and reliable options. A dedicated server is an entire physical server at your service, with all of your resources, with which you can do practically anything.

VPS is a virtualized server created on top of a physical server. While relying on sharing resources of the server, a VPS offers practically the same quality of performance, reliability, and customization.

Opt for the hosting plan depending on the scale of your project and its specific requirements in terms of hardware, and the location, and this will provide you with a fast and stable website. 

Step-by-Step Process to Link Your Domain Name to Your Web Hosting

After selecting and purchasing a domain, your next and final step is to link your domain name to your web hosting. Let’s see how this is done right now.

(1) Log Into Your Domain Registrar Account

After purchasing your domain, the first step is to log in into your domain registrar account where you’ve actually purchased your domain name. For this task you’ll only need the login details you’ve received from your registrar.

(2) Locate DNS or Name Server Configuration Options

Upon logging in, proceed to the “Domains” or “My Domains” section of your account dashboard. There, you are supposed to see the list of domains registered on you. The domain settings might be located under a button saying "Manage DNS" or "Manage Domain" to access the DNS settings.

(3) Identify and Access Name Server Configuration

In the DNS settings section, you should find the area where you can configure the “Name servers”, which can be labeled as "Custom Name Servers," "NS Records," or simply "Name Servers."

(4) Change Name Servers to Match Your Hosting Provider

From your hosting provider, you’ll get a set of name server addresses (two or more) which you’ll have to enter here. These will look like ns1.examplehost.com and ns2.examplehost.com. Make sure to carefully check these names for accuracy,since entered mistakenly, the name might point your domain to the wrong server.

(5) Apply the New Name Server Settings

Sace and apply the changes by finding a button that says something like “Save” or “Apply changes”.

(6) Domain and Hosting Connection: Final Confirmation

After the changes have been applied, wait for a while and check back to make sure that the domain is pointing to the correct hosting server. For this task, you can use some online tools like “What’s My DNS”. With this, you’ll see if your domain is pointing to the name servers globally.

(7) Confirm Successful Domain-Hosting Link

Now you can check if your website is loading correctly by simply doing anything an regular visitor would do – by typing your domain name into a browser. If everything has been setup, your website should be now live and functional.

Congratulations! Now you’ve linked your domain to your hosting.

FAQ

How can I log into my Domain Registrar account?

Go to the website of your domain registrar account and the login credentials you got from your domain registrar.

Is it possible to host multiple domain names with the same provider?

Yes, it is possible to host multiple domain names with the same provider. Many web hosting providers offer plans that allow you to host more than one domain under a single account. 

What are the consequences of not linking my domain name to hosting?

Your website’s address will look like just bare IP, which won’t make a positive contribution to your website’s visibility and SEO.

How long does it take for Name Server updates to be fully applied?

Name server updates, also known as DNS (Domain Name System) propagation, typically take 24 to 48 hours to be fully applied across the internet. However, in some cases, it can take as little as a few minutes or up to 72 hours, depending on various factors.