We have set up a domain and integrated it with hosting account. Now the time has come that we check if everything has gone by our plans.
Step 1
Type in the domain name name you registered in the address bar of your browser. Press enter and wait for your page to load. It shouldn’t too long as the site has nothing to show, or in other words its empty. You will probably see a page with the directory listing of your home folder, i.e., public_html or htdocs.
Troubleshoot
I see a page which says ‘You account has been created’ or something similar instead the directory listing.
This is nothing unusual. Hosts usually create an index page by default. You don’t need and will have to delete it later.
My site doesn’t load at all. My damn browser shows a server timeout.
There can be a lot reasons to this. Lets discuss the common ones.
- Make sure your domain properly configed. Just check whether the nameservers you entered are correct or not.
- It may take up to 24 or 48 or 72 hours, depending on your host, for you domain to propagate. You domain might not have propagated. You might have to wait for few more hours.
- Your cache memory still has the old values for your domain. Clear the cache and you’ll have your site working.
Step-2
Now the time has come to create our first personalized homepage (for testing).
Log on to your hosting account’s panel and find for something like ‘File manager’ and go to root folder (public_html on Linux servers or htdocs on windows servers). In this file you need to create a new file by the name of ‘index.html’. If a file named ‘index.html’ or ‘index.php’ or any index file already exists, you have to delete it first before creating the new one.
Once created open the file so that we add some stuff to it. I’ll say just type in a warm welcome for yourself, something like “Welcome to your site.” !!
Go open your website in an another window and you’ll see your message. So that means you are done with with testing.
Now we are through with the testing which means we can soon go live to a wider audience.
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In the real world, you got a name, an address, in short, a unique identity. Similarly, in the virtual world you would also need an identity…. Something which is unique and represents you and your website… Something which like your name or address… Something which is a DOMAIN. Yeah! that’s the most convenient way to reach a website.