This two-part article will take you step-by-step through the process of setting up a hosting account for your web site. Getting a web host is the first step in bringing your portfolio or personal art web site to life. We will be using www.1and1.com as our hosting company.
You can choose any web host you like; however, the exact process will be different, but the ideas presented here should apply.
Part 1: Sign up with a web hosting company
Visit www.1and1.com to get started. On this page, you will see many options and plans.
Our first step is to choose a web hosting plan. There are two major platforms for web hosting: Linux and Microsoft. Both are stable and secure, but Linux hosting offers you more/easier options for free or low cost PHP scripts and applications to power your web site. For our purposes, we will select the Linux platform.
Now we will select the hosting package. There are four packages to choose from: 1&1 Beginner, 1&1 Home, 1&1 Business, 1&1 Developer.
For an art / portfolio site, we will select the 1&1 Business package. It offers plenty of web space and traffic to host all of your large image files. It’s major benefit over the 1&1 Beginner package is the addition of WebStatistics and MySQL Database. Web stats are important, as they let you know how many people are visiting your site, where those visitors are coming from, and other important information to help you gauge the effectiveness of your web site. The database is also important if you plan to run a gallery script, forums, or other web applications.
Click on the Sign up button for the package of your choice.
A series of confirmation pages and special offers will be displayed. Choose any of the offers you like, or ignore them, and press Continue until you get to the “Your Cart” checkout page.
Review your order, and press Continue.
Next, you will enter your personal information. Make sure all the information you provide is accurate and up-to-date, especially your email address. Confirmation emails and support emails will go to the address you provide at this point. When you have entered all the information, press Continue.
Choose a password for your account. It is best to have both letters and numbers in your password.
Enter your credit card information, and make sure your billing address matches the address listed on your credit card. If it does not, you can add a new address.
The last step is to finalize your order and checkout. Be sure to read all the instructions on these last screens to make sure your order is finished.
When you have successfully created your order, you will receive several emails from 1and1.com containing information about your new hosting account.
Tip: If you have email spam filters set up, make sure you allow emails from 1and1.com!
When your account has been set up, continue on to the next part of this guide, Adding a domain name to your web hosting account.
*If you choose a different web host, the signup process will be different.
