Smart Web Hosting on Go Daddy

You will need somewhere to host your website. Beware of web designers who will set up your website and then demand that you host your website with them for a large monthly fee. If you are a small business person, the costs can prove to be prohibitive. You are better off learning some html code, controlling the host site and outsourcing the elements that you can’t do yourself.

My favorite place to host my websites is Go Daddy. I like them for two reasons. The hosting is cheap and the customer service is outstanding. For most businesses, the $6.99 per month plan is adequate. It gives you 150 gigabytes of space which is plenty for most businesses. Their unlimited hosting plan costs $14.99 but is more than most businesses need. You set up one website as your primary site and create folders underneath the primary site for your other web addresses. Their web technicians will walk you through the process over the phone. They are knowledgeable and will gladly take the time you need to set up the hosting.

Go Daddy has its own File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server which is adequate for most businesses. If you have lots of files to upload, Go Daddy will allow you to use your own FTP server. I moved two large websites over to Go Daddy recently and found that their FTP server worked just fine. If you don’t know what an FTP server is, let me explain that it is the way that you can take the files that make up your website, both html files and image files, and upload them from your computer onto the internet.

To use Go Daddy’s FTP server, you log into your account. Go to Hosting on the list on the left hand column. When your primary account comes up, click on manage account. The Hosting Control Center will come up. On the pull down menu under Content, click on FTP Client. The FTP server will come up. Find the folder from your computer on the left, click on the file you want to transfer. Make sure that the proper folder is highlighted on the right. Click on the double arrow in the middle to move the file into the Go Daddy hosting site on the right.

If you want to see that your website uploaded properly, go to Home in the Hosting Control Center and Click on View. You are able to see if you loaded all of the elements of your site propertly.

If you started a new website, it should go live right away. If you moved your website from another server, contact the technicians at Go Daddy to help you make your website live on the Go Daddy hosting site.

If you have a blog or your business is an affiliate site and you want to use your own domain name to get to the site, you can mask and forward your domain name to the site. Visitors to your domain name will go to the other site but will see your domain name as the address for the site. To mask and forward in Go Daddy, go to Domain Manager from the list on the left side. Find the domain name you want to mask and forward. Put a check by it. Click on it. On the top, click on Forward. It will prompt you to the IP address that you want to forward the domain name to. Type it in. Press Advanced Options. Click on Forward with Masking and click Okay.

Congratulations. If you have followed these instructions, you now have a website up on the internet.