How to Set Up Website Hosting

*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. For more information you can read our terms and conditions.

Once you’ve researched and selected your business name, it’s time to get a domain and set up your website hosting.

If you missed part one of starting a yoga blog, you can catch it here:

How to Start a Yoga Blog (or Website)

👉 A great tip I read about from Taylor Standford (and wish I’d done it) is to go to Google/Gmail and set up an email related to your name-name or business-name and use it for all the of the accounts you’ll be creating. You’ll have the same email address and all the info will drop into one handy place to reference it.

choose your hosting PLAN

SiteGround has three plans and you can sign up for any of them with a discount through my affiliate link.

You’ll want to decide which level and for how many years works for you. The more years you’re able to go, the longer you’ll be able to keep the initial discount.

For example, if you select StartUp, it’s around $3.61 (US per month). If you sign up for one year, you’ll pay approximately $44.00 for a year of hosting. Then when you renew in year 2, you’re rate will increase to the non-discounted fee of $12/month, making your annual cost $144. BUT if you have it in your budget go for multiple years hosting you’ll save $100 for every year of hosting you can pay upfront.

But if you’re just starting out, or really on a tight budget, the StartUp plan for one year may be your best bet. You can always upgrade to a different plan at anytime.

If you already have a domain and hosting somewhere else and want to transfer it to SiteGround you can have it done for free with the GrowBig or GoGeek option.

The StartUp plan is perfect for people with one website that are starting now
The GrowBig plan is a great value for money offer, including the option for multiple websites and the SuperCacher that greatly improves a WordPress website speed
The GoGeek plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and larger sites, or more geeky development needs

Now hit the orange-red GET STARTED button under the level you selected.

choose a domain

This next set of instructions is for those of you who don’t have a domain already purchased.

When you choose SiteGround for your hosting, they’ll register one domain for you for free. That’s a $7-$20 per year savings depending on the service you’d use to purchase your domain name outside of SiteGround. Other hosting companies offer one free domain, but not all of them.

Click Register a New Domain
Enter your chosen name-name or business-name (with the .com ending!!!) in the box after www.
Click the blue PROCEED button.

review and complete

If you’re only able to afford hosting for one year, I totally understand. You’ll still get the initial discount, and it’s a great way to test the waters. Other hosting providers offer the lowest monthly price only when you select the longest hosting period available.

Select the initial period for hosting (12-24-36+ months)
Tick the Terms & Services/Privacy Policy check box and whether or not you’d like to receive updates and discounts from the hosting company
Click the blue PAY NOW button

SiteGround will walk you through the last few steps (entering personal info, setting up an email/username and password [write it down so you can reference later!!!], credit card info, and payment confirmation).

wordpress installation

If you chose SiteGround for your hosting, you not only received your domain for free, but they’ll also install WordPress to your site for free too, perfect for us non-techny, budget-minded biz owners.

When you log into your Customer Area (your login information and how to access the Customer Area is sent to you in an email) for the first time, you’ll see a pop-up asking you if you want to start a new website on your account.