Web hosting is simply a service you pay for to store your website files in.
Think of it this way, if your website is your house, and your domain name is
your house address, then web hosting is the land beneath your house.

Your website is made up of many different types of files. To make your
website accessible to the Internet, you need to host your website files with
a good hosting company. You can’t just store your website files on your
local computer. It’s not powerful enough to handle the traffic

When you host your website files with a web hosting company, they are
able to serve up your files to your visitors 24/7. They have powerful
computers or servers to keep your site online

Web hosting companies offer different hosting plans to their customers.
From shared servers to virtual private servers, you have a host of options
to choose from.

But for your new website, you don’t need to pay for the most expensive
plan – a beginner or ‘newbie’ plan that runs on shared hosting will work just
fine.

You can always upgrade to a better plan when you start gaining some
traction with your site.

So, what’s the best hosting for your WordPress site?

While there are thousands of web hosting companies in the entire world,
WordPress.org officially recommends three web hosts. These are Bluehost
(https://www.bluehost.com), DreamHost (https://www.dreamhost.com), and
SiteGround (https://www.siteground.com).

A Quick Comparison Of Bluehost, DreamHost and SiteGround

While I’m not going to be recommending one host over the other (you have
to decide for yourself), here’s a quick rundown of the differences and
similarities between each web host.

• Pricing: For pricing, Bluehost’s Basic Plan offers the lowest price at
$2.95/mo if you lock yourself in a 3-year contract. The second cheapest
is SiteGround’s StartUp Plan at $3.95/mo for a 12-month contract. The
most expensive among the group is DreamHost. Its $6.95/mo plan gets
you locked in a 3-year contrac

• Free Domain Name: Both Bluehost and DreamHost offer a free domain
name for all new customers. For SiteGround, you’d have to shell out an
extra $15.95/year for your domain name.

1-Click WordPress Installs: All three web hosts make it easy for you to
install WordPress with this feature. With just a single click, you’ll have
WordPress installed on your site in no time at all.

Money Back Guarantee: If you change your mind about your hosting,
both Bluehost and SiteGround offer a 30-day money back guarantee.
DreamHost, on the other hand, gives you a 97-day money back
guarantee.

Support: You can’t go wrong with any of these web hosts when it
comes to technical and customer support. You can contact them for help
24/7. If you like figuring things out yourself, all three hosts provide a
robust knowledgebase full of tutorials and screenshots.

If you don’t want to use any of the official WordPress partner web hosts,
know that you’re free to use any other web host you like.

You just need to make sure they are able to meet the minimum
requirements for running WordPress:

• PHP version 7.2 or greater
• MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.0 or greater
• HTTPS support

If you’re not sure your web host meets these requirements, WordPress
even makes it easy for you to send a quick email to your host by supplying
this copy-and-paste letter for you:

I’m interested in running the open-source WordPress
<https://wordpress.org/> web software and I was wondering if my
account supported the following:

PHP 7.2 or greater
MySQL 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB 10.0 or greater
Nginx or Apache with mod_rewrite module
HTTPS support

For the most part, however, many commercial web hosts do offer
WordPress support, so you may not need to use that email at all.

Important Tip About Your Domain Name And Web Hosting

To keep things simple, I would recommend you buy your first domain name
from your web hosting company. As I mentioned in the previous section,
you can get a free domain name from Bluehost and Dreamhost.

The reason I recommend this is because doing so will help you simplify
your website setup process. If you buy your domain name from a different
company, you would need to point your domain name to your web host.

For beginners, the ‘linking’ process can be quite overwhelming. Messing
around with domain nameservers can make your head spin. However, if
you’re willing to learn the technicalities involved, you’ll find it’s really not
that complicated to link your domain name to your web host.

Now that you know the important stuff about domain names and web
hosting, let’s move on to the next step.

Setting Up Your Domain Email Address

One of the benefits of having your own self-hosted website is you get your
own custom domain email address.

For example, if your domain name is ‘myawesomedomain.com,’ you can
create email addresses like ‘support@myawesomedomain.com’ or
‘sales@myawesomedomain.com.’ Because it’s your custom domain, you
can choose any name you want!

If you’re trying to build a brand for yourself or your business, then having a
custom email address is very important. Not only does it help with your
branding, but it also makes your brand more credible.

For example, if people email you on your site and you respond to them
using a @yahoo.com or @gmail.com, people may not immediately
recognize you. In fact, people may outright ignore your email.

But if you use a custom domain email address, chances are they’d
recognize your domain name, and they’d go check out your email.

To set up your custom email address, you’d need to login into your web
host’s cPanel.

Each web host’s cPanel may look different from each other. If you choose
to sign up with Bluehost as your web host, then this is what your cPanel is
going to look like:

To properly set up your new custom domain email account, you would
need to enter the following details:

1. Name – it can be anything you want. For example, it can be support,
sales, help, contact, or even your first name.

2. Domain name – if you have more than one domain in your account,
you’d have to select the correct domain from the drop-down.
Otherwise, if you just have one domain, then that will be the default
option.

3. Password – you can choose your own password, or you can have
Bluehost generate it for you. Make sure you keep your password in a
secure location.

4. Default webmail client – Bluehost offers 3 webmail clients: Horde,
SquirrelMail, and Roundcube. You’re free to use any of them, or you
can use another email client like Outlook or Gmail

5. Mailbox storage – you can specify how many MBs or megabytes
you want for your mailbox or you can go for ‘unlimited’ storage.

Once you’ve filled out all fields, hit the Create button.

Congratulations! You’ve just created your first custom domain email
account!