1. Choose a plan and sign up to A2 hosting
A2 is hands-down the best hosting option for your WordPress blog (read this article for my comparison of A2 versus other popular web hosts). To set up your WordPress website, the first step is get yourself an A2 Hosting account. To do this you simply need to visit the A2 Hosting website, select your plan and make the initial payment required in order to secure it.
I recommend the WordPress ‘Swift’ package, which ranges between $4.90 and $9.99 per month depending on the available promotions: A2 WordPress Hosting – Signup
Visit A2hosting.com and choose the plan you want to use. (I recommend the Swift plan for the budget conscious, however if you are willing to spend a bit more the Turbo plan is also great as it will load your website really, really fast!).
2. Your domain name
The next page you will see during the registration process with A2 Hosting is the ‘Choose a domain’ page.
Remember that domain you chose and registered earlier with GoDaddy (if you haven’t done this yet, you must go and complete this step first, otherwise things will become very difficult for you). Well, now it’s time to put that domain to good use.
Select the ‘I will use my existing domain and update my nameservers’ option on the ‘Choose a Domain’ page and enter the domain name you purchase in the text field. Click the button and you’ll be moved onto the next step in the A2 Hosting registration process.
3. Configure the options of your plan
Here you are faced with a bunch of options you need to configure, plus paid extras (which, may I add, you can always upgrade to later on).
You get to choose:
- Your preferred billing cycle
- If you want a dedicated IP address (I don’t recommend it, unless you are creating an eCommerce store and need a private SSL certificate)
- Priority support and DropMySite offsite backups (these are things that you don’t really need)
- Your preferred server location (choose one that is the closest to your intended audience)
- Performance Plus and Barracuda Spam Firewall (these are two other upgrades which you don’t really need)
- An SSL certificate (I recommend Let’s Encrypt as it is free and a good choice for personal and small business sites)
- This one is important; A2 Hosting can auto-install WordPress for free (I highly recommend you do this)
- The last option is CloudFlare plus, which is another upgrade you don’t need right now
Once you have selected the options that suit you, click Continue and make the payment.
Congratulations. You are now officially an A2 Hosting customer!
4. Point your domain registrar’s nameservers to the right place
Before you move on to the next task, now is the perfect time to login to GoDaddy (or your preferred domain registrar) and update your nameservers. To do that just open a new window, login to GoDaddy (if you have mislaid your login details search for the Welcome to GoDaddy email in your inbox.
Once logged in, click the DNS option for your domain
Now you’ll see the DNS Management console pictured below; select the ‘Custom Nameservers’ option and enter the following four entries:
- ns1.a2hosting.com
- ns2.a2hosting.com
- ns3.a2hosting.com
- ns4.a2hosting.com
NB: These nameservers ns1 to ns4 are is almost always the DNS settings for A2 Hosting, but please double-check this directly with A2 support if your still site isn’t working in 48 hours.
Click ‘Save’ in Godaddy and you are done!
5. Create yourself an email address from your new domain
If you’re going to take your new blog seriously, and want others to also take you seriously, you are going to need to create a new email address.
I know what you are probably thinking. Why can’t I use that cute little email address I set up 15 years ago? You know the one – it’s probably something like honeybun1976@hotmail.com or ragingbull007@gmail.com.
Well don’t. Pleeease don’t!
Think of it this way. In the online world, your email address is like a business card. It is the first impression that many of your partners, suppliers and customers will have of your business. For example, imagine that you’d spent a solid amount of time, 200 hours or more, conducting and documenting a world-first study in your field. You now have an exclusive piece that you would like to submit to the New York Times, Forbes and Time Magazine with the hope that they will publish your study and ultimately increase the profile of you and your blog. You’ve written the most amazing pitch email, and have sent it to the editor of each publication. Who are they going to trust more, honeybun1976@hotmail.com…..or stephanie@bitcoinreserve.com?
With this in mind, you need your new email address to be slick, professional and trustworthy. I strongly suggest that your primary email address be firstname@yourdomain.com because quite simply, people like to know exactly who is on the other end of the email they have received or are sending.
Take a moment to consider the best email address for your blog, and then follow the steps in this post to set up your new email address on your A2 Hosting account.
6. Login to your WordPress blog for the very first time
You’ve done all of the hard work in setting up your blog, now it’s time to lift up the hood and take a look at the engine room! In future you will log into the WordPress admin area thousands of times; it’s a multi-purpose secure area that allows you, the blog owner, to update the design of your blog, write new posts, configure settings and add new features to your blog.
The login screen for an average WordPress blog is usually accessed by entering yourdomain.com/wp-admin into your web browser. But your blog isn’t average – it’s A2 optimised! This means that instead of following the standard login instructions that you would find on the WordPress Support website, you should follow the steps below:
Step 1: Find your welcome email from A2 Hosting
Step 2: Login to WordPress
In the email you found in Step 1, navigated to your ‘Control Panel URL’. It will be something like https://yourwebsite.com/wxyz (the last 4 letters were uniquely generated by A2 Optimised WordPress blog installer in order to create and additional layer of security for your WordPress admin). You will screen that looks something like this:
- Enter your ‘Admin Username’ in the username field (as specified in the email in Step 1)
- Enter your ‘Admin Password’ in the password field (as specified in the email in Step 1)
- Enter the security code onscreen
- Click ‘Login’
Success! If you have entered all of these details correctly, you will now be greeted with the WordPress admin dashboard. Take a quick look around; you’ll notice that the main menu runs down the left side of the page and allows you to quickly navigate through the main sections of your WordPress blog including adding Posts, Pages, customise your settings and more. I’ll talk you through some of these sections in order of importance in my upcoming tutorials. For now, stop and give yourself a pat on the back for getting this far!
Tip: I highly recommend that you keep your login detailing (including the login URL, username and password) a secret. Sharing any of these details or keeping them in an unsecure location will put your WordPress website at risk of being hacked.
For further information about logging in and configuring your A2 Optimised WordPress blog on A2 Hosting here.