Tech2know

Friends, I just moved from free wordpress blog, http://tech2know.wordpress.com , to my own domain  http://tech2know.in. Initially, it was not so easy for  me because I am no where near to this field and don’t have any  idea about PHP, Website designing, directory structure of a website, web related jargons etc. In the end I found that it was not that difficult. It was just a matter of knowing little things. I did some reading and everthing was completed in a matter of a few hours. The transfer was smooth and then I thought to write a complete article on the same as it may prove useful to someone like me . So, here we goes.

1) Deciding name of your domain : First of all you need to decide on the name of new domain. As we already have millions of domains registered therefore it is highly probable  that the domain which you are thinking of is already registered by someone else. For example, initially I thought of .com and afterwards came to know that the same is already registered and I settlled for http://tech2know.in. It is very easy to fing whether a domain is available or not. There are numbers of sites which can do this for you. You can check this on http://net4.in.  Just open the site, point mouse pointer on ‘Domain Registration’ link, fill the box with the domain name and click on search. The next page will show you which domains are available and which are not. Below is the screen shot.

You can google ‘Domain availability’ to find other websites through which you can check this.

2) Registering your domain: Once you decide on the domain name. Its time to register the domain on your  name. You need to pay a small amount for this. You can choose the time(1 Year, 2 year etc) for which you want to register the domain. Accordingly, you will  be charded by the registrar. There are a number of registrar which you can opt for. I opted for http://Net4.in. Actually, one of my friend also registered with this registrar and I just followed the suit. After you are through with the registration process, the domain is blocked,for the time duration you selected, on your name. No one would be able to take the same domain for the time duration. After registrastion, you will receive a main from the registrar in a day or 2. The mail will contain your login details so that you can login and manage your domain.

3) Buying a hosting : In step 2 you have registered the domain. Now its time to buy a hosting for your website. In simple words, it just buying some space for your website. Remember that in above step you just blocked a domain name for you. You still need to create your website which will recide on a web server. So, you need to buy space for your website on a webserver. There are a number of hosting providers like, GoDaddy, Hostgator, Net4 etc. I opted for Hostgator because, again, the same friend came into the picture . Well, its only 5 days since I am using the hosting but quite happy about their technical support. Its fast. There are many plans offered by the hosting providers and you can choose one of then depending upon your requirement and budget. Once you are through with the buying process, you will receive an email which contains details like your name servers, website ip, link of your cPanel etc. cPanel is nothing but a panel is a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site. We will cover the use of these details in coming steps.

Now, you have both domain and hosting space . Its time for the procedure of transferring your old freee wordpress blog to new hosting.  For moving your old wordpress posts to the new hosting, first of all you have to install wordpress in your hosting. So continuing our steps.

4) Create a admin email account : You can create this via ‘Email accounts, option under ‘Mails’ in cPanel. This will be used during installation of wordpress.

5) Installation of wordpress : Login to your cPanel by supplying the login credentials you received in you mail. There is a very helpful toolcalled Fantastico in your cPanel which automates the process of installing wordpress. Below is a screen shot of the same.

Click here to see that installation process in detail. Once installation is complete, you can visit your wordpress panel via <Your domain name>/wp-admin(example tech2know/wp-admin).

6) Change DNS or domain name server : Domain Name Server is a server that performs the mapping of easily remembered domain names to IP Address. In simple words, when you enter a site name in a browser then domain name server maps the site name to the IP address of the site. Every website is represented with a unique IP address. IP addresses are difficult to remember. Therefore, concept of domain name server came into existance and we are not required to remember IP address.

Every registar has a different procedure for changing your domains DNS, however they are all done basically the same way. You already have your name servers in the mail which you received after buying hosting(step 3).  Name of domain name servers are of form ns1.hostgator.com, ns2.hostgator.com etc. Below are the steps. Here I am providing the steps on changinh the name servers in net4.in as it is my domain registrar.

Login to ‘Net4.in’–>Click on ‘Domain’–>Click on ‘your domain name’(tech2know.in)–>Click on ‘NS’. Now fill below screen with name servers and their corresponding IP addresses.

If you don’t know IP addresses then just use Ping <Name server> command on command prompt. It’ll give you the IP addresses. After filling the name servers and corresponding IP addresses, click on ‘Proceed for NS change’. It takes some time(approx 24 hours) for the change to apply completely.Note Some domain registrar doesn’t ask for IP addresses of the name servers. In that case just fill the name servers.

Click here to see the procedure of DNS change with other registrars like Enom.com, GoDaddy.com, Register.com, Yahoo.com, Dotster.com and a few more.

7) Transfering posts from old blog to new : Login to your old wordpress blog. Go to ‘Tools’->Export and download export file.

Now, login to your new domain via <Your domain name>/wp-admin and ‘Import’ the downloaded export file via ‘Tools’->’Import’->’WordPress’->Select the file->’Upload file and import’. Once the processing completes, you will see all of your old posts in new domain.

With this we come to the end of this topic. Once your DNS change complets, you can view your site with all the posts. The site will have default wordpress theme which you can change as per your requirement. Once your site is up, you can access your cPanel via <your domain name>/cpanel.

Now the only setting remaining is to redirect all the traffic on your old wordpress blog site to new domain. You can take a look at my post How to redirect traffic from your old wordpress blog to your new self hosted domain.

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