For the beginners out there who want to know how to replace your Web host or registrar's placeholder page with your own, and are not too scared of learning a few things in order to do so, here's a Dreamhost-oriented explanation of how to do it.

Creating a site placeholder page

This article assumes you know enough to create (or use software to create) your own static HTML page, that you have a domain already, and that you have a hosting account already.

Save your file where you can find it

There are a million resources already about creating simple HTML pages. All you need is the simplest. Just google HTML Tutorial to get started…

Once you’ve created the page you want (as HTML), you should name it “index.html” and save it in a place you’ll remember. On a Mac I’d probably set up a folder inside your “Sites” folder that’s named whatever your site URL will be, such as “www.mysite.com”. On a Windows machine, unless you’ve installed some Web server to it already, I’d just create a folder in your Documents folder to store all your various site files (and name it following the same conventions).

N.B.: I also typically create a folder inside there called “_source” that will store all my non-site source files, like photoshop graphics, or fonts, or text files that I get my page copy from, etc. Basically anything that will be converted to Web-ready files but are not themselves intended to be uploaded (Dreamweaver users can then “exclude” that folder from syncing with server).

Set up your domain hosting

Set up a hosting account for your domain using your host’s control panel (on Dreamhost go to “Manage Domains” and click the “Add new domain” button. Choose “Fully Host” and fill out those options as desired. If multiple domains are going to point to the same site, use “Fully Host” for the main one, then “Redirect” for the others).

Point your DNS records to your host

You will need to point your domain name to your host on your registrar. In more technical terms, you will be setting your Domain Name Server (DNS) records. All registrars allow you to set “External DNS” addresses. That’s what you need to do. Point your 3 main DNS records to your Web host’s specified hostnames. On Dreamhost it will be,

• ns1.dreamhost.com
• ns2.dreamhost.com
• ns3.dreamhost.com

Once that’s done you should be able to access your domain in a browser (it will typically take a few hours before it shows up though).

Create Email Accounts

This is not required but inquiring minds want to know…

At this point you should also be able to set up email for that domain. For example you’ll need to create the individual email accounts you want to use. On Dreamhost there is a “Mail” group of links in the control panel that take you to the pages where you can set those up. (also for Dreamhost users, if you chose to use Gmail for mail, you’ll have to go to the gmail app panel to do that.

You generally will not be able to continue to the next step until you can actually see your domain using a Web browser. You will find a directory that’s empty, or nearly so, if you have set things up right so far.

Posting your placeholder page

Now its time to put your file on the server. You’ll need to copy your index file to the proper folder (“directory”) using FTP. Generally you would need FTP software to do that, which is too complicated for this email (although not terribly terribly complicated). But once you’ve set up the domain, most hosts have (Dreamhost included) offer a Web-based FTP tool you can use to copy the file to your “web root.” The web root is the base folder of your new site. As in,

mysite.com/index.html

Once you’ve set up the hosting, set up DNS correctly and copied that file up to the server, you should be able to see it. If you have related files, such as image files, make sure they are linked correctly and copied (“uploaded”) to the right place for the Web server to find them. And that is the subject of another post.

Hope that helps!

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