Faqs

This tutorial shows you how to create a website in wordpress. It takes 20 minutes to have your very own website running

Step by step Guide to Creating Your Own Website

Register a Domain Name

The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get a domain name for example. (www.websitehostingafrica.com). Take your time because the domain name you choose becomes part of your brand. You can see details on how to choose a domain here>>

This is the name you want to give to your website and subscription is on yearly basis. Getting a name does not get you a website. It is just a name like a business name registered. Having a business name does not mean that you also have the shop or office space.

Choose a Website Host Account

A website host is a company that has many computers connected to the Internet. It houses your site and provides you with space to upload web pages, email addresses etc.

Getting a website hosting account is like renting an office or shop premises space for your business. Since you’re just starting to create a website I recommend a silver package cost: 50,000UGX per year

Designing your Web Pages (Install WordPress)

Now that you’ve got your website hosting account and the domain name, let’s work on setting up your website.

Login to your cpanel account and install WordPress, it is all set for you. It’s free and there is no programing knowledge needed. WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that is used by more than 50 million websites worldwide.

After the installation, goto yoursite.com/wp-admin, login and begin adding your content.

Congratulations, you have created your first website!

If you need help, just email us or call.

WebsiteHostingAfrica take care of the website transfer for you free of charge.

Step by step to transfer your website to our servers

Sign up for a website hosting account

Once you’ve signed up for your account, you are going to receive the control panel details from us.

Getting ready to Transfer your website

Send us the login details of you former host and we shall take care of site migration from here. During this process, you will be asked to change the DNS (Domain Name System) on your domain name to our name servers. This process takes 24-48 hours for it to take effect.

Test and Confirm

After your website transfer is completed, you test your website to ensure that things are working well after you have changed the DNS and waited the 24-48 hours for the domain to resolve everything should be working correctly.

Delete your old Hosting Account

Our suggestion is to keep the old hosting account active for at least a week. This way if there are any issues during the website transfer process, we can be able to correct it easily.

In case you are transferring the domain, ask for An Authorization Code (also called an Auth Code or EPP Key) from your domain registrar. Transfer Domain Registrars means you’re changing domain registration provider.

You can upload your files directly through cPanel using the File Manager.

1: Login to cPanel.

2: Click File Manager.

3: Select Web Root and Show Hidden Files, then click Go.

4: Click Upload from the top toolbar.

5: Click Browse or some web browsers will have Choose File.

6: Select the file on your computer that you wish to upload.

7: Once the file has been selected, it will automatically upload.

Enjoy 🙂

Fantastico is an advanced script auto installer which allows each user to easily have a certain software on your web site. Currently, Fantastico can easily install software like CMS, blogs, forums, shopping carts, galleries.

In Fantastico you have a list of the most popular and widely used open source software. With just a few clicks you can set up a CMS, blog, shopping cart on your web site.

How to use Fantastico to install an application

1. Login to CPanel
   
2. Click on Fantastico De Luxe in the Software/services section.
3. Choose your application eg. WordPress and Click New Installation.
4. Enter a name in the Install in directory if you want to install in the sub directory, leave blank to install in your root directory, Enter username, password, admin, email, site name and description.
5. Click Install wordpress

1. Login to cPanel.
   
2. Under Databases, click MySQL Databases.
   
3. Type a name for the database in the Database field
   
4. Click Create Database.
5. Click Go Back.

Create database username and password

1. Click MySQL Users just below your database name
   
2. Enter a username and password and click create. (To get a generated strong password, click the Generate Password button)
3. Click Go Back.

Adding the user to the database

1. Below MySQL users there is Add User To Database
   
   
2. Select user and the database
3. Click add
4. On the next page Manage User Privileges (if you are new just select all Privileges)
   
   
5. Click make changes.

Accessing phpmyadmin

1. Login to cPanel.
2. Under Databases, click MySQL Databases.
   
3. Click phpmyadmin..

Congratulations on creating the database, user and password, adding privileges and accessing phpmyadmin.

CloudFlare accelerates and protects any website online. On average, a website on CloudFlare: Loads 30% faster, Uses 60% less bandwidth, Has 65% fewer requests, And, is way more secure.

1. Login to cPanel.
   
2. Under Software/Services section, click CloudFlare.
   
3. Signup with your email address and accept the terms.
   
4. Click CloudFlare Status and it will turn orange.
   
5. Enjoy

1. Log into cPanel
   
2. Click phpMyAdmin in the databases section
3. Click the new database name you created (see how to create mysql databases )
   
4. Click Import in the top right menu
   
5. Browse and select the database you previously created from your local computer.
   
6. Click Go below.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a protocol that enables you to transfer files between your computers and our hosting server. There are many FTP clients available but I’m using filezilla in this demonstration.

Download filezilla from internet it is free.

Get ready: Your domain name, username and password (available in the txt file we sent you)

Start FileZilla.

In the Host text box, Enter domain name (yoursite.com), username and password and click quickconnect.

Start transferring files to public_html directory (FileZilla has a Local site panel that displays files on your local computer, and a Remote site pane that displays files in the Hosting server).

To upload a file to the server, drag the file from the Local panel to the Remote panel. After the file transfer is complete, the file appears in the Remote panel. You can also right click on a file and hit upload.

Pretty simple

The following steps will help you to reset your cPanel password

1. Login to your cPanel.
   
2. In the Preferences section, click Change Password.
3. Enter your current password and new password twice for verification (Do NOT change anything else)
4. Click the Change your password button.You are now a genius 🙂

If you have an email account for you company, you may want to configure MS Outlook to send/receive email from this email address. To configure Outlook follow the steps below:

1: Open Outlook from Microsoft Office

2: Add Account

Go to File and click Add Account button

3: Select manually configure server setting

Click next

4: Select Internet Email and Click Next

5: Enter Server Settings

6: Configure Outgoing Mail Settings

7: Configure Mail Server Ports

Finish

Congrats you are done; also contact us if you have any trouble.

Follow the steps below to create email accounts from the cpanel.

1: Login to the cpanel

2: Click Email Accounts

3: Enter your Name and Password

4: Click Create Account

If you want to transfer the email accounts and messages for a domain from one server to another, follow the steps below;

1: Before you can migrate email data to another website hosting provider
you must first create the email accounts on the new server. To do this, see how to create emails in cpanel

2: Login to the Cpanel

3: Open File manager

4: Select Web Root (public_html/www)

5: From the root directory, go to “mail/domain.com/email Account”
All you really need to copy are the new and cur directories.

6: Transfer files to New Server

Place the new and cur directories (you downloaded from the old server) in the “root/mail/domain.com/emailAccount” of the respective account on the New Server. The folder Must be there if you followed step 1 .

7: Change DNS

If you followed all of the steps up to this point you should have all the emails transferred, you can now point your DNS to the new server, Propagation takes up to 48hrs

Test and enjoy 🙂

The following steps will show you how to login to webmail.

1. Visit yourwebsite.com/webmail
2. Enter your username and password, and then click OK. (Note: Username is your complete email like: name@yourwebsite.com)
3. You should now be logged in, Click on one of the three webmail clients (SquirrelMail, Horder, or Roundcube) to start using your email.
   

You can now send me a test email 🙂

1. Login to the CPanel
2. Click on the Auto Responders in the mail section.
   
3. Click on the Add Auto Responder
4. Enter the email to send the auto-responses from, sender’s name, the subject and type the message in the Body field.
5. Click on the Create/Modify.

You are done!

Email forwarding is a service through which e-mail messages are resent from a certain account to another.

To create an email forwarder follow the steps below:

1. Login to the CPanel
2. Click on the Forwarders in the Mail section
3. Click on Add Forwarder.
4. Insert the name of the email address you wish to forward from in the first blank field. And the email to receive forwarded emails in the next.
5. Click on Add Forwarder.

Adding Email Domain Forwarders

Domain Forwarders forwards all emails from one domain name to another.

1. 1. Login to CPanel
   2. Click on the Forwarders in the Mail section
   3. Click on Add Forwarder.
   4. Click Add Domain Forwarder
   5. Insert the Address to Forward
   6. Click Add Forwarder

Choosing a domain name is similar to choosing a company name it requires a lot of thought and consideration. Your domain name is your identity on the Web; you want to make sure you choose a name that fits your business and brand, here is a list to follow;

Keep it Short, Easy & Memorable

Having a domain that’s short, easy and memorable is essential for word-of-mouth marketing, easy to type and easy to remember, if your domain name is long and complex, you risk customers mistyping or misspelling it. Also a short name fits onto business cards and other printed material more easily.

Avoid hyphens and numbers

Hyphens and numbers make the name less memorable, and more difficult to spell. Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and not easy to remember or type.

Use keywords

Having relevant keywords in your domain name can be helpful, Use keywords that describe your business and the services you offer. It helps improve your rank on search engines.

Avoid trademarked names

If you have found a great domain check with the trader-maker registrars so that you’re not going to be infringing on anyone else’s copyright.

Choose a good domain name extension

Domain names have specific uses, so make sure to choose one that works for your business. .COM is the most popular domain TLD:

• .com : Represents company and commerce
• .org : non-profits organizations
• .net : technical, infrastructure, can also go for commercial or company
• .info : informational sites

Note:

Register your selected domain names as soon as you get it available before someone snaps it.

We get customers call asking why they can’t see their domain names as soon as registering them, or after a transfer between providers. This is mainly because millions of DNS servers need to be updated with the new information which takes up to 48hrs

Domain name system (DNS) propagation’ is the updating of information across the Internet. When you type your domain name, the request goes to the name server of your ISP. It resolves the IP address of a domain from the authoritative name servers and the record is being stored in the local memory of the ISP name server.

To speed the loading of websites, each ISP caches a copy of DNS records for a period of time, sometimes up to 48 hours. This means that they make their own copy of the registrars’ master DNS records, and reads from them locally instead of making a direct request to the domain registrar every time a request for your site is made. This speeds up web surfing quite a bit by:

The downside to caching the master DNS records is because each company or ISP only updates their records every few days, any changes you make to your DNS records are not reflected between those updates. This slow updating of the cached records is called propagation delay because your website’s DNS information is being propagated across all DNS servers on the web. Once completed, everyone can visit your new website.

Here are very useful website that can help you track the propagation progress

whatsmydns.net
dnschecker.org
checkdnspropagation.com

If it has been longer than 48 hours please contact us.