You now have a domain name for your website, and you have a hosting account. We need to connect to the two.
In simple terms, GoDaddy will act like the post office routing mail.
When someone types in your domain name, they get sent to GoDaddy’s domain server (post office) where your domain name lives. However, your website is going to live at Hostgator.com (residence), so we have to tell GoDaddy that when someone comes looking for your website, to forward them to Hostgator’s sever.
We’ll start by going to GoDaddy and click on Sign In in the upper right corner.
Enter your username and password to log in to the account you created in part 1.
After you enter your login credentials, click the Sign In button just below. You’ll then see your primary GoDaddy dashboard.
Click on the Domains tab to find your registered domain(s).
Find the line item with the domain you’ll be using for your website, and click the green Launch button at the end of the row on the right.
You’ll then be taken to your Domain Details page. Locate the Nameservers box and click the “Manage” link.
After clicking the Manage link, you’ll get a pop up window for the Nameserver Settings box. The setup type default will be Standard, which just means that GoDaddy is controlling where your domain name routes users to your website.
To change this, we’re going to put in Custom Nameservers that Hostgator provided in their Welcome email. Click the radio button beside Custom in the pop up window.
In that same pop up window, you’ll be presented with two text boxes. This is where we’ll add the info Hostgator gave us.
To find the two Nameservers we need to enter, go back to the email you got from Hostgator after you finished signing up and paying for your hosting account.
Either copy and paste each of those, one at a time, or type them into the two text boxes in the Nameserver Settings pop up window.
Once those are in and you’ve double checked to make sure they’re correct, click the Ok button in the pop up window. You’ll have another chance to review the info you entered, then click the Save button.
That’s it! You’ve now connected your domain name to your hosting account.
This update will take a few minutes to take effect. While that’s happening, we’ll head over to our new hosting account and get started on the website.
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