How to Point Your Domain Name to Your Website Host

Here is how to point your domain name to your website host servers. You’ll need to do this after you purchase hosting for your blog.

If you landed on this article, you probably purchased a domain name from one place and purchased website hosting from another place (which is exactly what you should do)!

Now, in order to get your website setup, you’ll need to point your domain name to that host.

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HOW TO POINT YOUR DOMAIN NAME TO YOUR WEBSITE HOST

Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is point our domain name from our domain registrar (I use NameCheap) to our webhost servers, where we want our blog to live.

It’s best to buy your domain name and your hosting separately, for security purposes. But when you do that, you essentially need to ‘attach’ your domain name to your hosting account.

No matter who your domain registrar and website host is, this can be broken down into a simple 3-step process.

1. Get nameserver values from your hosting company
2. Apply the nameserver values to your domain name
3. Wait for the DNS propagation, can take up to 72 hours

All hosting companies will be similar, but here is how to point your domain name to my two favorite hosting companies: Siteground and NameHero.

Side note: if you get stuck at any point, don’t panic! Go straight to your host company and open up the LIVE CHAT option to have them resolve any issue you come across.

HOW TO POINT YOUR DOMAIN TO SITEGROUND

First, you’ll go into your Siteground account to find your Nameserver details. If you haven’t purchased hosting yet, you can buy Siteground hosting here.

Go into your dashboard, go to Websites, click the three dots on the right side of your screen, and click ‘Server Details’.

If your dashboard looks a little different from mine, don’t worry!

Your nameserver details are in your dashboard, I promise. You can either dig around to look for them or reach out to their Live Chat so they can direct you.

You’ll collect the nameserver info. It is just two lines of digits, they start with ns1 and ns2… These are the two nameservers that we need to copy and paste into our NameCheap domain account where our domain is.

Now, go into your NameCheap account, or wherever you bought your domain, and go to the place where you manage your domain.

In Namecheap, you’ll login, go to your domain list, and click the Manage button next to your domain.

It’ll look something like this:

Click on Manage, and then scroll down to the nameservers section and enter your nameserver details from Siteground in the Custom DNS section.

This NameCheap article explains how to do this properly, but make sure you choose the Custom DNS option.

The whole process can take up to 72 hours to complete, but mine never takes more than a day.

HOW TO POINT YOUR DOMAIN TO NAMEHERO

Same concept with Namehero, the dashboard just looks a little different.

Right after you purchase hosting through NameHero, you’ll land in your Client Area.

One of the first things you’ll see is your Nameservers (again just two rows of digits).

Copy/paste those two lines of digits and head over to NameCheap to update the Nameservers.

Remember, login to Namecheap, go to Domains, click on Manage, and then update your nameservers under Custom DNS…

After completing these steps, you’ll just have to wait for the domain name to connect to your host (the technical terminology is to wait for the ‘DNS propagation’).

In the meantime, let’s go back to our hosting dashboard and download WordPress so that we can start prepping our site for setup!