real estate blog lab

This will probably be the most boring post in the series.  I’ll be covering:
 For the purpose of these post we are going to use the address 123 MyStreet

Disclaimer: The only association I have with GoDaddy.com is as a customer.

I’m using Godaddy.com for all my hosting.  They are the only hosting company I have ever used.  I’m not saying they are the best, or the cheapest, or the easiest to use.  They just happen to be the only one I have ever used and I’ve been quite happy with them so there has never been a reason for me to consider any other options.

For the purpose of this post I’ll walk you through the process of setting up hosting on Godaddy and use that hosting account for your single property sites or any other sites or blog you desire to host.

Purchasing a hosting package.

Once you have your account setup you can login and select a hosting package to purchase.  If you haven’t purchased a domain name yet, you can do this at the same time for $1.99 for the domain instead of $7.99 for a year.  Domains are cheaper if you purchase with a hosting package.
You will be offered a lot of options to add to your purchase.  The only one that I use is the Traffic Facts.  You can read through them and see if there are any you want to add.

I recommend the Premium package for $5.59 a month with a 2 year agreement.  It allows you to create sub-domains and provides you with 25 MYSQL databases which you can use to setup at least 25 individual property listing sites. 

This next item is important: When you set up your hosting account it will ask you if you want to be on a Windows server or a Linux server.  YOU WANT A LINUX SERVER.  Wordpress is installed on Linux servers only.  Here is what it looks like on the GoDaddy screen.

If you already have a hosting package and it is set up on a windows server you can log into the administrative panel and change to a Linux server.  It happens in minutes and you won’t notice the difference from the frontend view of any existing websites or blogs.

You will be asked to create a username and password for the hosting account.  You need to write this down. When you configure the FTP program so you can upload files to your account you will need to set up a connection using that information.

Point your domain name to the hosting account. Setup for the hosting account should be complete with these steps.  You can now log into your hosting account and select (open) to get to the administrative panel.

Setting up a MYSQL database.

Login to your hosting account. select (open) next to the domain name associated with the hosting account. The administrative panel contains rows of icons. 

Scroll down until you find the icon MYSQL.  Click on that icon and click on “Create a new Database”  For the user name and description I use the same thing, the street name. ex. description=”mystreet” username=”mystreet”.  Select a password for the database this is different from the account password.  I suggest you select a password you will use for all your databases.  This will make setting up the configure.php file for each site easier.

Once you have entered the description and username and password click create.  The database will have a pending status while it is being setup.  You can minimize the admin window,  or close.

In about 5 minutes you can log back in to the admin panel, click on the MYSQL icon and you should see your database is setup. 

To the right there is an icon to view the connection string,  click on it. 

This window will open that shows you a line with something like “mysql159″ 

 Write this number down.  You need it to setup the configure.php file for setting up Wordpress installation.

Unless you like playing with landmines you should close the admin panel.  You don’t need anymore information to setup and install the wordpress files.

Self hosting seems like it is so technical, and it can be, there is a lot you can do when hosting yourself.  You don’t have to get permission, or a tech to put a 301 redirect into place.  You have options for handling 404 page not found issues, and there are a lot of plugins and programs you can setup.

One last advantage I’ve found.  Our main site is old enough now at a year old that it is out of the sandbox.  When I create these single property sites they are under the umbrella of our site and hosted within that site, so there is no sandbox effect for the single property sites.  They receive pagerank in a few weeks, and are often found in blog searches in a day or two and on regular Google searches in a week after the first post.

I have several hosting packages and played around with a small one till I got the hang of it.  There are definitely advantages to setting up your own hosting plan for your sites.  Even if you don’t host your main site, it won’t take long for them to gain ground.  As I mentioned I have several hosting sites and I’ve noticed no sandbox effect on those that are blog based sites.  More on this when we cover SEO.

Self Hosting isn’t as hard as you might have thought.  Give it a try.  Knowing how to setup a hosting plan is a great piece of knowlegdge to have.