Setting Up Your DNS Nameservers For Your Blog

Now that you have setup your domain name through GoDaddy and your hosting account through HostGator, we need to get your domain name and your hosting files to talk to each other. This is done through the admin panel of GoDaddy so you can get your domain pointed in the right direction to your Wordpress blog files and see your blog on your url through the use of DNS nameservers. Basically…we need to get your hosting files and the IP address the same so when a visitor goes to your url…they see your blog and not a default “this domain is registered at GoDaddy” page.

The technical aspects of nameservers, DNS records, etc. really aren’t all that important for the purposes of setting up a blog. If you really want to dive into the technical definitions and why everything works the way it does…do a simple search for DNS and you will get more than enough information to geek out on. For the purposes of this tutorial, we are not going to dive into the technical aspects. We are just going to get you setup!

Where do I find my nameservers?

First, we need to get the nameservers in your hosting account.

Sign into your HostGator cPanel. You were given this login information with your account information when you signed up. The cPanel is your blog backend headquarters where you setup email addresses, databases and basically manage the nuts and bolts that are outside of Wordpress…but we will get into more of that later.

In the left column, scroll down until you see two nameserver records that should look something like this (yours should be slightly different)

NS1066.HOSTGATOR.COM
NS1065.HOSTGATOR.COM

These are the two records that you are going to need to copy and paste into fields in your GoDaddy account, so leave this window open and open a new window or tab in your web browser.

Inserting Your Nameservers In GoDaddy

Now…we need to go into your GoDaddy account where you purchased your domain names and get the domain pointed in the direction of your files (even though we have not technically uploaded anything yet).

Login to your GoDaddy account and under the navigation tab for domains, click on “My Domains”. This will open up a new window that is your Domain Manager. Click on the domain name that we are working with for this blog and in the bottom left hand corner you will see a heading for Nameservers. Click on the “manage” link in that field. You should get a popup that looks like the screen below.

Under this field, click on the bubble that reads “I host my domains with another provider.” You will then be shown the Nameserver fields and this is where you are going to copy and paste the two Nameserver records from your HostGator account. Once you copy and paste in the two nameservers, click ok. You should get a window that tells you…

Your changes have been submitted. Please allow a few minutes for the changes to take effect.

Click ok and you are done! Pretty easy right? This process is also the same no matter what hosting company you have decided to go with. If you have your domains and hosting separate, you have to get the two pointing in the same direction for everything to work properly.

Note: In most cases, you are not going to see the page you land on for your url change right away. It normally takes an hour or two for the domain to completely resolve, so just be patient and we will start to work on installing Wordpress on your server (hosting account) in the meantime.

Direction Post Image by treehouse1977

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2 comments

Marc Audet September 3, 2009 - 10:17 pm
Another outstanding post. As for myself, my wife set up everything for my blog. She has been blogging for a while and is great at what she does! This is a great reference to have so newbs like me to SEO and other fun stuff can understand it. Thanks Rob!
Robb Sutton September 4, 2009 - 7:37 am
Thanks Marc! That is the idea. Hopefully...by the end of this series...anyone should be able to setup their own, self-hosted Wordpress blog easily.
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