The Final Step to Enable WA Hosting of your Domain
I have no prior experience in the IM field. so if I misuse the relevant terminology, please forgive my ignorance.
The Problem
Having excitedly purchased my 2 new domains from namecheap over the weekend (my first ever domains!), I kept checking the "Build my Website" tab at WA at regular intervals ... 36 hours later and still nothing had appeared to indicate that the connection had been made. I presumed that since Americans generally take religion more seriously than Brit, the employees of namecheap were probably busy in church and that the process would be completed by Monday morning. Well, Monday morning came and went and still no progress!
I contacted namecheap support (a very quick and simple process) who informed me that everything was set up at their end and that I needed to arrange for WA Hosting to accept the re-direction. This was the first I had heard of any such activation step.
I have only been a premium member for a few days, but I have noticed that many people have difficulties completing the process of re-directing their DNS from their registry to WA Hosting. There is a very good video tutorial that explains how to arrange for namecheap or godaddy (or other registry sites) to point the DNS towards WA, but it fails to identify the final step required to complete the process at this end. This issue highlights the very difficult situation faced by very experienced and knowledgeable teachers - it is almost impossible for them to avoid presuming some prior knowledge of the task or think that a particular step is so obvious and intuitive as to require no formal explanation.
The purpose of this blog is to briefly explain the final step required to add your domain to the WA hosting service so that you can start creating your website.
The Solution
In summary, my problem was resolved as follows:
1. Go to "Build My Website"
2. Click "Domains" tab
3. Enter name of domain in text field;
4. Click "Create Domain" (a slightly misleading button and perhaps ought to be changed to "Add Domain" or "Add Domain to WA Hosting" - I note that the page tab actually reads "add domain" so this would improve consistency of headings and buttons)
I don't know if this helps anyone, but it worked for me. The button title "Create Domain" was the cause of my confusion since I considered that I had already created my domain when I purchased it from namecheap. I mistakenly thought that this button was only used by those creating siterubix domain names.
Good Luck
Kristian
Recent Comments
6
Thanks for your blog, was very helpful to me, i was a kind of frustrated after I added my domain to WA. I will follow you. Be blessed.
Kristian, you will find that following the courses is key, but there will still be items left to your own interpretation (because, we all know we are different in our planning). So, hang in there and everyone sees it a little different, though we are all a team too. :) Great that you figured it out. That is part of the process too.... Take care, Terri
Hey Kristian. I know it's frustrating at. First but did you ask before buying your domains?! Well Kyle created a video about how to point a domain to WA hosting: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/create-a-website-on-your-own-domain.I also recommend using live chat or creating a post!. Glad you sorted it out. :)
Thanks for the feedback. I sought and received a large amount of advice from members prior to choosing namecheap and purchasing the domains. The problem was not pointing the domains to WA hosting, but rather no understanding that you had to do something at this end to complete the process. I don't thin Kyle's video mentions that final step? I think it was @RICH who suggested I contact namecheap support. They were very helpful and immediately identified the fact that I needed to do something at this end. I am making some progress (considering I knew nothing about creating websites 2 weeks ago), but still a lot of work to do. Decided to go for bootcamp first before unleashing my niches on the world. www.freeswagsites.com Any feedback would be appreciated.
Aw, glad you got it sorted Kristian. Yup, after you change the DNS at Namecheap or another registrar, it won't "magically" appear in a list anywhere here at WA, you have to "build" the website on it after the DNS has populated. If you set the DNS at checkout, then it should be instantaneous, if you change it afterwards it can take up to 72 hours to populate, although it's usually within a few hours. You can keep an eye on DNS propagation using http://www.whatsmydns.net :) Rich.
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thank you for this, it really helped me out with a domain i had transferred over that said was ready to go but wouldn't "work"!