How to associate a domain-name with hosting

Community support
#1

Hi all.

I can’t get my head around the differences between the terms “domain”, “domain name”, domain parking”, “domain forwarding”, “sub-domain” etc., so I’m hoping that someone can explain what I need in very simple terms.

… as though you’re talking to your grandfather.

You know:

“Press Start, Grandad”

“It’s at the bottom left of the screen, Grandad.”

“No. Use your mouse, not your finger, Grandad.”

[Pulls hair out in frustration] :smiley:

The thing is: I bought a domain name, from Hostinger, about a year ago.

I’d like to have them host my website, but I’m struggling to understand the domain name part of it.

My website is nothing fancy, and doesn’t sell anything, so any basic hosting package will do, but …

I’d like the domain name (that I already have) to be the name of the website and all of the pages that are on it.

What I mean is: I don’t just want my domain name to redirect people to some obscurely-named site/page.

My gallery page should have (in the address bar) : “www. mydomain. com / gallery”

… and not: “www. someobscuredomain. com / gallery” simply because mydomain is just a redirect to someobscuredomain.

I spoke to a Hostinger representative, using the chat facility, and they told me that I wouldn’t be able to use my current domain name for the name of my website if I bought the Premium Shared Hosting package, because … although it comes with a free domain name, I wouldn’t be able to use the one that I have, because it already exists.

He said that I would have to choose a new domain name, or: buy the hosting package, ignore the renewal of my domain name until it becomes available again, and THEN I would be able to have it as the domain name of the website.

Have I explained that properly?

Is that really the only way to do that?

Risk someone else snapping up the domain name by waiting for it to become available again?

Thanks in advance.

John

P.S. According to the posting rules, this thread must include my “000WEBHOSTAPP URL”

That’s a bit tricky, since I haven’t bought the hosting package yet, but I do have a 000 page on my website, so I hope that that will suffice.

It’s https:// nowt.000webhostapp .com/

Sorry for putting spaces in the domain names, but I’d rather not give the spiders any food. :blush:

1 Like
#2

You can link your domain nowt.com for example to nowt.000webhostapp.com and display only nowt.com and use nowt.com with no issue on our free hosting.
You CAN also use nowt.com for example with your Hostinger hosting again with no issues, not sure why the rep said that.

You can use our free hosting to link your paid domain with and continue hosting for free :slight_smile:

Depending on your current website you’ll need to modify the URL once you’ve parked/pointed to 000webhost.

WordPress ^ for example

If you don’t use any script and host a text/image only website via .html or .php files you won’t need to do anything once you park/point/link the domain etc.

1 Like
#3

Ahhhhhh!

Wrong one.

I should have read the “How to point domain name to 000webhost.com”

I’ll try again

… “Waiting for nameservers”

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again, Infinity.

#4

Thanks for giving up your time to help me, Infinity.

Much appreciated.

That’s wonderful to hear that I can do that.

I’ve never tried WordPress, as I’ve always assumed that it’s just another WYSIWYG editor.

I learned how to build a website 20+ years ago, using notepad, so I know my way around HTML & JavaScript, but have never used anything else.

Do I need WordPress in order to change to address in the address bar from nowt.000webhostapp .com to mydomain .com ?

I tried to follow the instructions of the tutorial called: “How to Use Cloudflare for SSL”.

Is that the one that I should be following?

#5

To get your domain setup with SSL, use this:

To get the Wordpress URL changed, use this:

One after the other :smile:

#6

Thanks, Sulliops.

My previous attempt failed.

“ Waiting for nameservers ” turned into “You have not added any domains yet.”

I’ll give those 2 tutorials a go, as soon as I can.

Thanks again.

#8

I started a thread 3 days ago, called “How to associate a domain-name with hosting”, but it’s been closed/locked because I took too long to reply.

2 members tried to help me, but I’ve been unable to follow the tutorials that were suggested.

I’ll try to make this as short as possible.

A year ago, I bought the domain name (decorator.website) from Hostinger.
My Hostinger account says that the nameservers are listed as “owen.ns.cloudflare.com “ and
“veda.ns.cloudflare.com

My Cloudflare dashboard has a DNS tab (as mentioned in the tutorial (How to Use Cloudflare for SSL)), but the tutorials says:
“The cname records that you need to add are below.
“@” points to “yoursite.000webhostapp.com”
“www” points to “yoursite.000webhostapp.com”"

… but there is no “@” listed on that page
… the only mention of “www” is this line:
“CNAME www decorator.website Auto Proxied Edit>”
, and no mention of the website that my domain name currently points to, that I could change.

So, I Clicked [Add record] and filled in the line like this:

Type [A]
Name [@]
IPv4 address [nowt.000webhostapp.com]
TTL [Auto]
Proxy status DNS only

… but when I clicked [Save] the [nowt.000webhostapp.com] highlighted – as though it was unacceptable.

What am I doing wrong?

#9

I started a thread 3 days ago, called “How to associate a domain-name with hosting”, but it’s been closed/locked because I took too long to reply.

2 members tried to help me, but I’ve been unable to follow the tutorials that were suggested.

I’ll try to make this as short as possible.

A year ago, I bought the domain name (decorator. website) from Hostinger.
My Hostinger account says that the nameservers are listed as “owen.ns.cloudflare.com “ and
“veda.ns.cloudflare.com

My Cloudflare dashboard has a DNS tab (as mentioned in the tutorial (How to Use Cloudflare for SSL)), but the tutorials says:
“The cname records that you need to add are below.
“@” points to “yoursite.000webhostapp.com”
“www” points to “yoursite.000webhostapp.com”
“

… but there is no “@” listed on that page
… the only mention of “www” is this line:
“CNAME www decorator. website Auto Proxied Edit>”
, and no mention of the website that my domain name currently points to, that I could change.

So, I Clicked [Add record] and filled in the line like this:

Type [A]
Name [@]
IPv4 address [nowt.000webhostapp.com]
TTL [Auto]
Proxy status DNS only

… but when I clicked [Save] the [nowt.000webhostapp.com] highlighted – as though it was unacceptable.

What am I doing wrong?

#11
#12

You’ll want to login to CloudFlare and delete every single record they’ve added for you.

You’ll then want to add two CNAME records for the domain to function correctly, see above tutorial.

#13

I’ll try to be as detailed as possible.

You said: “You’ll want to login to CloudFlare and delete every single record they’ve added for you.”

I logged into cloudflare, and it showed my domain name with the word “Active” beneath it.

There doesn’t seem to be any way to delete it from that page.

I clicked on the domain name & it took me to an “overview” page.

The only option on that page that might possibly delete it is “Remove site from CloudFlare”.

Should I click that?

#14

Hit DNS

Delete all the records and add your two CNAME records via that page as per tutorial above.

#15

I deleted all 17 lines, then tried to follow the tutorial.

I got as far as the part of the tutorial that says:
“CloudFlare will now inform you to login to your domain registrar and switch your nameservers to CloudFlare to enable DNS to be managed by them.”

Still on the DNS page ~ Underneath the 2 CNAMEs that I just added, it says:
“Cloudflare nameservers
To use Cloudflare, ensure your authoritative DNS servers, or nameservers have been changed. These are your assigned Cloudflare nameservers.
Type Value
NS owen .ns.cloudflare.com
NS veda .ns.cloudflare.com”

I went to the registrar’s (Hostinger’s) website, logged in, and under [DNS Nameservers] is listed the same 2 names (owen .ns.cloudflare.com and veda .ns.cloudflare.com)

Presumably, that’s because it’s already pointing to CloudFlare, and CloudFlare will make the changes (within 24 hours) to point the domain to my 000webhost.com page.

Is that correct?

#16

Ahhhhh!
There’s a [Delete] for each one.
Got it.
Thanks.

#17

Ok. Thanks.

On the DNS page there are 17 lines.
Do I click on each line, in turn, and remove all letters, numbers & characters from each box, and then click [Save] on each one?

#18

So I can see your nameservers are pointed correctly.
Ensure the two CNAME records pointing to 000webhost are on CloudFlare and with grey clouds, then add to our 000webhost panel, once added then you may turn orange to reap the benefits of CloudFlare.

#19

Here’s a screenshot showing that the 2 CNAME records are pointing to 000webhost on CloudFlare and have grey clouds.

z-cloudflare

I’m not sure what you mean by: “ add to our 000webhost panel”

I’ve logged into 000webhost again, but can’t find the word “panel” anywhere.

In “Tools” there is a “Set Web Address” option, where I can “[+Add domain]”

Is that what you mean?

Click [+Add domain] and insert the domain name?

#20

Yes set web address add domain and point option.

#21
#22

Thanks for trying, Infinity, but I’m getting nowhere.

The tutorials just don’t work and instructions seemed to be aimed at people that already know what they’re doing.

The tutorial that you mentioned says that I should “Add a new site …” but when I try to do that, I get the message: “decorator. website already exists”.

It’s probably going to be easier for me to try another web-hosting service.

Perhaps I can find one with simple instructions aimed at dummies like me.

Thanks again for trying.

Much appreciated.