Pt. 1 — Make Your Own Website
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Make Your Own Website Part 1: Domains and Webservers

• Written: 17 April 2025 • • Last updated: 18 April 2025 • • •

In my first entry, I promised that I'd make a tutorial about how to set up your own personal website, from start to finish. This is my attempt to make good on that promise, so buckle up.

In Part 1 of this tutorial, you'll learn how to:

  1. Get a domain name.

  2. Set up web hosting.

  3. Connect your domain name to your hosting provider with DNS records.

  4. Secure your website with an SSL certificate.

Get a Domain Name

The first thing you'll need to begin crafting your own personal website is a domain name, also known as a domain.

But what is a domain name, anyway?

In short, a domain name is what people type into search engines to find your website. This website's domain name is Thunderbo.lt, and yours can be anything you want it to be. Well, almost anything.

Every website has a designated IP (Internet Protocol) address. But because IP addresses (well, IPv4 addresses, but you don't have to worry about that, for now) were made with the communication of computers in mind, not people, they're are strings of numbers and periods that no one could be bothered to remember. In swoops our hero, the domain name, which acts as a short, memorable stand-in for the IP address.

So how do I get a domain name?

To get a domain name, you'll need to go to a domain registrar, which is a website that lets you purchase and manage domain names. Preferably, this registrar is ICANN-approved, since that facilitates your ability to manage, move, and if need be, sell your domains. ICANN just stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the regulating body that deals with stuff like domain registration and ownership.

The domain registrar we'll be using for the purpose of this tutorial is Netim, but there are many ICANN-accreddited domain name registrars to choose from.

  1. First, enter the domain name you want. I'm not actually going to be buying a new domain name just for the purposes of this tutorial, but that won't affect anything going forward.

    As you can see in the image above, there is a chance that the domain name you want is not available, at least in the TLD (Top Level Domain, such as .com or .net) that you want.

    Now, my advice might differ for a commercial or branded website, where TLD recognizabiility and trust is important for customers. But for a personal website, it is not necessary for your TLD to be .com, .net, or .org. Using one of the three aforementioned TLDs can be helpful for the sake of memorizability, but that's about it.

    The TLD for this website is .lt, the ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) for Lithuania. (Using a TLD to make a word, such as combining "thunderbo" and ".lt" to make "thunderbo.lt" is called a "domain hack" by the way.)

  2. Now, head over to check out. Do not add any other services, as domain registrars will try to upsell you on everything from SSL certificates (which you can get for free) to web hosting (which you can get for a better price or with better resources elsewhere).

    If you're already a Netim customer, log into Netim Direct. If you're new to Netim, create an account and enter the necessary information.

You just bought a domain name. How easy was that? Before you start managing your domain, let's go ahead and set up web hosting.

Set Up Web Hosting

Why do I need web hosting?

A website is really just a repository of interacting files, like .html pages, .css sheets, images (most often .jpg or .png), fonts (most often .otf, .ttf, or .woff), and other file types hosted on a computer (the "host computer") that are served to another computer, which is usually a person on a device, like a laptop, phone, or tablet (the "requesting client"). The host computer serves these files via a webserver, which may be Apache, Nginx, LiteSpeed, or a few others. A hosting provider is simply a company that lets you rent or buy the hardware on which this webserver is installed and operating from.

There are a few different types of products that a hosting provider might sell, such as VPSes (virtual private servers) and/or shared hosting plans. Since I use a shared hosting plan from IncogNET to host this website, I will be tailoring this tutorial to that configuration. However, if any of you are interested in an in-depth hosting tutorial tailored for VPSes, don't hesitate to contact me.

Where do I get web hosting?

There are many, many web hosting providers that offer great quality products for reasonable prices. At the end of the day, evaluating a hosting provider is no different from evaluating any other business—ask yourself questions like:

I chose IncogNET due to their reasonable pricing, company history (founded in 2020), robust support for freedom of speech and expression, and minimal requirements to sign up (just a working email address).

(By contrast, many hosting providers want information like your full name, phone number, home address, and sometimes more. I find the requirement of this information to be redunant and a point of vulnerability, not a security measure. It's dubious how much these information requirements actually deter scams, phishing, and other malicious activity. It is better to presume innocence rather than guilt, and to simply terminate the service in cases of TOS violations).

  1. First, go to IncogNET's shared hosting plans. As of April 2025, you'll see three plans to choose from: Starter, Standard, and Professional.

    For most personal websites, the Starter plan is more than enough; a 20 GB disk is plenty of room to play around with. But if you anticipate significant growth in traffic, content volume, or domains you wish to host, it might be worth it to choose the Standard or Professional plan.

    You'll also notice two locations to choose from: Kansas City, Missouri, USA, and Naaldwijk, Netherlands. The location doesn't really matter much, but if your audience is primarily in the United States or broader North America, Kansas City is the better pick, while if your audience is in or near Europe, you might want to choose Naaldwijk.

    Since IncogNET's hardware is physically located in these advertised jurisdictions, it's also worth considering that your site and its contents will be protected by the First Amendment if you choose a location within the United States; not so for the Netherlands.

    For the sake of this tutorial, let's go ahead with the Starter plan in Kansas City.

  2. Enter your domain name, verify that you've selected the correct plan, accept the Terms of Service, and submit payment.

If the transaction was successful, you'll get an email from IncogNET with your hosting account information. Within this email, you'll find the IP addresses and server host name necessary to move onto the next step of this tutorial: connecting your domain to your web hosting.

Connect Your Domain Name to Your Hosting Provider With DNS Records

  1. Open the email with your hosting account information. The two things you want to pay attention to are the Control Panel URL (https://kcmo-01.incoghost.com:2222) and the Server IP (23.137.254.132).

    2. Unlike what the email says, you do not have to change your nameservers to ns1.incoghost.com and ns2.incoghost.com, unless you want to control your DNS records within the DirectAdmin control panel that IncogNET's shared hosting utilizes. I prefer to control my domain's DNS records from my domain registrar, Netim, so this tutorial will follow that path.

  2. Now, copy and paste the Control Panel URL into your browser's search bar. The ":2222" after the host name just indicates that you're accessing the server through port 2222, the port that the DirectAdmin control panel is accessed through by default.

    3. In the email, you should have also received a Username and Password. DO NOT SHARE THESE WITH ANYBODY. Paste them into their designated areas, as shown below.

  3. Now that you've logged in, the first thing you'll want to do is add your domain. Go to Account Manager > Domain Setup > + ADD NEW. Enter your domain and click "CREATE." Leave all settings as default. You should now see something like this:

    4. You've successfully added a domain to your DirectAdmin control panel, but in order to do anything with it, you need to point an address, or A record toward the server IP. For the moment, let's leave DirectAdmin and return to the domain registrar.

  4. Click on the menu icon in the upper left screen > Domains > My Domains, and then click on the domain you want to begin managing. Navigate to "My domain name configuration" and click on "Zone file."

  5. Click "Create a new record." The Type should be A, the Name should be @, and the Target should be 23.137.254.132 (the server IP). Then, click "Confirm."

    Repeat the process, only with "www" instead of "@" for the Name.

    At the end of this process, you should have two new records that look like this:

  6. Now, all you need to do before jumping back into DirectAdmin is wait for DNS propagation. You can easily check to see where your new A records resolve using DNSchecker.org.

Once your new A records have propagated across most of the world, you can try visiting your website by entering the domain name into a browser tab. You might get a warning that your connection to the website is not secure, so to fix that, let's jump into the final step of Part 1 of this tutorial: securing your website with an SSL certificate.

Secure Your Website With an SSL Certificate

  1. Go back into DirectAdmin Account Manager > Domain Setup, and this time choose SSL Certificates. Check "Get automatic certificate from ACME provider," and leave all options on default. Check "Wildcard," which should automatically select yourdomain.tld and www.yourdomain.tld (in my case, thunderbo.lt and www.thunderbo.lt). Also check "Force SSL with https redirect," and then click "SAVE."

  2. You'll need to wait a bit before the changes take place, but after a few minutes, DirectAdmin should give you confirmation that your SSL certificate hsa been created. Now, when you enter your domain into a browser, there should be a lock icon to the left to the domain name, or at least, no warning that the site is not secure.

If the change doesn't happen immediately, wait. It's also possible that your browser has cached the website without an SSL certificate, and visiting the website in an incognito window or a different browser will show the latest version.

Congratulations!

You've completed Part 1 of the Make Your Own Website tutorial series.

Now, move onto Part 2: HTML and CSS.

Conflicts of Interest

None of the URLs on this page are affiliate links; I do not earn a commission or kickback if you sign up for any services or purchase any goods through them. I'm sharing these resources because I genuinely appreciate them for what they are and what they do.