# Your Hosting

Websites need somewhere to live. In this challenge you are going to arrange suitable accommodation (hosting) for your website and make your webspace available on your domain name.

The hosting requirements for Webmaking101 are very basic and you do not need any special technologies. You just need a plain and simple hosting account with no added fancy stuff. 

Time = 45 minutes

## Task One - Ask Your Peers & Purchase Hosting

In this task you're going to seek the advice of your peers about which hosting company they do business with and why. It should take about 20 minutes. You're going to use that information as the basis for your own decision on who you're going to do business with.

Each of your peers who've completed this challenge should have a blog post called "Hosting & DNS" that they created as part of this challenge. Read through as many of these blog posts as you need to in order to begin to form your own opinions and ideas about which hosting company you're going to use. Where possible use the comments section on their blog to ask questions if anything is unclear.

Typically you'd want to make sure that whoever you choose has a support level that you're happy with (you may need to get in touch with them if something doesn't work) and that the price is within your budget. Many hosting companies offer a money back guarantee incase you're not happy so this may be worth bearing in mind.

When you've got a good idea of which hosting company you want to use then spend a few minutes searching the web to see if you can find any additional information (good or bad) that influences your decision.

When you're satisfied that you're going to be looked after by the company you've decided to do business with, go ahead and order your hosting account.

## Task Two - Setting It Up

_You might have to wait a little while before you can start using your hosting account. Don't worry if you do, you can always come back to this task later on._ 


In this task you're going to modify the DNS records for your domain name and point it at your new hosting account. The work you done in the previous challenge on DNS is really going to pay off. This task should take you a few minutes.

The theory behind what you have to do is the same regardless of who you bought your domain or hosting from, but the practical application of this theory will be different in every case. But don't worry, it's very simple. 


1. Get the IP address of the server that your hosting account is located on. You should have received this information from your host. Get in touch with them if you don't have it.

2. Login to the website that you bought the domain from and find the screen that allows you to edit the DNS records for your domain. Modify the 'A record' for yourdomain.com and set the IP address for the 'A record' to the IP address of your hosting account.

3. Finally you want to modify or add the DNS record for www.yourdomain.com and set it as a CNAME record for yourdomain.com.


Now you just have to wait for up to 24 hours ( although it's normally a lot sooner than that) for the DNS information for your domain to propagate across the internet. When everything is done, your hosting account should now be available by typing http://yourdomain.com into your web browser.


## Task Three - Write about how you did it.

The technical parts of this challenge are now complete. All that is left for you to do now is to write a blog post called "Hosting & DNS". Spend about 20 minutes on this task.

In this blog post you need to write about two things :

1. The name of your hosting company and why you've chosen them. Was it because of price, support, their nice shiny website or peer recommendation? 

2. A step by step guide as to how you configured your DNS to point at your hosting account. Bonus points are available for nice screenshots.

Your blog post will provide your peers with two useful things. Firstly, It will provide information that will help them choose web hosting. Secondly it will also provide valuable detail on how to set up their domain to point at their hosting accounts. Bare this in mind when you're writing it.

When you've completed your blog post, let the community know about it by posting it onto the community wall. 

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# Badges

# Possible Badges:

## Webmaking 101 

Webspace Badge: 
Description: has completed challenge 6
Assessment type: self assessment

## Skill

Description: The Hosting Badge recognizes the ability to implement web hosting services to set up your own domain.
Assessment type: formula
Rubric:


## Peer

Description: The Super Blogger Badge recognizes the ability to consistently write infomative, engaging and well presented blog posts while explain clearly and concisely concepts to various audiences.
Assessment type: peer assessment 
Assessment formula: acculumative


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