Set Up Your Domain Through Hover

By Adam  |  13 Jul 2015 08:00:00

If you want to start up your own eCommerce website, there's a good chance you're also thinking of buying your own domain. A popular webhosting service is Hover and in this post I am going to talk a little about why getting a domain could be a good idea, how to pick a good name for your domain and then, after that, how to use your Hover-purchased domain for your Sellr store.

The main upside of owning a domain is that it makes your website look just that little bit more professional. When somebody comes to a website and sees by the URL that you do not own your domain, they may well think that business isn't to be taken so seriously. Of course, it's not something that everyone will notice, but it's something some people will notice and could potentially be something which sways somebody from your website to the website of a competitor. However, if you are just starting out with your eCommerce website, and more experimenting to see whether you can make much money with your business idea or not (rather than heading in with a long term plan) it might not be the best time to buy a domain, because they do cost money.

If you've decided that you do want to buy a domain, there are certain things to keep in mind as you chose a name. Firstly, you will need to go for something that hasn't already been taken, so if you were planning on calling your business Furniture Company, there's no real chance that you will be able to get that domain. You need to think of a unique business name which can then lead to a unique domain (and don't just go for your name, either). For SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) purposes, the best thing to do is go for your business name followed by a word or two about your product or service; if your business was called Sitr and you sold furniture, then you could go for www.SitrFurniture.com and that way people who simply search for 'furniture' are much more likely to find you.

Once you've purchased a domain, this is what you need to do next; log in to Hover as usual and click on the domain you would like to use for your Sellr store. Verify that the 'Nameservers' are set to 'ns1.hover.com' and 'ns2.hover.com'. If they are not, click them and then 'Revert to Hover Defaults' though, unless you have done something, they should already be set that way. Next you need to go to 'edit DNS' where you will see an '@' symbol, click on that and enter the Sellr IP address: 80.168.142.220. Make sure you save it and then do the same for the '*' record. Then click 'add new' and enter the 'hostname' as 'www', the 'Record Type' as 'CNAME' and the 'Target Host' as the current URL of your Sellr store.

After that you're pretty much all done. Coming back to Sellr, you'll then have to go to the 'Website' tab and go to 'Website Domain Name' where you will find the next stages of the process all laid out for you. It should all be fairly straight forward, but if you encounter any issues, don't hesitate to get in touch: we can be reached by email at support@sellr.com or over the phone on 01225 422200. We wish you all the best with your new domain!