Getting Your First Website Live Print

Four ways to a website

A new hosting account is an empty stage, and there are four ways to put a website on it: build one with Sitejet Builder included in your hosting, install WordPress, upload a site you already have, or have us migrate everything from your previous host. This article helps you pick and points each route at its first step, none of them is wrong, they suit different people and different websites.

Route one: build it with Sitejet Builder

Sitejet is a website builder included with your hosting, and the fastest route from nothing to a professional-looking site: pick a template, edit the text and images in your browser, publish. No installation, no code, and nothing to maintain afterwards.

Start it from your client area: open your hosting service and click Edit with Sitejet Builder in the Actions menu, the same menu described in our article on accessing your cPanel and webmail. Sitejet suits brochure-style sites best, the who-we-are, what-we-do, how-to-reach-us websites that most businesses need first, and a site built today does not lock you in, any of the other routes below can replace it later.

Route two: install WordPress

WordPress powers a vast share of the web, and it is the route to choose when you want a site that grows, blogs, plugins, online shops through WooCommerce, and a world of themes. Install it from cPanel: log in at yourdomain.tld/cpanel, find the software installer via the search box as described in our cPanel tour, choose WordPress, and the installer creates the database and files for you, a few minutes end to end. From there, everything happens in WordPress's own admin at yourdomain.tld/wp-admin.

Two habits worth starting on day one: keep WordPress, its theme, and its plugins updated, and install only what you need, our security articles are blunt about outdated plugins because hacked WordPress sites are the single biggest source of the compromises we deal with.

Route three: upload an existing site

If you already have website files, a hand-built site, a static export, or something a developer gave you, upload them into the public_html folder using cPanel's File Manager, the folder our cPanel tour introduces as the part of your account the world sees. The file index.html (or index.php) in that folder is your homepage. If the site needs a database, create it under cPanel's Databases section and import your data through phpMyAdmin, and if that sentence reads as foreign, the migration route below exists for exactly this.

Route four: have us move it

Coming from another host? Our website migration service, offered at a fixed once-off fee during the order process or afterwards via support ticket, moves your files and databases for you. And as our transfers article explains, if your previous host runs cPanel, we can move the entire account, website, mailboxes, and mail together, tell us early so it is handled as one job. Keep the old hosting active until everything is confirmed working here, cancelling the old service is the last step of a move, never the first.

Whichever route: the finishing checks

• Browse your site at yourdomain.tld from a phone as well as a computer, and check the padlock appears, SSL certificates are issued automatically, and the SSL/TLS Status screen in cPanel confirms it.
• Set up your email alongside the website, a mailbox on your own domain finishes the professional picture, and our Email guides cover every step.
• Take a backup once the site is live and looking right, cPanel's Backup tools make it a download, and a known-good copy from day one is a gift to your future self.

Good to know

Websites are replaceable in a way domains are not: a site can be rebuilt, rerouted, or restored from backup, while a lapsed domain follows the unforgiving timeline in our expiry article. So when budgets or attention run short, the priority order is always the domain first, the hosting second, the website third, protect the name, keep the stage, and the show can always be rebuilt.