Publishing Your Website on Hostinger
Getting your website live on Hostinger is straightforward once you know the steps. This guide walks you through the pre-publish checks, the actual publishing process, and how to confirm everything's working properly.
TL;DR:
- Run pre-publish checks to catch issues before going live
- Use Hostinger's preview feature to test your site first
- Connect your domain through DNS settings in your registrar
- Click publish and verify everything works by visiting your live site
- Set up monitoring to catch any issues after launch
Before you make your site live, run through these essential checks to avoid problems later.
Review your content thoroughly. Check all text for typos, test every link to make sure it works, and verify that images load properly. A broken contact form or dead link creates a poor first impression.
Test across different devices. Your site needs to work well on phones, tablets, and desktops. What looks perfect on your laptop might be unreadable on a mobile screen.
Check your SEO basics. Make sure you've set meta titles and descriptions for your key pages. These help search engines understand what your site is about.
Use Hostinger's preview URL feature before publishing. This shows you exactly how your site will look without making it live to the world.
The Publishing Process
Here's how to get your site live on Hostinger:
Log into your Hostinger dashboard and select the website you want to publish from your project list.
Connect your domain name. This is often where people get stuck. You need to update your domain's DNS settings to point to Hostinger's servers. If you bought your domain elsewhere, log into that registrar and change the nameservers to Hostinger's.
Hit the publish button. Once your domain is connected and you've completed your checks, publishing is just one click.
After publishing, do a hard refresh in your browser (Ctrl+F5 on Windows or Cmd+Shift+R on Mac) to see your changes immediately.
Confirming Your Site Is Live
Don't assume everything worked perfectly. Here's how to check:
Visit your domain directly. Type your website's URL into a fresh browser window. If it loads, you're most of the way there.
Test the functionality. Click through your navigation, submit a contact form, and check that any interactive elements work as expected.
Check from different locations. DNS changes can take time to propagate worldwide. You might want to ask a friend in another country to check your site loads for them too.
Set up Hostinger's monitoring tools to alert you if your site goes down. It's better to know about problems quickly so you can fix them.
FAQs
How do I connect my domain when publishing on Hostinger?
Log into your domain registrar (where you bought the domain) and find the DNS or nameserver settings. Change these to point to Hostinger's nameservers. Hostinger provides the exact details in your dashboard.
How can I make sure all my changes published correctly?
Use Hostinger's preview feature before publishing, then clear your browser cache and do a hard refresh after going live. This ensures you're seeing the current version, not a cached old one.
Can I revert to a previous version after publishing?
Hostinger doesn't offer automatic version history, so you'll need your own backups. Keep a copy of your site files before making major changes so you can restore them if needed.
Jargon Buster
DNS Records – Settings that tell the internet where to find your website when someone types in your domain name.
Hard Refresh – A way to clear your browser's stored version of a page and load the newest version from the server.
Nameservers – The computers that handle requests for your domain and direct visitors to your website.
Wrap-up
Publishing on Hostinger becomes routine once you've done it a few times. The key is taking time with the pre-publish checks and making sure your domain is properly connected.
Most publishing problems come from skipping the preparation steps or not waiting long enough for DNS changes to take effect. If something doesn't work immediately, wait an hour and try again before panicking.
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