If you’re looking to start a website, create a professional email address, or link a domain name to your social media profiles, this tutorial is exactly what you need. In this post, I’ll walk you through the process of acquiring a domain name. You’ll also learn how to set up a business email account. Additionally, I’ll demonstrate how to connect your domain name to your website, social media profile, or other online services.
If you’re currently following my WordPress tutorial for designing a food blog website, I will guide you through each step of connecting your new domain name to Elementor hosting. This process is quite similar to connecting your domain name to other services.
I’m all about helping you find the best and easiest to use tools to use to build your websites.
The domain registrar that we are going to use in this tutorial is incredibly easy to set up, easy to use, and most importantly, they won’t bombard you with unnecessary upsells.
Let’s make your website journey enjoyable and hassle-free!
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Step 1: Choose A Domain Name
Are you ready to dive in? Let’s kick-start the process by clicking on the link below to visit hover.com.
The first step is choosing a domain name, ideally reflecting your business or closely related to it.
While I prefer the classic “.com” top-level domain, there are other top-level domains (TLDs) available, such as .me or .shop. However, I recommend using .com whenever possible. It’s the TLD that most people are familiar with.
Start brainstorming some ideas and typing them into Hover to see if they are available. One you have a domain name that resonates with you. We can move on to the next step.
For this tutorial, I tried mynicewebsite.com. After entering it, hit the search button to see if it’s available. Huzzah! It is available!
Next choose if you want to add an email address now, add it later.
Step 2: Decide Whether to Include an Email
The easiest way to add an email address is right here using the hover email service. You can also decide later on to host your email with another company like Gmail, Microsoft Outlook or Zoho.
If you do want to get an email with Hover they offer a few options.
One of the options is email forwarding, which allows you to forward emails from the address you create to another account, such as Gmail. While this can be a convenient way to get started, it’s important to note that Gmail may slow down the forwarding process if too many emails are being forwarded. This can lead to delays in receiving important messages, negatively impacting your business.
For a smoother and more reliable email experience, I highly recommend going for the small mailbox option. Having your own email service, you can steer clear of any potential hiccups that come with email forwarding.
You can then choose how many email boxes you want. So this would be how many individual addresses you want.
And then just complete the checkout.
Hover domain dashboard
After signing up for your domain name you will be taken to the dashboard for your domain name. Here you will see the basic information about your domain name on the left.
On the right you will see a few services that you can use to easily connect your domain name too plus a more button that will allow you to connect your domain to additional services. Some of the additional services include linking to your Facebook or Instagram profile. A Squarespace or Shopify Website plus many more.
You can also of course manually connect your domain name to any other service or hosting company. Or simply forward people from that domain to any other existing website like your LinkedIn profile for example.
Farther down on the dashboard, you will see options for creating your email address.
Step 3: Setting up your email address
If you purchased an email address with Hover let’s take a look at how to set up a professional email address for your company with Hover. Follow these simple steps to get started:
- Purchase an Email Address: If you didn’t already purchse an email address when you signed up for your domain name you can click on the “Email” button at the very top of the dashboard and it will guide you through the process of purchasing one.
- Create Your Email Address: Once you have purchased a mailbox, go to “Setup your email” and click on the “Create an Address” button
- On the form that pops up enter a mailbox name, for example, “Tim,” this will create an address with your domain name. In my example, it will be “tim@minicewebsite.com.”
- Set Your Password: To view your password, click on the “Show” button. Make sure to remember it for future use. You can also take this opportutniy to choose your own password.
- Click create mailbox at the bottom to create your new mailbox.
How to access your new email
To access your email mailbox, go to the Hover home page. At the top click, “Your Account” from the drop-down menu and select “Webmail”.
Alternatively, you can visit mail.hover.com
Enter your new email address and password, then click “Log in.”
Start Using Your Email: You are now in your email mailbox. From here, you can compose new messages from your domain name and manage all incoming mail.
Step 4: Connect your domain name to your website or online service
Hover makes it easy to connect your domain name to many website builders and other services.
Here is an example of how you can connect your domain name to a website builder Elementor hosting. It’s a similar process for the other easy conect services.
- Go back to the dashboard for the domain name you want to connect.
- From the hover home page click on the control panel
- Select the domain name that you want to connect.
- At the top look for the connect section. Click more.
- Find the service you are looking for, in this case, Elementor
- Next, you need to find your Elementor website domain name.
- In your browser open up a new tab
- Go to your Elementor dashboard and hover over the website you want to connect. Click “manage this website”
- Copy the default URL provided by Elementor. This will be a string of letters followed by “.elementor.cloud”
- Copy this address and go back to your browser tab with Hover.
- In the hover connect click on Elementor if you haven’t done so already and paste in the domain name that you copied from your Elementor Cloud dashboard.
- Click Connect at the bottom.
That’s all it takes! Hover will start to connect the domain that you purchased to your Elementor hosting. This can take up to 24 hours to get fully connected, after that time you and your visitors will be able to view your website at your new Domain!
Connecting Your Domain To Other Services
If you want to connect your Hover domain to another service that is not part of Hover Connect you will need to use the DNS method.
DNS stands for Domain Name System. Whenever someone types a website into their browser, the domain name system is used to figure out where that page should be directed to. It’s like a phonebook — when you type in a website address it looks up the DNS record and connects your domain name with the server hosting that website.
To use this method you will need to find out from your hosting company which DNS records you need to create and then follow this hover guide to add those records to hover.
Conclusion
I love how easy and straight forward it is to register a domain name with Hover. It’s the ideal place to get your domain name and email set up. They also have a great selection of services that you can connect to without any technical knowledge.
By using Hover, you can be sure that you are getting a reliable service with fast activation times and great customer service.
If you have any questions about registering your domain name or connecting it to another services feel free to reach out to the Hover support team. They are always ready and willing to help with any issues!
