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Setting Up Your Domain

 

If you registered your domain name with HostGator, you still need to point your domain name to your assigned name servers.

Important Note: If you are transferring an existing site to a new hosting account, the DNS change needs to happen after the site's content has been moved over, not before. This is so that site visitors can continue to see the website while it is being transferred. When starting a new site, the DNS needs to be changed first so people can see the new site sooner.

The steps you need to follow depends on where you bought your domain:

Important Note: Once your name servers have been updated, there will be 24-48 hours of DNS propagation time during which your website and email may not be available.

Domains purchased from HostGator

If you purchased your domain from HostGator and wish to point it to your HostGator hosting package, you can use the following link in this guide to correctly point your domain and manage your HostGator domain:

Domains purchased elsewhere

If you purchased your domain with a third party, you might be interested in transferring your domain to HostGator in order to keep management for both your domain and your hosting in the same place.

For information about transferring your domain, please see our following article:

Otherwise, you will need to use the name servers in your welcome email to point your domain to HostGator from your current registrar. The following article will provide additional information about updating your DNS:

HostGator offers tutorials to assist with this for many different registrars:

Accessing your account after configuring your domain

After the domain name has been propagated to the correct DNS records and server, you will be able to use domain-based URLs to access the various parts of the hosting account.

cPanel URL

To access the cPanel on a hosting account, please refer to the following article:

Webmail URL

To access webmail for a hosting account, please refer to the following article:

Website URL

To access your website, simply use the domain name. It should look like the following:

http://yourdomain.TLD
yourdomain.TLD should be the actual domain name you purchased, such as hostgator.com, etc. If you have not purchased a domain name, then your hosting account will not work correctly. In order to purchase a domain, please go to hostgator.com/domains or contact our Billing department via phone or Live Chat.

Purchasing new domains

If you're interested in purchasing additional domains for your website, following the process is simple. You can purchase directly from our domain registration portal or read our articles about helpful practices when purchasing a domain:

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