If you haven’t purchased a domain name yet, you might want to read my article on purchasing a domain name. Or go ahead and sign up for hosting without a domain. (Just leave that field blank on the sign-up form.)

Our favorite service, Hosting Rails Site5, is ideal for websites built in Ruby on Rails. But regardless of how we build your site, Site5 is a great host with top-notch customer service.

Step-by-step sign-up

1. Go to the Site5 shared hosting page
2. Go to the bottom of the first column (“basic”) and click “order now”
3. Choose “hostBasic” from the pull-down menu
4. Type in your domain name, or leave it blank if you don’t have one yet
5. Choose 1 or 2 years of service (you’ll save 23% by purchasing 2 years up-front, but if you need to leave before the term is up, you won’t be refunded for unused time)
6. Enter your contact and billing info
7. Review your info, agree to the terms of service, and complete your order

The welcome e-mail

Once you’ve finished filling out the forms, you’ll receive a welcome e-mail with a boatload of technical information about your new hosting service.

Save this e-mail. Save it in a couple of places, and then save it again. It’s not the end of the world if you lose your welcome e-mail, but it has a lot of important technical information, and it’s a pain to recover this information via support e-mails and phone calls.

Last of all, forward that e-mail to me, and we’ll get to work on your site!

Just the beginning

Now that your site is hosted, we’ll create a private URL where you (and anyone else you include) can monitor its development.

Get in touch if you have any questions, or head on over to Site5 and sign up!