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

Step-by-step sign-up

1. Go to the Hosting Rails sign-up page.
2. Select “Shared” as your account type.
3. Select “Basic” as your plan.
4. It’s up to you whether to get 1 or 2 years of service. You’ll save about 20% by purchasing 2 years up-front, but if you needed to change hosting services after a year (for whatever reason), you won’t be refunded payment for the second year’s service.
5. The next page has a few technical questions. These are my recommended answers:
   • You don’t need extra dedicated memory.
   • You don’t need a dedicated IP address.
   • You don’t need nightly backups.
   • You don’t need a Rails application installed.
   • You don’t need to tell them anything special about your site.

The rest of the sign-up process is personal and billing information, which you and you alone can answer.

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 Hosting Rails and sign up!