How to Take Your Website Live: Checklist and Fixes

To take your website live, three things need to be in place: your domain must point to your Hostking hosting, your website files (or WordPress) must be in the correct folder, and the site must be allowed to appear in search. This article gives a checklist for each step, with fixes for the most common problems. It covers cPanel and DirectAdmin.

Step 1: Point your domain to Hostking

Your domain's nameservers control where visitors are sent. Nameservers are set at your domain registrar, not in the control panel. If your domain uses other nameservers, DNS records you add in the control panel will not work.

• Find the nameserver names and server IP address in your welcome email, or in the client area at my.hostking.host
• Check the nameservers set at your registrar match those values exactly
• If you changed nameservers recently, allow time for the change to take effect (see the waiting time section below)

cPanel: DNS records

1. Log in to cPanel
2. Go to Domains > Zone Editor
3. Click Manage next to your domain
4. Check that an A record exists for the root domain (often shown as @ or a blank name field, depending on the DNS system)
5. Check that an A record exists for www, or a CNAME record pointing to the root domain
6. Both records should point to the server IP address shown in your welcome email or the client area

To change a record, click Manage next to it, or click Edit. Make your changes and click Save Record.

DirectAdmin: DNS records

1. Log in to DirectAdmin (your login address is in your welcome email)
2. Go to Account Manager > DNS Management
3. Select your domain
4. Check the A records for the root domain and www point to the server IP address
5. To add a missing record, click ADD Record, choose the record type, enter the name and value, and click ADD

Menu names can vary by DirectAdmin theme. If you cannot find a menu, use the search box in the control panel.

DirectAdmin: extra domains

To add a second domain that should show the same site, use a domain pointer. Extra domains need the same nameservers as your main domain.

1. Go to Account Manager > Domain Pointers
2. Click CREATE DOMAIN POINTER
3. Enter the extra domain as the Source Domain and your main domain as the Target Domain
4. Check the option names in the panel before saving, as they can differ by theme

Step 2: Check your website files are in the right place

Your website's public files must sit directly inside the public_html folder (also called the web root). Files outside this folder are not shown to visitors.

cPanel: file location

1. Log in to cPanel and go to Files > File Manager
2. Open the public_html folder
3. Confirm your website files, including index.html, index.php or index.htm, are directly inside this folder

DirectAdmin: file location

1. Log in to DirectAdmin and go to Files > File Manager
2. Open domains/yourdomain.com/public_html, replacing yourdomain.com with your own domain
3. Confirm your website files are directly inside this folder

Extra folder created by a ZIP upload

Extracting a ZIP file can create an extra subfolder. Your homepage may then sit at public_html/mysite/index.html instead of public_html/index.html. To fix this, move the files up one level so the homepage is directly in public_html.

WordPress or other apps installed in a subfolder

If you installed WordPress or another application using Softaculous, check whether it went into a subfolder. If it did, the site is at yourdomain.com/subfolder. Visiting your domain without the subfolder name may show a blank page or a file list.

Step 3: Check for a valid homepage file

The server looks for a specific file name to show as the homepage. If this file is missing or misnamed, the site will not load, even if all other files are present.

• The homepage file must be named index.html, index.htm or index.php
• Names such as home.html or homepage.html will not load automatically
• File names are case-sensitive on Linux servers, so Index.html and index.html are different files

Check that file names and capitalisation match what your website code expects, including references to images and other files.

Step 4: Make your WordPress site visible to search engines

WordPress hides a new site from search engines by default. The site can still load for visitors, but it may not appear in search results.

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard
2. Go to Settings > Reading
3. Untick Discourage search engines from indexing this site
4. Click Save Changes

Waiting for changes and troubleshooting

DNS changes often take a few hours. In some cases they can take up to 48 hours, and rarely longer. This waiting time is called DNS propagation.

To check progress, enter your domain into a propagation checker such as whatsmydns.net. It shows what DNS servers in different countries currently return.

While you wait, flush your computer's local DNS cache and clear your browser's cache. Your browser may otherwise show an older version of the page.

Permission errors (403 Forbidden)

A "403 Forbidden" or "Permission Denied" error can mean the file permissions are wrong. Use these settings:

Avoid 777. It lets anyone read, write and run the file, which is a security risk on a live site.

1. Open File Manager in cPanel or DirectAdmin
2. Right-click the file or folder (in DirectAdmin, select it and choose Permissions)
3. Choose Change Permissions and set the correct value

SSL certificate issues

If your site loads but shows a browser security warning, check that an SSL certificate is installed for your domain. In cPanel or DirectAdmin, go to SSL/TLS Status to check.

Cached pages

On LiteSpeed-based hosting, an old cached page can appear instead of your latest upload. Clear the cache with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin in WordPress, or use the LiteSpeed Web Cache Manager in cPanel.

Missing images or styling

If the page loads but images or styling are missing, the file paths in your code are probably wrong. Paths should be relative to the public_html folder, not to a location on your own computer.

Still not working?

If your site is still not live after checking the steps above, contact Hostking support. You can start a live chat on the Hostking website, or open a support ticket from the client area at my.hostking.host. Support can check server logs that are not visible in File Manager.