I think you may need a cloudways tutorial because Cloudways is not like any traditional hosting provider so the method of setting it up is also different from other hosting provider. But don't think that this is a difficult way but I think it is easier than other traditional hosting services and this cloudways tutorial will help you a lot to make this simple thing simpler.
If you want to know more about Cloudways before read the cloudways tutorial you can read the Cloudways complete review article. I have described everything about Cloudways.
In this tutorial, I have tried to cover everything that needs to be done in this hosting admin panel to start your site.
So let’s start
Sign up
At first go to Cloudways home page and click "start free" button from right side of the menu, after clicking you will land on the free sign up page.
Fill the form with your information, tell about your blog, tell how much you want to spend on hosting. I filled for myself in the picture. Check the terms and condition box and click start free button.
Install WordPress and taking server
This is the application and server details page, here you will select wordpress version or if you want you can select any other application like laravel, magento by clicking drop down.
By the way verify your account by email confirmation.
Ok...
Give your application name and server name and then select server. In server selection you need to keep look at the page bottom to see the price as you can see it here in the picture.
Each server has it’s own price range. You can select digital ocean, this is in the lowest price, I have selected Vultr for their high frequency server, you also can choose it.
All servers are good, you can choose any one.
Difference of selecting server will not make any effects in your settings.
You can scale it up according to your need and finally select your server location in which country you want to target.
Click launch now.
After clicking you will be taken here but there will be an additional timer of 13 minutes. In this picture you can’t see the timer because I took the screenshot after 13 minutes. So wait 13 minutes.
Server management
After finishing 13 minutes click on the name of your server and you will be landed on server management page. From here you can manage your server very easily.
Server monitoring
One step below from master credential you can monitor your server status. There is nothing important to tell. You can see yourself.
Settings and packages
In here go optimization tab and switch on automatic disk clean up. If you want you can do custom clean up but it is not important at this moment.
Vertical scaling
In this section you can scale up or down you server. But for digital ocean, linod and vultr you can not scale down after scale up once.
Back up
You can make a backup of your server and it is totally free. You can set it as your need.
Application
Go to application from left side of menu or switch the button to application as showed on picture and this is your application means your wordpress site. By clicking the arrow icon of the right side you can visit your site now.
You can delete or clone any application from here. This is called staging. Now click on your application name.
Application access details
After clicking you will be landed on application management page and in the picture you are seeing my access details.
You can see wp admin panel access, mysql database access. You can log in to your data base directly by clicking on the button "launch database manager".
Your public IP will be shown in the right side bar. You have to need this ip during adding domain to the server. So remember it.
I am little scared, I am showing you my access details.
My application url is showing this site’s url but in case of you it will show a subdomain under cloudways and you will need to add your registered domain instead of the subdomain.
Where ever it registered namecheap or godaddy or anywhere in maximum case the process of adding domain name is same and very easy.
You need to go to “Domain management” to add your domain in cloudways. So let’s add the domain.
Domain management
Write your domain name in the primary domain section as showed in picture and click save change.
You have added your domain to Cloudways now you have to add this record to your DNS from where you registered you domain.
I will show you form Namecheap because my domain is registered here. Namecheap provides hosting also but it is highly not recommended. I have used their hosting and got a terrific experience. So stay away from namecheap hosting. Their domain is cheap price so I have taken domain from them.
If you don’t have any domain then go to namecheap, click on the menu "domain", search domain name and purchase. This is as simple as that.
After purchase click on the “domain list” from left sidebar after that click on the “manage” button right side of the domain name.
Now click advanced dns
Click on add new record
Select the type “A Record” from dropdown, Give a host “@”, give your public IP as value. I have told you about the IP before.
You have to give one more record as like as I showed in the picture bellow.
In 24 hours your DNS record will be added and you site will be running under your own domain.
You can see the domain management process in the video.
How to get free SSl
For installing the ssl go to “ssl certificate” from application management section, select let’s encrypt ssl certificate and give your email id and domain name and click install certificate.
That’s it.
You can on auto renew.
One thing, your domain need to be live before adding ssl. So wait until it is live after adding dns records.
You can see the video demo
Conclusion
I don't think you need to do anything more in your hosting to create a website. Feel free to host your site here and ensure maximum speed and security of the site.
If you want you can read the full review of Cloudways hosting and if you have any question about Cloudways tutorial then let me know in the comment section.
