Starting Out With Our Free Student Web Hosting

So you’ve started your course and you’ve claimed your freebies, but you’re not sure where to start with your free student web hosting?

Don’t worry – help is at hand!

Creating Your Hosting Packages

Once you’ve verified your course, you’ll need to go through your Eco Web Hosting account to create individual packages for your projects.

To create hosting, use the Create Hosting Packages page. You’ll be presented with the following options:

Screenshot of the Create Hosting Package page, with the fields you need to complete

One thing to bear in mind – the domain you enter here isn’t registered when the hosting package is created. This is just a placeholder on our systems. I’ll cover domain options later in this guide.

Unless you specifically need Windows hosting to use ASP.NET or MSSQL, I’d strongly recommend sticking with Linux hosting when you’re creating your package. This choice is for the operating system on the server – it’s not affected by your local OS. Linux hosting gives you a stable and configurable platform, with more verbose error messages should anything not go to plan!

Choosing Your Domains

In terms of the domain, don’t worry if you don’t have one at the moment, or you don’t want to purchase one. You will be given a temporary URL to use with the hosting, and this lets you view your projects online once uploaded.

This link can be found in the Account Information section in the right-hand pane of the hosting control panel once you are logged in there from the ‘Temp Address’ link.

Screenshot of where you can find your temporary web address for your hosting package

If you already have a domain registered elsewhere that you want to use with your hosting packages, you can do this by simply updating your domain to point to the following nameservers:

  • ns1.eco-dns.co.uk
  • ns2.eco-dns.co.uk
  • ns3.eco-dns.co.uk
  • ns4.eco-dns.co.uk

Please note that these DNS changes can take 24 to 48 hours to fully propagate and take effect.

And of course, if you want to purchase a domain name, you can find more information on prices and available domains in our Domain Names page.

Uploading Your Files

Once you’ve created your hosting, sorted out your domain (or temporary URL), and you’re ready to upload your projects, you have two options to use – depending on the size of the files.

The File Manager is a web based tool in the Hosting Control Panel, and it’s ideal for light usage. If you have a few small files that you just want to get in your package, this is your quickest option.

If you have a large site (either in terms of number of files or size of the uploads), you may be better off using FTP software. For this option, I’d recommend using FileZilla.

You can find your FTP details just below the Account Information section in your Hosting Control Panel. You’ll also be able to unlock FTP so you can upload.

Screenshot of the panel where you find your FTP details and unlock your FTP

Remembering Which Folder And Files

The only other thing to be aware of is that public_html is the default folder on our servers. Make sure you’re uploading your project/site files into that folder in order to make them ‘live’.

You also need to make sure you have a default index.php or index.html file uploaded – since that’s where the domain name or temporary URL is going to point first.

And You’re Good to Go!

If you’ve followed the above steps, and you’ve uploaded your files, you can visit your temporary URL (or domain if it’s pointed to Eco Web Hosting), and view your project!