Setup WinHost Account

Lesson 2: Setup Winhost: Domain, Site & SQL

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In Lesson 2, we will walk through how to set up a WinHost account, including registering a new domain name or transferring an existing one, and using the WinHost Site Control Panel. We will discuss selecting a hosting plan, entering billing information, and optional service features. I will show you how to update name server settings for domains registered elsewhere, order an SSL certificate, and set up your first online SQL Server database. Finally, we will get the database connection string, discuss passwords and security, and review relevant information provided by WinHost for managing your service.

Navigation

Prev: Lesson 01
Next: Lesson 03

Keywords

Access Seminars, Winhost setup, Winhost control panel, Winhost SQL Server, Winhost connection string, online SQL database, domain name setup, domain transfer, web hosting, FTP setup, SSL certificate, Winhost promo code, site backup, DNS propagation, email

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Intro

Transcript

In lesson two, we are going to set up an account at Winhost.com. We will talk about setting up a new domain name, or transferring an existing one if you have one already. We will see how to use the Winhost Site Control Panel. We will create our first online SQL Server database, and I will show you how to get the connection string.

We are going to start out today by setting up a Web Service through a company called Winhost. They are my recommended ISP. I used to be with GoDaddy for years, and then I ended up getting unhappy with them, so I switched. I moved over to Winhost. They made it so easy to set up the website, move everything over, set up a database. Their customer service is fantastic. I would not recommend them if I did not use them personally and love them.

So, here is a link you can use. Full disclosure: I did sign up as an affiliate, so I will get a couple of dollars if you sign up through me. Thank you, but if you are looking to set up a website, you do not even need to set up a whole website. All you need is just Web Service for a couple bucks a month to set up your online database. Whether you use the website or not is completely up to you. If you have another website that you are happy with, stick with them. You can use Winhost to host your database.

I will put a link to this in the description down below that you can click on to go right there. When you go to Winhost's homepage, you will see this. They may change prices in the future; they may change their packages. This is what they have as of right now. It is currently May of 2021, but that is on them. So, they change this stuff, but as far as what they have right now, I personally have this... Actually, I have the ultimate plan. These guys give you unlimited disk space and bandwidth.

This basic package - three gigabytes of disk space is plenty if you are just hosting a simple database for you or your company unless you have tons and tons and tons of records. 50 gigabandwidth again is plenty, but it is eight bucks a month for unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. Now, two gigabytes for your SQL database, that is again, that should be plenty of space. My whole website right now, I think, uses 75 megabytes of space, so that is plenty.

So, I am going to set up a basic one for the purposes of class because I have my own account which I am not going to use for class. I am going to set up a brand new one just for teaching this class and maybe when I do some more ASP classes. So, I am not going to need a lot of disk space or bandwidth. I am going to go with this one. I will click on get started.

Now, if you do not have a domain yet, a domain name like yourname.com or whatever, you can sign up for one here. I have got a whole bunch of them that I am not even using, like my old PCresale.net that I used to have if you took any of my older access classes or my ASP classes. I have my domain names registered at a different company called Hover. They used to be called BulkRegister.com way, way back and I signed up for like a 10-year membership. They are fine, I like them too, they are good. You can have your domain name anywhere you want to and just point it to whoever is hosting your website.

So if you want a new domain name, type it in here. They will walk you through setting up the domain name. It is pretty simple to do. If you are going to be building access databases and online stuff, you should be able to figure out how to set up a domain name. It is not hard, trust me. But I am going to use an existing domain name that I have.

Not that one; that is already set up. I am going to set up PCresale.net on the server. Next.

Next, they want your billing address, company info, all that stuff. Type all this stuff in. No, I am not going to let you see all of mine, but it is all pretty much straightforward stuff. I am going to fill all this out.

Again, nothing out of the ordinary here. Some optional features down here at the bottom: site backup, automated off-site backups. They backup your website files and your databases daily. I strongly recommend this. I have it on my site. I am going to turn it off because this is just a sample teaching database site. So I am not going to pay the extra three bucks, but for three bucks, trust me, it is worth it. If you ever lose a file or something gets corrupted.

Same thing with the SiteLock Basic. I have the ultimate package so I get it for free. But again, two bucks a month for SiteLock, it is worth it. I am turning it off because again, this is just a teaching database. Now the default is the rate you get for 12 months. I am only going to sign up for three months at a time because I am not sure if I am going to keep it that long. I might do a couple classes and then cancel it. So that is my fit. The fee goes up a little bit for the month, that is okay.

Now, web server. Make sure - you get the latest one here, 2016 with IIS 10. Everything I am showing you should work with the older one, but that is mostly for compatibility with people who have things that they want to make sure run under IIS 8. Go with IIS 10. It is the new version.

I do not have any promo codes for you. I am going to look and see if I can get a promo code for you guys. I know I get a little bit of a cut as a commission as a further commission, but I do not know if - I will have to look into this. I will put it in the notes down below in the description if I can find a promo code for you guys. So check the notes down below. I will send an email to my rep over there.

So I am setting this up $18.75. They are going to bill me for three months. That is fine. Submit my order.

Sign up is done. Go check your email. Check your spam folder. If you do not get anything, follow them on Twitter if you want to. Do not follow them on Facebook because I hate Facebook. I will talk bad about Facebook every chance I get. So no. And if you want to join the affiliate program, if you have other people that you know you are going to be referring to them, then sign up. It does not cost you anything. And if someone else signs up, you get a couple of bucks.

So let me go wait for that email to come in. I think I just saw it come in now in my inbox.

So here is the email they send you, a couple of notes on it.

First thing right here: here is your control panel. That is the link. Copy this link. Copy your username - I deleted mine - and copy this. This is the password that you provided when you placed the order. That is the password you just typed in a second ago in the sign-up form.

You can use Notepad on your computer. You can write it down if you want to if you are old school, because you are going to have a bunch of different addresses and passwords and usernames to keep track of. You get an FTP username and password. You are going to have a database username and password. So get ready and put it in your Notepad. I am not going to show you mine because I do not want you to see all my passwords, but just copy this stuff down.

Now, if like me, you are using an existing domain name - if you have your domain name already registered somewhere else, then you have to set up your name servers to be this. A name server is basically a server on the internet that takes an IP address - or, excuse me, the other way around, takes a name and converts it to an IP address. So if you type in PCresale.net, there is a big name server database out there that knows to send PCresale.net to whatever the IP address of my physical server box is.

So that is what that is. If you got a domain name from Winhost just now, then do not worry about that stuff. I am going to show you how to do this in just a second, but I have to go right now and set up my new name servers. As soon as I get my IP address - I do not have my IP address yet; I will show you where that is in a second.

Continuing down this email. Here is their support portal. Yes, this is Microsoft Paint.

Their support is fantastic. From what I remember, they do not have a phone number, but they have email support and they get back to you really quick. It is one thing that actually impressed me. I personally hate talking on the phone. Those of you who are longtime customers of mine know this. I can not stand it. I was in sales for so many years. I hate talking on the phone, plus I spend all day talking when I am recording videos. So I do not want to talk anymore on the phone.

I do not really care for the live online chat. If I have a problem, I want to fire off an email, have someone fix it, and then reply back to me. They are really good. I had one little hiccup when I was setting up my website because I got some custom weird stuff. They got back to me in like four minutes with an email. So I can not say anything but good things about their support people.

There are some tutorials here. You probably will not need them because I am going to walk you through everything. But if you have questions about some crazy stuff that I do not cover, you can check there. Here is their network status. In case your site goes down, you can check that. I have not had the site go down yet. I have been with them a couple of months now and I think I had like one one-minute outage, which is nothing. With GoDaddy it would go down for 15-20 minutes every night at 3 a.m. and it would just send my server alarm off and wake me up and I got mad. That is one of the reasons I left them.

Again, here is their affiliate program if you want to sign up for that.

You will get a second email from them with your FTP login information. You will need this to send any files up to your website. Again, you will have a username and password. Write that down. I am going to copy and paste that into your notepad. And this is important too: if you do like me and have a domain name that is somewhere else, it takes a little while for the server updates to propagate.

So right now, for example, PCresale.net is pointing to my 599CD website. It just forwards it over. I have to log on and change that. It is going to take a while for the rest of the internet to get that change. It could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to even like 48 hours depending on where you are on the internet and the traffic and the propagation. I do not know the logistics of it, but it takes a while to weed its way through the web.

You can use a secondary FTP logon, which is basically an address on their server directly to your server. I will show you that in a few minutes too. Again, if you sign up with a domain name through them, you do not worry about that.

Now we are going to log into our control panel. Go to that first email and click on the link for your control panel. Mine is cp.winhost.com. Again, it might be different for you. Put in your account username and password. Not the FTP username and password. This is your account username and password. Mine is a number. Type that in and hit log on.

This is the main page. You will get some announcements and notes and some other stuff on here.

I am going to go over here and click on Sites. You can see my PCresale.net domain is here. I have not forwarded this domain name yet, so I am going to do that right now.

Here I am over on Hover. You might not have to do this. This is just for me. I set the name servers to what Winhost gave me: ns1.winhost.com and ns3. You might not need the ns3. That is in case the first one fails and it can not find it. It goes to the second one. If that fails, it goes to the third one. I almost always just stick with one and two. Save those.

I waited about five minutes, and then I just checked it. I typed in pcresale.net on my address bar and boom, this comes up. This is perfect. This site is being hosted at Winhost, so it is working already. I remember back in the day, like back in the early 2000s - let me think, late 1990s? No, maybe late 1990s. It used to take a couple of days for that to propagate. It is pretty good now.

That information gets cached. Your browser will cache it, all the DNS lookups. So every time you look for a web page, it does not have to go and query the name server at Winhost to find out what IP address to go to. Your browser will cache it for a certain amount of time. Then your internet provider's server will cache it. Then the guy above them will cache it. So if you have not looked up that domain name in a while, then all of those steps look for it fresh. Like I made sure this morning I did not look up pcresale.net at all with my browser. So nobody up the chain had that cached. So I just changed it and went through it. There it is. Good.

Again, you might have to do this step. Do not get confused. If you have a Winhost domain name, then you do not need to worry about this, but you should now see this if you try to go to your web page that you either transferred over or got from Winhost.

So back to the Winhost control panel. Let's just take a quick peek at some of the things that are in here.

Here are your domains. I do not have any domains registered through Winhost. I have one hosted at Winhost, but registered elsewhere. So this is fine. It is all set now.

SSL cert. You want to get one of these. Click over here on "Order New SSL Certificate." Even if you are not doing any e-commerce on your website, if it is just your database you are hosting, you still want this. It is $49 a year for the cheapest one, and that is fine nine times out of ten. The reason why is because now you can use HTTPS for secured web traffic. All of your web traffic should be using HTTPS. It encrypts it. Your browser encrypts any requests. The other end decrypts it. Otherwise, your information goes in real text over the internet and any hacker between you and your server can read your traffic without any effort at all.

So if you care about the integrity of your data, get yourself even just the basic one. It will be up and running in 24 hours. You can still develop and work on it without the HTTPS, but when you are ready to go live, you should have that. We can just use HTTP for now, but that is not secured. So while you are setting up your database, once you go live, make sure you have got your SSL intact and just do this. The steps are pretty straightforward. If you have any problems whatsoever, contact Winhost support. They will help you and walk you through setting up your secure certificate with your CSR. It is not that hard to do.

Let's go back to the Sites tab here. Click on the domain name right there - PCresale.net.

Here is all the info on your site. Here is your secondary web URL if your primary is not working. If PCresale.net had not forwarded over already, I could go here: PCresale.w34.whatever, and that would still FTP. So if you are waiting for yours to propagate, you can go there.

Here is your FTP address: ftp.PCresale.net. You could just FTP into pcresale.net or whatever your domain name is, and that usually works too. You do not usually need to specify the FTP.

Here is your physical site address. Here is your SMTP server. If you want to send mail through that, I will be doing a separate seminar on just setting up websites and email and all that stuff. That is not the focus of today's seminar. But if enough of you are interested in it, let me know and I will show you how to set it up.

The next thing to do is to set up our database. So come over here and find MS SQL Manager. Not MySQL. That is a different one. We are going to use SQL. This is a SQL seminar or SQL Server from Microsoft - MS SQL. Click on that.

I got the really cheap basic package so I can have one database with a max of 500 MB, which is more than enough for me. You will see whatever you have got there. Usually, I think my other one is unlimited and like 5 GB, which is plenty of space. That is tons of space.

Now, it only says one database. You really only need one database because that database can have pretty much an unlimited number of tables in it. You can have customers and orders and whatever else in the same database.

So let's add a database. Database version - this is just a list of different versions of SQL Server. 2019 is fine unless you have got a specific reason to go to an older one. Type in a database name. This is the name for your database and you will need this when you connect to it. I will call mine PCresale1. It is DB_ that number _PCresale1 because this has to be unique on the machine. Quota is how many megabytes you want to reserve for it. You know what? I can only have one database. Anyway, so I might as well give it all 500 MB.

Now, note down here it says the default SQL database password will be set as a site password. We are going to change that, and that is important because if you are going to be giving your database - I am going to talk about security a little bit more - but if you are going to be giving your database out to other people, your Access front end, it is pretty hacker-proof. It is like 99.9 percent hacker-proof, but it is not 100 percent, and if someone figures out your database password, you do not want them to also have that to get into your website and change things in your control panel too.

We will talk more about security as we get there, but you want to have a unique password. Have a different password for your website versus your database itself. Click create.

Did I tell you that I love these guys for their support? I literally fired off an email earlier when I was talking about promo codes at the beginning of this video, which was probably like half an hour ago. I sent them an email. I said, "Hey, I told them who I am. I am making a tutorial blah blah. Do you guys have any promo codes that I can share with my customers?" I got back an answer literally within 10-15 minutes.

Current promo codes can be found here at this page. I will copy this and put this link in the - we will call it the links down below. Let me click on it and see where it goes.

So here is the promo code: WH2021. I am sure they will change this in the future. And look, I could have saved a few bucks. Two bucks a month for basic. That is just cheap. It went from seven something to five. I should have asked first. I could have saved me a couple of dollars for this sample. This promotion ends June 31, 2021. So I will update that link and I will put it in the link section. So check it when - if they somehow change the link, let me know. I will contact them, or you can contact them and say, "Hey, give me a promo code." But you can not beat that, 12 bucks a month for that. Their service is really good too. Yes, I know I am being a salesman, but I really love these guys. I have been with like four different internet providers since I started my website, including GoDaddy, 1&1, Hostgator. I have been with a bunch of them. These guys are by far the best as far as my site running well, staying up, and their support being helpful and getting back to me timely. GoDaddy is the worst at that.

So enough sales. The database is set up. It usually takes about a minute for this to get provisioned. And yes, it will use three megabytes up front for the setup and the stuff, so do not worry about that.

Click on Manage right here. Now, this is all the important information that you are going to need about your database. Here is the database server, the database name, the database user account - you will need that to log in. The password that we are going to change. Here is your connection string. This is important too. This is the string you will use to connect from Access or from your website to the database.

The first thing I am going to do is change my password. Give it a new password and retype it. I like to type this into my notepad first and then copy and paste it. I type mine in and I hit update - update password success.

Copy those things to your notepad - your database name, your database user, and the password that you just put in there.

Let's go back to Manage. Now, I also want you to copy this connection string right here. Copy this whole thing, including the quotes. Paste it into your notepad and right here where these stars are, these asterisks, replace that with whatever your password is that you put in, because you want to create this whole connection string. It has got data source equals, initial catalog is the name of the database, the user name, your password. You do not really need the integrated security equals false, but leave it on there anyways. Replace that with your password right now and then save this in your notepad.

That is it. Our database is set up. We still have to actually set up tables and stuff in the database, but the database exists. It is online. We should now be able to connect to it, upload a table. We are going to set up a SQL Management Server in the next lesson and see how we can get in there and do stuff with that.

So far, our domain is set up, our website is set up, and our database is set up online. That is all the configuration that we have to do at this point.

I am going to the next lesson.

Quiz

Q1. What is the first step in setting up an account with Winhost?
A. Sign up for web service and select a hosting package
B. Install a database engine on your local PC
C. Contact GoDaddy for DNS transfers
D. Download the Winhost desktop application

Q2. What is the main purpose of the Winhost control panel?
A. To manage your hosting account, website, and databases
B. To process payments only
C. To install desktop applications
D. To write and edit code directly

Q3. If you already have a registered domain name with another provider, what must you do to point it to Winhost?
A. Change the name servers to those provided by Winhost
B. Re-register your domain name with Winhost
C. Cancel your old domain registration
D. Use the IP address in your browser

Q4. Why is it recommended to use HTTPS and an SSL certificate for your online database or website?
A. To encrypt web traffic and improve security
B. To increase download speeds
C. To host larger files
D. To reduce hosting costs

Q5. Which database management system is the focus of the tutorial in this lesson?
A. Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
B. MySQL
C. Oracle Database
D. PostgreSQL

Q6. Why is it important to use a different password for your website and your database?
A. For better security in case one password becomes compromised
B. To make it easier to remember
C. Because Winhost does not allow repeated passwords
D. To comply with internet domain regulations

Q7. What information must you copy to your notepad when setting up your SQL Server database on Winhost?
A. Database name, user, password, and connection string
B. Email address and credit card info
C. Server physical address and company info
D. FTP upload folder only

Q8. What is the connection string used for?
A. Connecting applications (like Access or web apps) to your online database
B. Logging in to the control panel
C. Making payments to Winhost
D. Creating a new domain name

Q9. What should you do if you registered your domain name through Winhost?
A. No need to change name servers; Winhost handles everything
B. Manually set up FTP separately
C. Register the domain again elsewhere
D. Use a different email provider

Q10. According to the lesson, what should you do right after creating a new database in the Winhost control panel?
A. Change the default password to a unique one
B. Delete the database user
C. Edit the web.config file
D. Download SQL Management Studio from the control panel

Q11. Why is it recommended to keep track of all your login credentials in Notepad or another secure place?
A. Because you will accumulate multiple usernames and passwords for different services
B. Because Notepad is encrypted by default
C. So you can share them easily with friends
D. To submit them to Winhost for verification

Q12. What is a primary reason the instructor prefers Winhost over GoDaddy?
A. Winhost has better customer support and website uptime
B. GoDaddy is cheaper but less reliable
C. Winhost requires social media sign-in
D. GoDaddy does not host databases

Answers: 1-A; 2-A; 3-A; 4-A; 5-A; 6-A; 7-A; 8-A; 9-A; 10-A; 11-A; 12-A

DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks.

Summary

Today's video from the Access Learning Zone covers the process of setting up an account at Winhost.com to get your website and online SQL Server database up and running. I will walk you through the entire process of signing up, choosing a domain, handling DNS if you already have a domain elsewhere, using the Winhost control panel, and setting up your first SQL Server database with the appropriate connection string.

We start by going over the decision to use Winhost as a web hosting provider. I personally used GoDaddy in the past but was dissatisfied with their service and support, so I switched to Winhost. I have been very pleased with how easy it was to set up my website and move all my data over. Their customer support has been excellent as well, which is why I am confident in recommending them.

You do not have to move your entire website to Winhost if you are satisfied with your current host. Winhost allows you to use just their database hosting service for a few dollars per month. It is flexible enough that you can point your domain to their servers if you wish, or simply manage your database online.

To get started, head over to Winhost's homepage. Be aware that prices and packages may fluctuate over time. As of May 2021, there are several tiers available. For the majority of you who are just hosting a database for a small company or personal use, the basic package provides more than enough disk space and bandwidth. If you anticipate a huge amount of records or extremely high traffic, you may want to consider a higher-tier package with unlimited disk space and bandwidth. For our purposes here, the basic one will suffice.

When signing up, you have the option to register a new domain name through Winhost, or you can use an existing domain that you already have, perhaps registered with another company like Hover or other registrars. You simply enter the domain name you wish to use, and continue through the registration process, filling out your billing and company information as needed. There are optional features you can add, such as daily website and database backups and SiteLock security, which are both recommended for production environments, though I am skipping them here because I am setting this up purely for instructional purposes.

You also get to choose your web server version; choose the latest, such as IIS 10 with Windows Server 2016 for best compatibility and security with modern websites. Once all your preferences are set and you check out, wait for the confirmation email.

Check your inbox and spam folder for emails from Winhost. The first message will contain your control panel link, your username and the password you chose. You will want to keep these details handy, preferably in a Notepad file or another secure location, since there will be several different usernames and passwords to manage, including account, FTP, and database credentials.

If your domain is registered elsewhere, you need to update your registrar's name server settings to point your domain to Winhost's name servers. The email from Winhost will give you the exact names to use, such as ns1.winhost.com and ns2.winhost.com. This change allows internet users who type your domain into their browser to be directed to your new site on Winhost's servers. Domain propagation across the internet can take anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours, depending on various caching mechanisms. Meanwhile, Winhost also supplies a secondary web URL that you can use to access your site and upload files via FTP before your primary domain name fully points to the correct place.

Winhost provides email-based customer support, which I have found to be fast and responsive. I prefer this method over phone or live chat, as it gives you a written record of communications and solutions. If you run into any technical issues, just open a support ticket and they will get back to you quickly.

Back in the control panel, you will find several key areas: you can view domains you are hosting, order SSL certificates for HTTPS encryption, and manage your websites. I recommend setting up SSL for your domain, even if you are not conducting e-commerce. At $49 a year for the basic certificate, it is a good investment for securing web traffic, especially when working with sensitive data.

To set up your online database, navigate to the MS SQL Manager in your control panel. On the basic Winhost package, you typically get one SQL Server database and a generous amount of space for most use cases - enough for tens of thousands of records. You only need one database, as you can create multiple tables inside it to organize your data.

Create your database by selecting the desired SQL Server version (2019 is fine unless you have specific compatibility needs), then set your database name and allocate the maximum quota allowed by your package, since you only get one database on the basic tier. The default SQL database password is initially set to your site password, but you should change it to something unique for security reasons. Never share your main account password with others who might need database access.

Once your database is created and provisioned, go to the Manage screen in the control panel. Here you will find all the important connection details: server name, database name, database user, and the connection string needed to connect from Access or other applications. Update your database password, copy it to your secure notes, and be sure to store the connection string as well. Replace the placeholder asterisks in the password field of the connection string with your actual chosen database password. You will need all this information for future connections from your applications.

At this point, your domain should be pointed to Winhost, your website is online, and your SQL Server database is set up and ready to accept tables and data. In the next lesson, we will cover installing and using SQL Server Management Studio to connect to your database and start managing your tables and data.

You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.

Topic List

Setting up a Winhost account
Choosing a web hosting plan at Winhost
Registering a new domain name
Transferring an existing domain to Winhost
Configuring domain name servers
Reviewing Winhost welcome emails
Managing account credentials and passwords
Navigating the Winhost Site Control Panel
Setting up SSL certificates for your site
Accessing and configuring site settings
Identifying FTP login information
Understanding DNS propagation timing
Using the secondary web and FTP URLs
Ordering and managing databases in Winhost
Creating an online SQL Server database
Selecting SQL Server database version
Naming and allocating quota to a SQL database
Configuring database user accounts and passwords
Retrieving the SQL Server connection string
Saving and editing your connection string
Linking a domain to your web hosting plan
Basic security considerations for site and database
Confirming hosting setup and site propagation

Article

In this tutorial, I will walk you through the process of setting up an account at Winhost.com to host an online SQL Server database. This will include registering a new domain or pointing an existing one to your hosting, using the Winhost Site Control Panel, creating your SQL Server database, and getting the connection information you will need to use the database in your projects.

To start, you will need a web host that supports SQL Server databases, and I recommend Winhost based on my own experience with their service and support. Setting up an account is simple, and whether or not you plan to build out a full website, you only need a basic hosting plan to get your online database up and running. Their entry-level packages are very affordable and more than enough for a small to medium-sized database. If you already have a website hosted elsewhere, you can still use Winhost for your databases without switching your whole site.

When you arrive at the Winhost homepage, you will see their hosting packages. Although the details may change in the future, the idea is pretty consistent - their basic plan offers plenty of disk space and bandwidth for most database hosting needs. For most purposes, the included resources are generous, and even with a fairly active business site, it is rare to run out of space or bandwidth.

Start by selecting the package that fits your needs and click to get started. If you do not already have a domain name (like yourname.com), you can register a new one during sign-up. Registering a domain is straightforward - you simply select an available name, and the host will walk you through the purchase. If you already own a domain listed at another registrar, you can keep it there and just update its DNS records to point to the hosting service. This gives you flexibility in choosing where your domain is registered and who hosts your site or data.

Once you choose your plan and domain preferences, fill in your billing and company information. You will be asked about optional features like daily site and database backups and site security options. I strongly recommend adding backup service if you are using this for anything important, since losing data is always a risk and automated backups make recovery much easier.

You will also see an option for adding security features. Many of these are worth the cost, especially if you care about protecting your data or expect to have sensitive user information in your database. For teaching or demonstration purposes you can skip these, but for real business data, security is something you should not ignore.

Choose the length of your subscription. Longer terms are usually cheaper per month, but you can also sign up for a few months at a time, which is ideal if you are just starting out or unsure how long you will need the service.

During setup, you will be asked to select a web server. Always select the latest offered version unless you have a specific need for backwards compatibility.

After submitting your order, check your email for confirmation messages. These emails will contain your account control panel link, your login information, and sometimes information about accessing support and documentation. Keep all these details somewhere safe, such as a simple text document, because you will need them for managing your site and database, uploading files, or connecting from your programs.

If you registered your domain elsewhere, you will need to point your domain name at your new host. This involves changing the domain's name server settings to match those given by Winhost. Usually, you replace the existing name servers with the new ones listed in your welcome email. It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days for these changes to be reflected across the internet; until then, your domain may not always resolve to the new server. Do not worry if there is a delay as this is normal.

Once your hosting is active, you can log into the Winhost Control Panel. Use the link and credentials provided in your welcome email. Inside the control panel you will see your hosted domain(s) and a range of management options.

If you are planning to use your hosted database with any application that will send or receive data online, you should consider adding an SSL certificate so your traffic is encrypted. This is usually an added yearly cost, but it is important for maintaining privacy and preventing unauthorized access to your data. Even if you are not running transactions or user logins, encrypting your traffic is best practice.

To set up your SQL Server database, locate the section in the control panel for SQL management. Here you can add a new database. Choose a database name that is easy to remember, as you will need it when connecting from your programs. You will also be assigned a database username, and by default, the password is the same as your main site password. For security, change your database password immediately to something unique - this way, if anyone obtains your database credentials, they do not automatically have access to your hosting account.

After creating your database and setting a new password, save each of your database connection details: the database server address, database name, database username, and the password you created. This information will be used in your connection string, which is the specific text needed by your apps (like Microsoft Access or a web application) to connect to your database over the internet.

In the control panel, you can usually view a sample connection string. Copy this string and replace the placeholder for the password with your actual database password. Save the whole string so you have it ready for your Access project or any program that needs to connect to your SQL Server database. The connection string will include the server address, database name, user ID, and password, and is formatted so your application can easily connect using these details.

That is the process of setting up hosting with Winhost, configuring your domain, and creating your first online database. You are now ready to start building out tables, developing forms, and connecting your applications to your new online SQL Server database. The next step will be to use SQL Server Management tools or your preferred database manager to connect to the database and start creating your data structure.

Setting up your hosting and online database can seem overwhelming at first, but once you have the basic steps down - getting your account set up, pointing your domain, and creating your database - the rest is just about building out your application. Always remember to keep your account information secure and regularly backup your data as your project grows. If you run into issues, Winhost has good support available by email and helpful documentation on their website. With your database online, you are well on your way to developing powerful connected applications.