After your domain name has been registered, the first thing that you will want to do is create email addresses.  You’ll want to add the following (in addition to any others you might want):

info@yourdomain.com
wordpress@yourdomain.com
yourname@yourdomain.com

You can choose to manage these email accounts through your hosting company’s email interface or manage the account through your personal internet email address or in Outlook (or virtually any other way!).  I manage my Edit and Post and Elizabeth Anne Designs email addresses through my personal Gmail account.  If you would like to do the same, visit Settings → Accounts and Import in Gmail.  Choose ‘Send mail from another address’ and follow the prompts.

You can also choose to set up Google Apps for your domain name.  Visit the Think Splendid blog for an excellent article on the setup of Google Apps.  (A clarification to those who hop over to Think Splendid: Since Terrica’s article was published, Google has updated their settings to allow you to use your own mail server to send/receive.  If you select that option, the “on behalf of” line that used to accompany all sent messages is no longer shown.)

Your hosting provider should also give you instructions for setting up your first FTP user (if one was not already set up for you).

FTP, or file transfer protocol, is the way that you upload and download files from your server.  Your hosting provider will give you access to a web FTP program that is good in a pinch, but to get the full power of FTP I recommending downloading one of the several free FTP programs available.  I personally use Core FTP, which you can download for free here.  In essence, what this program allows you to do is to transfer files back and forth from your computer to your server with one click.

To log in to your FTP program you will need the following information:

• Host Name – a host name can be either your server name, your website address, or your IP address.  For ease, let’s use your website address.  So, my host name would be editandpost.com
• Username – this is specified either by your hosting company or by you within your hosting company’s interface.
• Password – also specified by you or your hosting company during setup.

The port for log in is typically 21 (verify with your hosting provider).  Your connection type is FTP.

Once you’ve logged in to your FTP program you should see a screen similar to this:

Now you’re ready to rock and roll with FTP, you have email, and your server is a blank slate. Next in this series, we’re ready to install WordPress!