Creating
your first website?
It can be pretty easy to get lost in the new web
terminology such as FTP, SSL, Domain Names.
Hopefully after reading this article, you will have
a basic understanding how to create and display your
very own website.
We will start from the very beginning and by the
time you have finished reading this article, you
will be well on your way to creating your first
website.
There are many different programs that make
creating websites easy.
One of the most common programs is Microsoft
FrontPage.
This particular program is a WYSIWYG, otherwise
known as what-you-see-is-what-you-get. This will
allow users to build their website without knowing
any complex HTML (hyper-text markup language). You
can see how your page looks, while you create it!
You can insert images with just a few clicks, and
even change the page colors. FrontPage has many
great starter tools such as built in Hit Counters
(that show how many visitors have been to your
website), and search tools (that allow people to
search for pages on your website).
Other options, such as the free 'FirstPage'
are also available and are worth a look if you don't
currently have a WYSIWYG editor.
One of the most time consuming ordeals is
creating your actual website!
While you are in the process of creating your
website, you will need to find a domain name, and a
hosting company before you can display it online.
A domain name is a unique identity for your
website that will allow people to easily remember
how to get to your website.
An example domain would be: FrontPageWebmaster.com.
A domain will contain two parts to it, the first
part is the actual name (in the example above,
FrontPageWebmaster) and the second part is known as
the domain extension (in the example above, .com is
the extension). Domain extensions vary, and choosing
which one is best for your site really is just a
matter of personal preference. The most common
extension is .com; this is just because it was the
first extension available. This doesn’t mean that
more people will be able to see your site (domain
names will have no affect on how many people can see
your website).
Once you have an idea about the domain name you
want, you have to pay a Domain Registrar to get the
domain name. First you must find out if the domain
name is available for purchase. A few places you can
check if a domain is available, and purchase a
particular domain, is NameCheap.com and GoDaddy.com.
These two places have been in business for a few
years, and are known for their excellent service and
low prices.
Places
like NameCheap and GoDaddy charge less than $10 per
year.
Once you have an idea about the domain name you
would like, and you know it is available, it is time
to search for a hosting company to host your
website. Be sure not to purchase your domain just
yet!
There are literally hundreds of thousands of
hosting companies on the market today.
It is hard to find out which one is best for you. I
will give you some tips about who to avoid and why
to avoid them. But let’s begin with what a hosting
company is, and why you need one.
Once you have a domain name, you still need
someone to host that domain name so it is online for
everyone to view. This is what a hosting company
does, they will host your domain name, and allow
everyone to view your website using that particular
domain name.
A good hosting company will have your domain name
online for more than 99% of the time.
These hosting
companies use what we call servers that are made
from high performance computer parts. We all know
computer parts can go bad, so your website might not
always be online.
Some factors that determine how
good a hosting company is, how long their websites
are online (this is determined by how many minutes
per day the website is available), and how fast the
hosting company support is. Many hosting companies
will take days to respond to support requests, and
by the time they respond, the problem no longer
exists, or it is already too late!
Some companies prefer a high quantity of customers
over high quality service. This is why you will see
some hosting plans for only $5 per month for more
hosting space than you could ever use (usually
around 2,000-5,000MB+). Just about every host that
has these ridiculous prices will have very poor
support staff, and your website will not always be
online.
Hosting is broken down into plans. Among these
plans, you will compare pricing, space, and
features.
The hosting industry falls into the, “you
get what you pay for” category.
If you pay extremely
low prices, your service will usually be poor. When
you look at the size of most websites, they are
usually less than 20MB. Many hosting companies know
this, and provide very low prices to lure you in,
and offer 100 times the amount of space than you
really need; they try to make the plan look good,
knowing you will not use the full amount of space.
These types of hosting companies work off of
quantity, not quality, and do what we call
“overselling”. Overselling is when a hosting company
has a server, and sells just enough accounts to use
up as much room as possible, but if all or maybe
even 10% of the accounts actually used their full
space, the server would go down.
While some hosting
companies will place 100-1,000 websites on a server,
others that charge low prices, but provide
more space than you will ever need, will have over
2,000 websites on a server. Can you imagine having
over 2,000 different websites on your computer?
These companies that do that usually say their
equipment is top of the line, but there are very few
computers that can handle that many websites.
In the past two years or so, this idea of low prices
and tons of space has taken the hosting industry to
a new low.
- Setting up your DNS (Domain Name Servers)
If you notice, both hosting companies offer
domain registration, be advised that it is not a
good idea to purchase your domain through a hosting
company. If you need to host your website, go to a
hosting company. If you need a domain name, go to a
domain registrar.
The reason behind this is that
most hosting companies just resell for other domain
registrars, and you are going to a middleman to make
your purchase. You have a lot more flexibility with
your domain when you purchase from a true domain
registrar.
If you do decide to take this advice, and
purchase your domain from an actual domain
registrar, you will have to do one small extra step.
This involves modifying what we call DNS (domain
name servers).
When you sign up for hosting, your
host will tell you that your domain name needs to be
setup, or “pointed” to two name servers. These name
servers are basically just like websites, but they
are what handle your domain name. This is actually
quite simple to do, and not only will you get help
with this change from your domain registrar, but
your hosting company will also assist you with this
process. The most common way to do this, is by
logging into your domain control panel (by visiting
the place you purchased your domain from) and click
on “Modify DNS” from there you will have to enter
the two DNS addresses that your hosting company gave
you to use. Usually this will be NS1.YourHost.com
and NS2.YourHost.com. But this will vary, so be sure
to enter the correct information.
Once you make this
simple change, you might have to wait up to 24-72
hours for the change to take effect.
This step is
called “domain propagation” which is a rather hard
concept to understand, and doesn’t need to be
covered in this article.
Now you have an understanding about hosting,
domain names, and websites. But how exactly do you
take what you have on your computer, and put it
online for everyone to see?
Well there are a few things you can do. If you
are using FrontPage, like I suggested earlier, you
can click on File, then Publish.
Type in your
website using http://yourdomain.com, and click the
publish button again.
It will ask for a username and
password; this is the same username you use to log
into your hosting control panel, and the username
that your host gave you inside of your welcome
e-mail.
Now if you don’t have FrontPage, there is no need to
worry, you can also easily upload (the idea of
putting your website online) your website using FTP
(file transfer protocol).
In order to upload using
FTP, you must first have an FTP Program to use.
There
are many to pick from, and most of them are free.
One I would choose, is
WS FTP,
which is
free and works perfectly.
Once you pick out an FTP
program, you have to connect to your website using
that program. You will need your website address
(the domain name), a username, and a password.
When
you enter your domain name (which is also known as a
host or address) be sure to include the ftp://
prefix at the beginning of your domain, for ex:
ftp://yourdomain.com.
On the left hand side of the FTP program, you will
see a list of files on your computer, you have to
navigate to your website on the left hand side, and
select the files to upload by highlighting them, and
click on upload, transfer, or publish.
The right
hand side will show you where you are publishing to
on the server. If you see a list of folders, on the
right, and one of the folders is named public_html,
www, or home, be sure to double click on the folder,
and transfer your files into that folder. These are
the basic website folders that most hosting
companies will use, your host might have a special
folder to upload to, so double check your welcome
e-mail to determine the proper folder to upload. The
public_html, www, and home folders are the folders
that your website files are usually stored in. If
you don’t see any of the above mentioned folders,
then you should be fine (but you might want to
contact your host to be sure), if you see more than
one of the folders listed, you can upload to either
one.
Once you finish uploading your website, verify that
it works by visiting http://www.yourdomain.com. If
it comes up, then everything worked, if nothing
shows, (make sure you have waited the 24-72 hours
for the domain to propagate) contact your host to
resolve the issue.
- Advanced Website features
Many people are confused about more advanced
website features such as shopping carts, and SSL. A
shopping cart is software that allows users of your
website to add items to a virtual shopping cart, and
purchase their items together when they are ready. I
have worked with many different shopping carts
before, and would recommend SalesCart Pro as the #1
shopping cart. SalesCart Pro is a plug-in for
FrontPage that will allow you to add an item for
sale with just a few clicks. You can easily setup a
fully functional shopping cart in minutes with
SalesCart Pro. Unfortunately SalesCart Pro will only
run on a host that has ASP, so you need to make sure
that your host supports this.
Another shopping cart I
love, that falls one step below SalesCart Pro, is
called OsCommerce. This shopping cart works on a
host with PHP, and it is free! OsCommerce allows you
to have a shopping cart that is updated online,
through an administrator interface.
Unfortunately
this is not a plug-in for FrontPage, so it is a
little harder to setup.
The last recommendation for
a shopping cart is the PayPal Shopping Cart. The
great thing about this cart, is that you can create
products using an online interface, and insert the
product information into a pre-existing page. This
is great for websites that only plan to sell a few
products, but still would like to have a shopping
cart. The PayPal Shopping Cart is also free.
Once you establish a shopping cart, you need to have
a way to accept money. This Is accomplished by
having a merchant account. A merchant account is a
3rd party that processes the payments (by using a
credit card) through an online interface. Most
shopping carts will require a special add-on in
order for you to use a merchant account.
Authorize.net is a pretty solid merchant account,
their pricing is reasonable, and the setup is
simple. Both SalesCart Pro and OsCommerce have free
add-ons that allow you to use Authorize.net as your
payment method.
However, if you use the
PayPal Shopping Cart, you
will already have a merchant account (through
PayPal) that is secure. The downside to this is that
PayPal will be shown as name of the company that
took the transaction. If you had a merchant account,
your name would appear on the customer’s credit card
bill. Is it really worth the extra money to have
your customer’s bill say your name instead of
PayPal? Yes & no. It is a lot more professional to
have your name appear, but it is not necessary.
Before you can even think about taking orders with
credit card numbers online, it is a must that you
make your shopping cart secure. In order to do this,
you must use an SSL Certificate.
This will allow you
to place your shopping cart on https://yourdomain.com/shoppingcart
where there is an s after http. SSL stands for
Secure Socket Layer, which encrypts the information
that is sent so sensitive data such as credit card
numbers are secure.
The PayPal Shopping Cart will
not require this SSL Certificate, just because
PayPal uses their own website to process the
transaction, and the credit card number is secure on
PayPal’s website.
Some hosting companies will not
allow you to purchase an SSL Certificate from a 3rd
party and use that on your website, they will
require you to purchase the certificate from them.
Unfortunately the only thing you can do in this case
is buy your certificate from your host. You might
pay a little bit more than you would going with an
SSL Certificate from a 3rd party, but this is just
something you must put up with.
If you are able to
purchase an SSL certificate, I highly recommend
CompleteSSL.com. These certificates work great, and
are reasonably priced.
If you ever run into a problem, don’t hesitate to
contact your host. Hosting companies deal with
common problems all day long, and their friendly
staff are there to help.
Article by
BobbyDouglas
Arizona Web Design - Mr. Bob's Web Design in Arizona
