FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is simply a program that lets you copy files to and from your web server (or any other computer). If you are comfortable using Windows Explorer to navigate the hard drive on your computer then you should be able to get around FTP pretty easily.

There are several good FTP programs out there. I prefer to use CuteFTP, which is a paid program (but reasonably prices) but I can also recommend FileZilla FTP Client which is free and full featured.

Okay! So you have y our first HTML files ready to go or you’re ready to manually upload and install WordPress… Now what??

Well, download and install your FTP client of choice and get ready to upload your files!.

If you are setting up a new site, you’re probably going to want to install the files on the root (top level) of your website so that they’ll load when someone just types in your domain name. If you place the files in a folder on a second or lower level then you’ll have to include that folder name in the URL. Instead of typing www.icanmakeawebsite.com your visitors would have to type www.icanmakeawebsite.com/foldername. Keep in mind that some web hosts (including PowWeb) put the root of your website in a folder. When you connect to your website you’ll see one or more folders including one called HTDocs. The HTdocs folder is the top level of your website on PowWeb, so you’ll want to put your files in there. If  you put them at the same level as HTDocs, they won’t be accessible from your website.

Let’s do a quick walk through of uploading a file using Filezilla:

First, you’ll need to open Site Manager to set up the connection

In site manager, you’ll click New Site and give it a simply name to remember what the connection is.

On the right side of the window, you’ll put in your connection details like site name and user ID. Often, the site name will be your website preceded by FTP, for example: ftp.icanmakeawebsite.com. Your User ID and password should be given to you by your webhost. If you are a PowWeb customer, you can easily create FTP ID’s in the control panel. After you put in your site and user information, click connect.

Once you’re connected, you’ll see the window below. The left side is the pc you’re typing on and the right side is your web server. Again, notice the htdocs folder which is where my web host puts the root of your website.

When you type in a website address and don’t specify a file name at the end (for example, typing in icanmakeawebsite.com instead of icanmakeawebsite.com/index.html) the web browser automatically looks for a file named index.html or default.htm. This makes allows your visitors to automatically load your main (index) page without having to know the name of the page. If your website root folder is empty then your visitors will get an error message when visiting your site. So your first step will either be to upload an index.html file or upload the installation files for another platform such as WordPress.

In this case, if I want to upload the index.html file that I have created on my PC, I will locate it (I saved it to c:\temp) then simply drag and drop the file from the lower left window to the htdocs folder in the lower right window. As soon as the copy is complete, you will be able to view the file on your website via your web browser.

If you want to copy a lot of files or folders, you can just select all of them on the left side and drage and drop them to the right side.

You can also do this in reverse if you have files and folders on your website (the right side) that you want to download to your pc, you can just drag and drop them from the right window to the left window.

You can also modify files that are on your website directly. Let’s say after you’ve copied the index.html file to your website, you decide you want to rename it. You simply right click on the file and choose rename from the menu that pops up.

That covers the basics of using FTP to upload and download files. FTP is also capable of doing a lot more, like setting permissions on files and it can be run from the command line, which would allow you to set up scripts and automated jobs to upload files and content to your website.

Let me know if you’d like to know more by filling out a comment below!

Technorati Tags: download, ftp, permissions, upload, website

Eventually, browsers started showing the favicon right in the address bar next to the website address. There are several good reasons to have a favicon on your site and I’ll tell you why and how to do it below.

BRANDING:

Whether your site is for a company or is the main center of your work, you should be branding it. Your favicon picture should be your logo or something descriptive of your site or your company. If it is a company, you should take every opportunity to put your logo somewhere where people will see it. If not and it’s just your site, your favicon will become a logo and branding not only on your website, but in peoples bookmark or favorites list!

Consider that someone may have fifty or more bookmarks in their favorites list. If more than half of them just have the generic browser favicon, then you are instantly going to stand out in the list and draw the eye to your bookmark, begging the user to click on it.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Do search engines rank you higher if you have a favicon? Maybe.

The search engine company’s are very secretive about how they come up with page ranks (where in the list your webpage ends up) and there is some debate as to whether the presence of a favicon will rank you higher.

If nothing else, having a favicon can’t hurt and from a user perspective, could very well help remind people that your website was one they want to visit again.

HOW DO I MAKE AND INSTALL A FAVICON?

Obviously, you must make or download a favicon before you can put it on your site. For this you can either just do an internet search for “favicons” where you’ll be presented with hundreds or thousands of favicons or you can go to a favicon generator site where you actually upload a picture to them and they convert it to a favicon file for you.

Keep in mind that a favicon is not just a picture renamed to favicon.ico. It is actually an icon file that has specificy requirements in order for it to display properly. A favicon generator site that I’ve used successfully is chami.com’s favicon generator.

Once you’ve created or downloaded your favicon.ico file, you need to upload it to your website. Place it in the root folder of your site (the main folder that holds all of your other site files and your index.htm file).

Once there, it may work automatically. Browsers such as Internet Explorer automatically look for it there. To make sure that it will load in all browsers, you can edit the header on each of your web pages and add the following line of code which will force the favicon to load:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”>

That’s all there is to it. Give it a try and start making your site a bit more professional and definitely more memorable.

Technorati Tags: favicon, website

Ok, so you finally pulled the trigger and signed up with a webhost, got a domain name and now you’re ready to get your fancy new website up and running… So what platform are you going to use? Did you just look at me like I fed you a spoonful of worms?

Well lets start with what a platform is. Just like the word implies, it is what your website will sit on. There are many platforms out there ranging from plain old vanilla HTML web pages to using WordPress blogging software to fancy Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla. Here, we’ll discuss each of these platforms and briefly explain what they are and how they work.

HTML FILES:

HTML files are the great grand daddy’s of the internet. HTML is short for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the original idea that gave us the ability to click on words (links) and have them take us to other pages and to make a page appear on the internet.

With HTML files, you manually write each page using either a plain text editor like notepad if you know HTML code or you can use a program like Expression Web which allows you to create a web page like a Word document by simply typing and dragging and dropping. Whichever way you use to create the page, when you’re done you save the page as a .html file and then you upload it to your website.

If you have a site that isn’t going to change often and isn’t going to be very large, HTML can be a simple solution, especially if you are using a program like Expression Web, which does all of the coding for you. You simply type the content you want, drag and drop pictures and files onto the page and then program generates the HTML code for you.

HTML can also be nice since you don’t need any other software or special configurations to make it work. You can literally save a copy of your website and upload it to almost any web server and it will be up and running almost instantly without any configuration or additional software.

HTML Code:

DRAWBACKS OF HTML:

Just like any old technology, HTML pages have drawbacks compared to more modern platforms. First of all, they are static, not dynamic. This simply means that once you create the HTML file and save it, it will not change again until you manually change it and upload it again. For example, let’s say you add another page to your website and you want the menu on all of the other pages on your website to have a new link to the new page. Well, you may end up having to manually edit everyone one of your pages and resave them, then upload them back up to your web server. This may not be that big a problem if you will only be updating your website a couple of times a year or you have very few pages, but once your website starts to grow or you need to update it more often, this can get very tiring and tedious, very quickly.

Coding is the next drawback of HTML pages. It’s all but a certainty that when working with HTML pages, you will find that you are trying to do something that requires you to start learning coding that goes beyond what even a fancy editor will do for you easily. You WILL end up needing to figure out coding and you will spend hours pulling your hair out trying to figure out why it’s not working. When you do finally discover that a misplaced comma is what cost you the last two hours of your life, you’ll question why you’re doing this. Coding is great for developers that do this full time, but if you have more important things to do, you’ll want to find something better.

WORDPRESS:

WordPress is an open source software package that was originally made for people to set up web logs or Blogs. Open source software is made by developers that believe that software should be free for all to use and improve upon. The great part about WordPress is that there are hundreds of programmers continuously improving it and it’s free. There are also thousands of people using WordPress that are usually happy to help other users with questions and problems.

One of the coolest things about WordPress is that, unlike HTML pages, WordPress is dynamic. This means that all of the content you create isn’t stored in static HTML files, but in a database. Even though the site appears to have HTML pages like a regular website, it actually doesn’t. When someone visits one of your pages, WordPress actually creates the page dynamically with all of your settings then adds the content from the database to the page. The real power of this comes when you want to change the look of your website or add links, etc… Instead of having to manually edit every page on your site, you change it in one place within WordPress and it magically changes on every page in the site.

Instead of spending all of your time tediously updating individual pages, you can spend it creating quality content.

This site is on the WordPress platform. While the orginal intent for WordPress was Blogging, it has evolved over the years to the point that there are many non blog websites that use the WordPress platform because of its ease of use and great, helpful community.

Once you have WordPress installed on your web server, the interface is super easy. If you want to put up a new post or web page, you just click “Add New” and an email type form comes up. Instead of Subject and body, it’s page title and body. You can choose all types of formatting for your text, upload pictures and even video and files without knowing any coding at all and without even having to separately upload your pictures and files like you would have to with HTML files. When you are finished typing, you just click the “Publish” button and BANG! – your new page shows up on your website.

See my page on using WordPress for detailed information and a walk through.

WordPress New Page Interface:

JOOMLA:

While WordPress was made for blogging, Joomla was made to be a Content Management System or CMS. This is basically a website on steroids. Joomla was primarily made for websites where you have a lot of new content or your content changes often and you have many people adding content. Imagine you were running a news website like Foxnews.com. You have 20 reporters adding news stories all the time and you need to organize and display all of that content quickly and easily. These type of situations is where a CMS platform really shines. Now that is an extreme analogy, as Joomla can be very useful for much smaller sites as well.

For me, I would use Joomla if I expected to have a website with a lot of different content and media as well as wanted to have a lot of people editing and adding pages.

The only real con to Joomla is that it has a much steeper learning curve than WordPress. You’ll have to spend a good amount of time learning Joomla before you can really put up a site and get it to look and act the way you want it to.

Before you can get started using any of these platforms you’ll need to learn how to work with files on your web server.

Technorati Tags: html, joomla, platform, website, wordpress

Here are some suggestions on what to look for in a good web host.

If you’re just getting started in putting up your own site, I recommend going with a low cost web host like Powweb. This site is hosted on Powweb and I couldn’t be happier.

Powweb is a full featured web host that gives you huge bang for your buck. Many other hosting companies will give you cheap super basic hosting but then try to tack on expensive charges for every little thing you want to do on the site whether it be more bandwidth, more storage, more email addresses, etc. Powweb is one flat rate charge which includes just about everything you could want in a website. 

• unlimited bandwidth (transfer) -Others charge you for extra data being sent from your server.
• unlimited storage – others charge you for more space on their servers to save your web files to.
• unlimited email accounts – others give you a limited number of email accounts
• 75 databases – others give you no databases or a few at best
• Run as many websites from one account as you want. No extra charges – Unlimited!

Powweb really does give you everything but the kitchen sink at a very aggressive price. Of course, I’m biased because of my good experiences with Powweb, so by all means check out all the other hosts you want to, but make sure you come back and compare them to Powweb. I’m pretty sure you’ll end up signing up with them as there isn’t much out there that can give you more for  your money than Powweb does.

Technorati Tags: host, hosting, powweb, web

Here we’ll discuss pros and cons as well as good strategies when picking the perfect name for your site.

Competition
One reason choosing a name is so tough is because it’s not enough to choose the coolest, snappiest name you can think of, or even the most descriptive. Why? Because you are competing with everyone else in the world for domain names! Odds are, if you are choosing a name about a fairly common topic, someone else has thought of some of the same domain names as you.

Alternative domain names
This is where you have to get creative and thoughtful. Are you ok with using a domain other than .com, such as .net, .org, .biz, etc? There are differing schools of thought on this. Some people think you should go with .com at all costs because visitors may not remember your site was .biz. Some also think that people still just try typing in names based on topics. For example, if you wanted to find out about soccer, you’d go to soccer.com and hope it was about pro soccer as opposed to soccer uniforms.

Others say that it really doesn’t matter what domain (or even name) you choose anymore because most web users these days find everything via search engines anyway.

I believe a little bit of both. I believe if you can get a good .com domain, that should be your first choice. This is primarily because most people on the web are familiar with .com. This also matters when using your domain for email as many people assume your domain is .com. This is not a hard and fast rule though! My primary domain is actually a .biz because I wanted my last name to be my domain and .biz was the best available.

Think of email when choosing a domain name
I need to stress the point about email here: If you are choosing a domain that will be your main site and email address, you need to keep it short and easy to spell. If your group is the Jonesville Civic Association, Inc., You should try for a domain like JCAI.com or JonesvilleCivic.com. Do not go with jonesvillecivicassociationinc.com because the odds are high that whoever is trying to type in your web address or email address will make a typo and will never get there.

I also believe your domain name should be as short and descriptive as possible (which is not always possible!). Sometimes you have to choose short OR descriptive, but can’t have both. Take this site as an example. I went with ICanMakeAWebsite.com because there are so many other sites out there with similar names that it was hard to find a shorter name that was appropriate. Also, since my main email address is not using this domain, I don’t worry that people will have to type out a long address to reach me. In this case, I decided to go with descriptive over short. This is where the other school of logic comes in… It doesn’t matter what your domain name is because people will find you via search engines.

Since the content of this site is 100% about building websites and website related topics, the search engines send people here that are looking for this type of information. Once they’re here, they’ll bookmark this site if they find the information useful. Gone are the days in the infancy of the internet when you would just type in domain names as key words and hope the site you got to was what you needed.

Registering a domain name
When registering a domain name you can either go to a dedicated name registrar which has some benefits, but the easiest and fastest way is to go with a web host package that includes a free domain name.

My web host Powweb, gives you a free domain name when you sign up with them. If you are putting up your first website and want to keep the costs down, I would recommend going with them as their hosting is about $7 a month and you get the domain name free. Fear not, even though they are inexpensive, Powweb gives you all the features that more expensive web hosts give you. I have been with them for over five years and am happy.

Whichever route you decide to take, you’ll end up at a search form where you can see if the domain name you are thinking about is available to purchase. Be prepared to try several variations of the name you are thinking of in case your first few choices aren’t available.

Technorati Tags: domain name, making a website

The Problem: Paying someone else to make and host a website for you can be amazingly expensive and you have little direct control of the site.

Here, I will help you learn to setup your own website that you can fully control. My goal is for you to find it easy and even fun while using free or inexpensive tools that help you avoid headache inducing programming and coding tedium.

Believe it or not, putting up a website can be cheap, easy, and fun!

Why would someone need a website? The list is almost infinite but here are some reasons I’ve made websites for myself:

- personal site for family and friends to see pictures, etc

- professional website to post your credentials, resume, etc.

- Business advertising – a simple site with your services and contact info

- Business portal – a place to display detailed information on your products, offer customer service, downloads, and even support forums and blogs.

- web based business such as a storefront or membership based site.

- hobby or interest site such as a photography or church website.

- Revenge or warning site- I have made these when I have been defrauded by a business to let others know to avoid a company or person.

- event site such as weddings. You can post your progress and use a blog as an online diary.

There are many more reasons for someone to want a website but you get the point.

The web has come a long way in usability since I first went online in the mid 90′s. In those days, if you wanted to put up a website you had to pay an arm and a leg for the domain name and web hosting was more like a mortgage than a bill. Once you spent all that money you then had to know how to code in HTML which was pretty much done by memory or with a fat programming book.

Nowadays, domain names are often free with a hosting plan that you can get for $5 – $7 a month – Sweet!

There are also numerous tools out there that let you simply type your content and drag and drop pictures without knowing a lick of HTML or code.

Knowing that these inexpensive options are available, it really is a shame that people are afraid of doing it themselves and end up paying someone else hundreds or thousands of dollars to do it for them.

Let’s move on. We’ll start by discussing Choosing a Domain Name

Technorati Tags: introduction, making a website