Setting Up a Website Zero to Live in

Setting Up a Website Zero to Live in under 1 Hour! A Presentation by David Bolton http: //www. dhbolton. com

Creating a Website Needs – Domain Name – Web Server – Linking the name to the server.

Creating a Website Needs – Domain Name • E. g Pathway. Caribbean. com • Google. com • dhbolton. com (My own website)

We Need a Domain Name! I’m going to register a domain name now. I need suggestions for a domain name, something short.

Domain names need to be registered. – I use http: //123 -reg. co. uk – Costs: £ 10 a year for. com – £ 3. 00 a year for. co. uk

David gets suggestions and registers the domain…

Creating a Website Needs – Domain Name – Web Server • This is called hosting a website. Hosting companies charges vary but typically

Costs – Single site £ 2 a month. – Reseller Site. £ 20 -30 a month. – Mine costs £ 200 a year and has 60 websites on it. – Virtual Server £ 30 -50 a month – Dedicated server £ 65 - 300 a month – Facebook - $Million a month!

Companies that register domains are called Registrars. Tip: Never register a domain with a company that hosts. Why?

If you need to change hosting – Maybe your website grows or the hosting company goes bust then it gets messy trying to transfer domains.

Question. – How many people know the difference between the Internet and the Web?

Internet – Millions of connected computers. Started in 1969 in the USA. Web – A Publishing Service that runs on the web. Created in 1991 -1993 at CERN by an Englishman.

Other Internet Services – Email – Instant Messenger – FTP and SFTP (File Transfer Protocol) – Telnet. – Log into a remote computer. Now replaced by SSH as Telnet sends passwords in plain text! – Many others

Internet Slightly Technical Bit – IP Address. A 4 part number that uniquely identifies a computer’s connection to the internet. – Eg. 123. 234. 123. 56

Example Domain and IP Addresses Pathwaycaribbean. com 82. 195. 136. 135 dhbolton. com 82. 195. 136. 135 Google. com 209. 85. 229. 104 Note that dhbolton. com and pathwaycaribbean. com are the same IP as they’re on the same webserver.

The global “phone book” that converts domain names to IP addresses is called DNS is short for Domain Name System.

To hook up a domain name to my webserver, I have to configure the DNS info at the registrar and tell it the IP of the webserver.

After hooking up, the DNS system broadcasts it to many other DNS servers. These are all over the world. A DNS Server is a electronic phonebook automatically used by web browsers.

It can take up to 24 hours to “propogate” when a domain name is pointed to a webserver but in practice I’ve seen it work within 5 -50 minutes.

Once it’s live, I can type in the url and see the website. Only we haven’t created a site yet!

Types of Websites – Pure HTML. Old fashioned but still a lot around. – Use a scripting language so it can use databases to pull information out.

Modern websites are a mixture of these four types of content: • • HTML – text and formatting CSS – Specialised Formatting Graphics Java. Script

Simple HTML – <h 1>David Bolton</h 1> – David is a web designer and programmer

CSS is complicated! – Allows exact design but needs a good designer. Not quick! – The websites on http: //csszengarden. com all have the same html but different CSS and graphics.

Java. Script runs programs in your browser. – It’s how Google. Mail, Google Maps etc works. – Need to be a programmer! – Many websites never use Java. Script

• Easiest Way to Create a Site – Get a free web design – http: //oswd. org – http: //www. opendesigns. org/ – No charge but they expect a link back to the designer’s website

I’ve downloaded Bitter Sweet http: //www. oswd. org/design/preview/id/3569

I’m now going to upload it to the website. I’m using Adobe Dreamweaver which uses the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to copy the file. As soon as the file reaches the webserver, it’s live on the web.

I’ll edit the main file (called index. html) and add a name or two, then upload it to show that it’s live.

Things to Do – Use Free Software – Create a Sitemap – Get found in Google - SEO – Track Visitors – Google Analytics

• Open Source Software – Wikipedia Software – • http: //wiki-cruise. org – Word. Press CMS/Blog • http: //portent. org – Both use software that’s totally free and are running on the same server as http: //Pathway. Caribbean. com

• Open Source Web Software – Chat – E-Commerce – Email Lists – Blogging – Databases – Graphics

Some Statistics – There about 72 million active websites with over 240 million domain names registered – Source http: //Netcraft. com

SEO – the Art of Getting Found – Search Engine Optimisation – Billions of people searching but so many websites that it’s hard to be found for a given phrase. – Google is what most people use

• Various Free Tools for SEO – Google Webmaster Tools – Google Analytics – track visitors for free. – Sitemaps: http: //sitemaps. org/

• Why Google? – 78% of searches are Google. – 10% Yahoo – 7% Bing (Microsoft’s search engine)

• Q & A Session