3: FTPing and Hosting

Hosting:

What are hosting companies? A hosting company does what the name implies, they host your website on their computers (servers), keeping it running smoothly so that your site is always available and secure. That is their number one job. This is the first place that you will have to spend some money. You can expect to pay between ninety and a hundred and thirty dollars per year.

When you sign up for your first hosting plan you may be anxious about what you are doing, but trust me it is super simple to do. Once you have your hosting plan you can create as many sites as you want, each with their own domain name (www.yoursite.com). You can use your hosting platform as a playground to experiment with new technologies and:

At the end of this module I will show you how to purchase your own hosting plan; you don’t have to do any of these things yet but you soon will need to.

Domain Names:

It’s time to get rolling. You know what a hosting company is. So what is a domain name? A domain name is the www.dogsandcats.com, www.google.com, www.yourname.com that you type into your internet browser to visit a particular website.

Your domain name is important because it tells people about your blog, business, or website. In the above example I wrote www.dogsandcats.com. You would expect that domain name would take you to a site about dogs and cats. If the site was about pigs and cows, I’d be confused, actually I would be looking for the irony but probably wouldn’t find any. So I would leave the site and look for a site about dogs and cats.

What should your domain name be? I can only tell you what you want in a domain name. You will have to decide this one for yourself, but don’t fret, if you change your mind in three days, three months, or three years you can buy another domain name for your site. However, it’s best to find the right domain name as soon as possible. This is the name you will be building your site upon; this is the domain name that will be in the search engines first.

Your domain name should be:

With the four tips above in mind, I want you to take out a pad of paper and begin to write down every possible domain name that is relevant to your business. Take ten minutes and write, don’t stop, don’t edit, just write, everything and anything that comes to you is legitimate. You are a content creating genius with ideas, ideas, and more ideas.

Take your list and whittle it down to your top five to ten favorite names.

That’s it, you now have a possible domain name. The next thing you need to do is find out if the name you chose is available. There are many ways to do this but I’m going to show you two. The first way would be to continue to read below and follow the steps to purchase a hosting plan. One of the steps will ask you for the domain name you want. At that point you will be told whether or not it is available.

The second and preferred way to do this is to go to: whois.com. Type in your domain name and click “Search”.  A Warning, do not buy the domain name through this service unless you are not going to be purchasing a hosting plan at this time. The reason is that when you purchase a hosting plan you will be able to pick up the domain name for free and you won’t have to deal with transferring names and pointing to servers (some day you may have to do this for a client who has already purchased a domain name. It’s not difficult to do but this is not the place to get into it.)

How to buy a hosting plan:

I’ve used a few hosting companies and I will recommend a few for you to look into. There are many to choose from.

To be fair, I can’t recommend one over the other, so I feel the need to say use whoever you want. If it is your prerogative to learn more about hosting and the options that our available then by all means go for it. But if you want to move as quickly and effortlessly as possible I suggest following along with me and going with Dreamhost or Bluehost.

If you do strike out on your own and purchase a hosting plan you should know a few things. Your hosting company should offer you:

Step 1: Purchasing Hosting

These are the steps for purchasing a hosting plan. You will eventually have to do this. You can do it now if you’d like or you can simply pretend to do it by following the steps, clicking the buttons, and so on, just stop playing along when you get to the place that asks for your credit card information.  Navigate over to http://www.dreamhost.com.

Once at Dreamhost, click on “Hosting,” you should see a list on the right showing you all the services that are included. On the left there is a button that says, “Sign Up,” click on it.

Okay, you will be receiving a few emails confirming that your account is set up and ready to go. That is all there is to it. The next thing you will want to do is check your email. You will be given a link to go to as well as your username and password. Follow the link and log-in.

What you should be looking at is the Control Panel (CPanel). It’s from here that you can install additional software, create email accounts, amongst other things.

The point I’m trying to make is that it is really easy to purchase and set up a hosting plan. In the “Finale” module I will talk to you more about hosting and how you can actually make money and save money for your clients when you purchase a hosting plan for their sites.

FTP:

You have a hosting plan and domain name. But how do you put your XHMTL and CSS files onto the servers? You do this by using an FTP program.

FTP or file transfer protocol allows you to upload and download files from your computer to the servers (computers) that host web sites. In effect the FTP software gives you access to the servers at the hosting company, making the process of moving your .html and .css files from your computer to their computers effortless. It’s kind of like having a folder on your computer where you can drag and drop and copy and paste files to.

To use an FTP client you will need:

It may take you a few tries to get familiar with the FTP process, so practice. Once you install FileZilla you can go ahead and log-in to your servers. You’ll need to pay attention to files or folders that are already there. Generally, there will be a folder that says either Html, Public, WWW, or Yourwebsite.com which you will put your files into. It is different at each hosting company. At Dreamhost you will see a folder named after your domain name. Within that folder you will find the default index.html file that you will eventually replace with your own index.html file.

A word of advice, Backup your files before you upload new files. Backup frequently. There have been many times that my backups saved me.

Conclusion: