cPanel is a hosting account management software, and if you signed up with a hosting company that supports it, you should have received a link your login page. (For more information on logging into cPanel see this post.)

Go ahead and log in, and on the page that comes up you should see an icon called “Fantastico De Luxe“. Find this icon and click it:

Fantastico is a Web based software package that simplifies and automates the installation of Web scripts. On the page that comes up you’ll see a list of scripts that are available for installation with Fantastico. Select the “WordPress” option:

Once you do that you’ll see Fantastico’s panel for WordPress on the right. Click the “New Installation” link:

The next screen is where the real action takes place. You’ll see a form asking you to fill in the details of the installation:

Here’s what you’ll need to fill in:

Install on Domain – Choose the domain name of your WordPress site. If you’ve set up only one domain under your hosting account, then you’ll only have one option.

Install in Directory – If you leave this blank (recommended), your WordPress installation will live under the root of your domain, i.e. if your domain name is examle.com, then your WordPress site will be accessible from http://example.com. Otherwise, if you specify a directory, say “test”, then WordPress will be accessible from http://example.com/test.

Administrator Username – This is the username of the site’s administrator, i.e. you. For security purposes, choose something not as easily guessable as the standard ‘admin’ username.

Administrator Password – This is your password. Choose something very difficult to guess. Include digits in your password.

Admin Nickname – This is how the admin user will be referred to and displayed by WordPress. So for example, if your nickname is ‘Stimpy’, then posts by you may say something like “Written by Stimpy”.

Admin Email – This is your admin user’s email address. Make sure it’s correct because if you forget your password, this is where a reset will be sent.

Site Name – A headline for your site. Some WordPress themes (a theme controls the way a WordPress installation looks), including the default theme, display this in the site’s header.

Site Description – Like the site name, only instead of a headline, it’s a slogan or a more detailed, yet short description.

Don’t sweat over the site name and description, as they are easily changeable from within the WordPress admin panel.

After you fill everything in, click the “Install WordPress” button. A screen detailing what’s about to be done will appear. Click the “Finish Installation” button there, and presto, you have a WordPress site.

Point your browser to the site’s domain to see your new WordPress site. To log into the administration panel go to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin. (Replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain of course.)

The default theme is somewhat ugly, but don’t worry, WordPress makes it easy to change it into one that’s more attractive.

Adding a domain name to your hosting account is easy if you’ve signed up for a hosting with a company that uses cPanel, as I suggest. Therefore, that’s what I’m going to cover here today.

In tech-speak, adding a domain name to your hosting account is called creating an add-on domain. If you don’t have cPanel, then look for technical support with your hosting company regarding add-on domains (or addon domains).

The first thing you need to do is log into your cPanel account. I just thought I’d discuss it here since creating an add-on domain is possibly the first task you would ever need to do with cPanel, and therefore you may have never logged in yet.

All the information you need to log into your account can be found in the welcome email you’ve received when you signed up for your hosting account, except perhaps the password which you should have kept safe when you first signed up.

The username and password you’ll use to log into cPanel are almost sure to be the same as those you’ve specified when signing up for hosting.

The URL of the login page is usually just yourdomain.com/cpanel or 123.456.789.101/cpanel, where the numnbers are the IP address of your specific Web server, and yourdomain.com is the domain name you’ve signed up with for hosting. For the hosting company Host Gator, this information is detailed in the welcome email as follows:

Until your DNS has been changed and resolved over to our nameservers, you can access your cPanel at:
http://123.456.789.101/cpanel

Once you point your browser to your cPanel’s URL, you’ll be prompted to enter a username and password. You’ll probably either get a login message box similar to the following,

or a login screen that looks like this:

After you log in, look for the “Domains” section of the control panel:

Then, click on the “Addon Domains” icon:

In the screen that comes up you’ll be asked to enter details about the domain you want to add:

Filling out that form is very simple. First, enter your domain name in the “New Domain Name” field. The next two fields, will then be filled out automatically, and the defaults are just fine. The “Document Root” field is the directory in which the website will reside. The other fields on the form, “Subdomain/Ftp Username” and the password fields, deal with FTP (file transfer protocol) access to the new website’s files and directories. But since you can also access those with your main login, i.e. the one you use with cPanel, the FTP username and password are not that important here.

For the password, just click the “Generate Password” and then the “Use Password” button on the box that comes up to create a strong password:

You don’t need to record this password, as you won’t need to ever use it. But it’s important to have something uncrackable there.

After you’re finished with the password, click the “Add Domain” button on the add-on domain creation form.

The next screen will have a massage saying that the domain has been created, but it may take a while for it to appear as cPanel is working on getting everything configured. Just be patient and wait for it to finish.

Once it’s done, you’ll see the following, which means the domain has been added to your account:

If you click on the “Go Back” link, you’ll be taken to the main add-on domain page. Once there, you’ll be able to see your newly added domain listed in the table at the bottom half of the page (click image to enlarge):

And that’s how you add a new domain to your hosting account.

Normally, domain name lookup is accomplished by communicating with computer servers on the Internet that are dedicated to the task. Those servers are called domain name servers. The hosts file enables each personal computer to act as its own local domain name server.

Given that domain name servers do the same thing, what is this good for? For the purposes of launching a website, a host file is handy because domain name servers can take up to 48 hours to update across the internet. So if you register a new domain name and set up a hosting account, you may not be able to see your site as you normally would, by typing its domain name in a browser, for 24-48 hours after you’ve configured the DNS entry with your domain name registrar.

However, if you add an entry for your site in your personal computer’s hosts file, you’d be able to access it with its domain name immediately, albeit, no one else would until the NDS servers actually update. But this is useful if you want to start working on creating your site right away.

Updating a hosts file after you register a domain is entirely optional and is not necessary if you’re willing to wait the 24-48 hours before starting to work on your site.

And now, let’s see how it’s done.

Updating Your Hosts File on the Mac (OS X)

I’ll start with updating the hosts file on the Mac since I do most of my work on a Mac.

Open up the Terminal application. Terminal is normally found in the Applications > Utility folder. If your can’t find it, Just search for “terminal” in SpotLight:

The Terminal gives access to the underling Unix directory structure of OS X, and looks like this:

Once in Terminal, type the following command at the prompt and hit Enter:

sudo pico /private/etc/hosts

Here’s what this means: “sudo” makes the command run with superuser privileges since the hosts file is a protected file, “pico” is a text editor, and the rest is the directory location and name of the hosts file.

After you’ve hit enter, due to the “sudo” command, you’ll be asked for a password. That’s just the password to your user account on the Mac. Type it and hit Enter.

Next, what you’ll see is the hosts file from within the text editor:

Notice the following line:

174.132.115.253          makeawebsitegreat.com

The numbers on the left are the IP address, and the domain name is on the right. Just add a line like that to your hosts file. You’ll have to use your cursor keys to get around that file and go to the last line. Your specific file may have other entries. Just add yours at the very end of whatever is there. The number of spaces or tabs between the IP address and the domain name doesn’t matter.

To find the IP address of your hosting account, locate the email you’ve gotten when you signed up for hosting. The email from Host Gator, for example, says something like this:

Your sites IP address:
174.132.115.251

If you can’t get a hold of your IP address, contact your hosting company’s technical support.

Once you’re finished editing, hit Ctrl-X to save and exit:

Enter y when asked “save modified buffer?” And after that just hit the Enter key to use the default file name.

Then, type in the command exit, and close the Terminal window.

Updating Your Hosts File on Windows

Editing the hosts file on Windows is a lot simpler than on the Mac. The Mac’s OS X operating system goes to great lengths to hide advanced, low level features that come from its underlying Unix base. And unfortunately, the hosts file is one of those advanced features, and therefore the Terminal app is needed to update it.

However, in Windows it’s possible to access the hosts file as you normally would any other file on your computer. The hardest part is to find the hosts file, which is not that difficult. Once you find it, the hosts file has the same format on Windows as on the Mac.

On Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, and 7, the hosts file resides in the %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\directory, and the file name is Hosts with no extension. %SystemRoot% is the installation directory of your Windows files, which on my Vista machine is C:\Windows\. So for example, the hosts file on my Windows computer is at C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\Hosts.

Once you’ve located your hosts file, just open it up with Notepad, add a line with your IP address and domain name as I explained in the Mac OS X section above, save it with Ctrl-S, and exit Notepad.

Updating The Hosts File on Other Operating Systems

Hosts files on all common operating systems are of the same format as on the Macintosh OS X and Windows. It’s only a matter of finding the file and adding your entry. You can refer to the following Wikipedia page for details on how to find the hosts file on other operating systems not mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file

One Last Thing…

If you rely on editing the hosts file for accessing your site in the first 48 after updating the DNS, it’s always best to take out the entry after that time is up and check that all went well with the update. Otherwise, you might end up with a site that no one else can see without realizing it. Instead of deleting your entry in the hosts file, you may comment it out by inserting the # character in front of the line.

Once you’ve taken out the entry and saved the hosts file, visit your site. If it shows up, it’s all good!

When someone types your domain name into a Web browser’s address bar, expecting some Web page to come up, what actually happens next is as follows:

1. The browser looks up the Internet address (also known as Internet Protocol address or, IP address) of the computer server that has your website, i.e. the computer you have your Web hosting account on. This is called DNS (domain name server) lookup, but more on that later.
2. Using the IP address, which is numeric, the browser contacts your Web server, and requests the page that matches what was typed into the browser’s address bar. The request is made using the famous hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).
3. The Web server contacts browser and sends it the appropriate data that makes up the Web page.
4. The browser takes that data and renders the page.

What we need to concern ourselves with here is the first step. Once that’s set up, all the rest is taken care of by the browser and Web server automatically.

The question we should be asking now is the following: Given a domain name, how does the browser know the IP address of the Web server? And the answer is that it does so by looking it up using domain name servers. A domain name server (DNS) is a computer that serves up a look-up table that matches domain names with IP addresses.

And to make everything work, all you need to do is tell your domain name registrar the name of the DNS of your hosting company.

After you’ve signed up with a Web hosting company, you should have received an email message detailing the DNS information. And you should have been provided with the names of a minimum of two domain name servers, one primary and one backup. Your domain name servers should typically be named something like ns1.SomeDomain.com and ns2.SomeDomain.com. (Domain names are not case sensitive, by the way.)

Now that you have the names of your domain name servers handy, I’ll show you how to set up your GoDaddy domain name registration account to use those. If you didn’t register your domain name with GoDaddy, the principles are similar but the specifics are obviously different for your registrar.

Log into your GoDaddy account and go to the Domain Manager. One way of doing this is by using the menu option on the left sidebar:



The domain manager will display a list of all your registered domains. Now, using the check boxes, select the domain(s) you’d like to set the name servers for:



After you’ve made your selection, click on the “Nameservers” icon, which is located on the toolbar just above the domain name list:


Next, a screen will come up letting you enter your DNS information (click image to enlarge):



Select the “I host my domains with another provider” option, enter your domain servers in the appropriate fields, click “OK“, and you’re done.

One last thing you should know is that DNS changes are not instantaneous. They may take up to 48 hours to propagate throughout DNS machines scattered across the Internet so that every person in the World can access your site.

Once the DNS updates for your Internet point of access, you’ll notice your domain no longer shows an ugly parked domain page full of links and ads, but instead it either shows some default page in your Web hosting account or gives some “page not found” message.

It’s a bit of a downer that you have to wait up to 48 hours to see your site when you type your domain into a browser. Luckily, there is a way to make that happen immediately, but for your computer alone.

Every computer has its own local domain name table called a hosts file. In the next post I’ll show you how to edit that file so that you can access your website and start working on it immediately after registering a domain and setting up hosting.

]]> http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-point-your-domain-name-to-your-hosting-account/feed/ 0 http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-sign-up-for-web-hosting/ http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-sign-up-for-web-hosting/#comments Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:29:59 +0000 Yaron http://makeawebsitegreat.com/?p=809 The number of Web hosting companies and options seems to be endless, and I think the best thing I can do for you is greatly narrow those down.

In this post, I’ll walk you though the exact steps needed to sign up for hosting with the hosting company I’m using for this website, Host Gator. However, it is my intention to give you insight into into the various options available when you sign up for hosting in general. Also, since in the future Host Gator might change their sign-up process and screens, I think what’s most important here is an explanation of the available choices rather than the exact process of signing up for hosting.

Let’s start with my top requirements for a Web hosting account:

1. Linux Hosting – Linux is the de facto standard operating system of Web hosting servers just as Windows is the de facto standard of desktop computers. And Linux is indeed the better solution for Web hosting. There are Windows hosting solutions available as well, however, unless you know you need to run some piece of software that’s only supported by Windows, I say stay away from Windows as a Web server.
2. cPanel Support – cPanel is a widely used hosting account management software. It acts as a control panel that integrates all the services and scripts one needs to use in a hosting account. It’s very convenient. And if you know a hosting account uses cPanel, you can also automatically trust it offers all the features that come with it.
3. Good 24/7 Customer Technical Support – I don’t think I need to explain why this is desirable.

Over a year ago I saw several sources recommending the hosting company Host Gator, and since it matched my top 3 requirements for Web hosting, I gave it a try and it turned out to be very good. Host Gator’s technical support staff is very competent and highly responsive, with convenient 24/7 chat support.

Therefore, I am also going to recommend you host your websites with Host Gator.

How to Sign Up for a Hosting Account With Host Gator

Open up a Host Gator page in a separate window by using this link. Go to where it says “Hosting” and click “Order Now“:



The other options, “Reseller” and “Dedicated“, are for power users. Just to give you an idea, the “Reseller” option enables you to have completely separate hosting sub-accounts that you can then give out to other people, possibly for a fee. The “Dedicated” gives you a whole computer server just to yourself. It’s good for people who run very many, or highly trafficked sites. But for most practical purposes, especially if you’re starting out, the “Hosting” option is just perfect.

In the following screen that comes up select the “I will use My Existing Domain and update My Nameservers only” option, enter your domain name, and click “Next“:



If you haven’t registered your domain name yet, go here to learn how to register a domain name. In that post I also explain why you should never register your domain name with your hosting company, as in the first option given above.

The following screen will give you the opportunity to choose from among three plans, “Hatchling“, “Baby“, and “Business“:



With the Hatchling plan, you’ll be able to host just one site. The Baby plan gives you the ability to host multiple sites with different domain names all under a single hosting account. And the Business plan is just a Baby plan supped up with some commerce features, such as a toll free phone number. My recommendation is to go with the Baby plan, although if you know you just want to have a single site, it’s okay if you get the Hatchling plan.

If you are planning on having multiple sites, I also suggest you sign up for hosting with a generic domain name, such as JebediahsWebsites.com for instance, that won’t be associated with an actual site you want to build and act as an umbrella domain for your hosting account. Otherwise, the directory structure in your hosting account will get a little messy. After you sign up for hosting with your generic domain, you’ll be able to neatly add in the domains for your actual sites.

After you select your hosting plan and click “Continue“, the next screen will ask you to select a billing cycle:



You can choose from a monthly bill, yearly bill, etc. You can save a little by signing up for the longer periods. Personally, I don’t like to commit to long term plans and pay in advance larger chunks of money than necessary, so therefore, I recommend to go with the monthly billing, at least until you’re sure you want to keep your hosting account for a long time.

After you click “Calculate Totals” you’ll see a screen summarizing your order (click image to enlarge):



Just click “Continue” there, and you’ll be at a screen asking for your contact and payment information:



Fill out all the information and click “Verify My Order” to proceed onto finalizing your hosting plan order.

After your order is final, your account will be set up and you’ll receive an email containing very important information about your account. This may take a few minutes or longer, but once you receive that email, make sure you save it in a safe place and don’t lose it.

]]> http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-sign-up-for-web-hosting/feed/ 0 http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-register-a-domain-name/ http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-register-a-domain-name/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:20:09 +0000 Yaron http://makeawebsitegreat.com/?p=633 To build a website, the first thing you’ll need is a domain name. Take careful consideration picking one, as changing the domain name of an already established website is tricky and sometimes detrimental to the smooth operation of the site. Once you’ve chosen your domain name, this post will walk you through registering a domain name with GoDaddy.com, while avoiding potential pitfalls.

GoDaddy is primarily a domain registration company and known for its flamboyant commercials with the “GoDaddy Girls”. It’s also a very good at domain name registration, offering very competitive prices and a super handy domain name management control panel, which will be accessible through your user account on GoDaddy’s Web site.

GoDaddy also offers Web hosting and many more “bells and whistles” to go with your domain name registration, but I recommend you just stick to domain name registration with them.

In fact, as a general rule, I recommend you never register a domain name and get Web hosting from the same company. And that’s for two main reasons:

1. Domain name registration and Web hosting are two distinct services, but many companies package them together because people usually need both at the same time. However, the reality is that a company that specializes in Web hosting is not likely to offer as good a domain name service as a company that specializes in domain name registration, and vice versa.
2. The second reason is essentially separation of powers. Because of the more complex nature of the service, Web hosting is more prone to problems than a domain name registration service. Not that any of the following are likely, but maybe you’ll be accused of spam, have hackers install a malicious script on your site, or otherwise due to the incompetence of the hosting company have your account suspended. In that case, if the relationship with your Web hosting company goes sour and your domain name is registered somewhere else, to reestablish your site, all you need to do is get hosting set up with a new company, copy your site over, and point your domain name registration to your site’s new location. But if your Web host is also your domain name registrar, you may also need to transfer the registration as well, possibly for an additional fee. And worse yet, if the hosting company decides it really doesn’t like you and it controls your domain name registration, it may decide to cancel the registration as well.

Okay, onward to the actual registration process…

Registering a Domain Name With GoDaddy.com

The following is a walk-through of a domain name registration with GoDaddy. As GoDaddy changes its work-flow and graphics from time to time, the main purpose of this is to show you which options I think you should choose when registering a domain name rather than exactly demonstrate how to do it. Once you read this, things at GoDaddy might be somewhat different than what they are when I’m writing this post, but nonetheless, the process itself should be rather straightforward.

Use this link to open up a GoDaddy domain registration page in a new window. Find an entry field that looks like the following (click image to enlarge):



Enter your domain name in the field and click on the “Search” button. Assuming you’ve verified beforehand that the domain is indeed available, the next screen will confirm the availability and have a “Continue to Registration” button, which you should click:



Next you may see a pop-up screen offering you to register a whole bunch of other domains:



In that case, I’d just go to the bottom and click the “No Thanks” link.

Next you’ll see a screen asking you to fill out your registration information:



Fill out your information and click the “Continue” button ad the bottom of the form:



The next screen is the Registration and Checkout Options (click image to enlarge):



Just leave those as they are (we’ll make some changes in the shopping cart later on) and click the “Continue” button toward the button of that screen.

And now you’ll be at the shopping cart (click image to enlarge):



GoDaddy’s shopping cart is set up by default to register a domain name for two years. You may register a domain name for up to 10 years, but unless you’re sure you’ll want to keep your domain name for the long run, I suggest registering for one year to start (registration is non-refundable) by changing the year selection box to “1 Year“:



After you’ve made your selection for the number of years, click the “Update Cart” button. It should be at the bottom right of the cart:



Next, there is one extra feature GoDaddy offers that I do recommend considering, and that’s private registration. To avoid risking loosing the rights to your domain name, you must supply your real name and contact information to the registrar. However, those then become publicly available in the domain name registration repository. If you wish to keep your privacy, you may do a private registration.

For a few more dollars a year, private registration adds a third party that acts as a proxy for your registration. The proxy company puts up its own name and contact information onto the domain name registration, and passes along to you any communication you might receive regarding the domain.

GoDaddy provides such a privacy proxy through a service called DomainsByProxy. And if you wish to register a domain privately, it’s very easy to do so with GoDaddy. All you need to do, is select the “Private” option in the shopping cart, and click the “Update” link that’s to the right of it:



Your shopping cart will then update to include the private registration line item (click image to enlarge):



Now just scroll down and start the checkout process (click image to enlarge):



Choose your payment method, verify that you’ve read the terms and conditions by checking the appropriate boxes and click “Continue With Checkout”. Now all that’s left for you is follow the screens for payment and Account Registration. After that you’re done. Congratulations on your new domain name registration!

]]> http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-register-a-domain-name/feed/ 0 http://makeawebsitegreat.com/what-is-a-domain-name/ http://makeawebsitegreat.com/what-is-a-domain-name/#comments Sun, 27 Dec 2009 04:51:49 +0000 Yaron http://makeawebsitegreat.com/?p=611 Normally, registering a domain name is the first step of building a website.

So what exactly is a domain name?

What’s referred to as a website’s domain name is the part of the of the Web address that comes right before the top level domain (which is the .com, .org, .net, .us, etc.) together with the top level domain itself.

So for example the domain name in the following Web address, also known as a URL (universal resource locator), is marked in red:

http://www.exampledomainname.com/some-page-name.html

The domain name is the part you register and reserves your site’s name on the Web. Anything else in the Web address is configurable by your site or your Web server, and doesn’t require registration. (Anything but the http://, which is not actually a part of the address, but more on that later.)

Here’s a complete breakdown of the components of a URL:
http://www.exampledomainname.com/some-page-name.html?parameter1=test&parameter2=drive

The green part is what’s known as the the sub-domain.  In the early days of the Internet it used to designate a specific computer on a network, and when the World Wide Web developed, Web servers were then designated as www.  But today it just evolved to mean a separate location on the Internet, as many domains and sub-domains can be served by the same physical computer.

Since once a domain name is registered, sub-domains are completely under the control of the domain’s owner, sub-domains are often used as  a way to dish out addresses for multiple websites.

So for example, someone may register example.com, and then put up sites named site1.example.com, site2.example.com, site3.example.com, etc., having to register just one domain name called “example.com”.

Many site addresses start with a “www”, however they just mirror what’s in the higher level domain and are completely redundant, i.e. www.example.com shows exactly the same pages as example.com.  These days the www, is mostly a vestige form the early days of the Internet.  And once you set up a Web hosting account with any hosting company, www.yourdomain.com is made to automatically mirror yourdomain.com, so you don’t have to worry about it.

As discussed before, the purple part together with the orange part combine to form a Web site’s domain name. In relation to the top level domain, the purple part is a sub-domain as well.

The orange part of the address is the top level domain. You are probably familiar with the most common top level domains of .com, .org, and .net. Each top level domain may have a different authority controlling the registration of its sub-domains. Some top level domains are assigned to countries, such as .us to the USA and .il to Israel.

The blue part of the address is a specific page on the website. It may have a .html or .htm extension, but not necessarily so. It can also specify directories as in /this-is-a-directory/and-this-is-a-page.html.  Or it may not be there at all, in which case, the server is called upon to deliver some pre-configured default page.

The brown part of the address, which is separated from the page with a question mark, is the parameter list.  If present, it’s used to pass variables to the software that generates the Web page.  The blue and brown parts combined, i.e. the portion of the URL to the left of the top level domain, are called the URI (universal resource indicator).

And finally, the http:// just designates the protocol with which the entity pointed to by the address is to be interpreted. HTTP stands for hypertext transfer protocol and essentially means it’s a Web page. In a Web browser, http:// is almost always all you’ll see, however a URL is an Internet address, and since the Internet includes many protocols other than HTTP, the URL is not truly complete without it.

]]> http://makeawebsitegreat.com/what-is-a-domain-name/feed/ 0 http://makeawebsitegreat.com/creating-your-website/ http://makeawebsitegreat.com/creating-your-website/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:22:07 +0000 Yaron http://webhotshot.com/?p=484 The number of options and technologies for building a Web site is overwhelming. However, unless you are truly aiming at something complex or unique, (such as a new dot com startup selling Moon dust to Martians) there is one choice for creating your website that clearly stands out: Building a WordPress site.

WordPress is an open source blogging tool, but it’s evolved enough so that it can be configured to look like an “ordinary” non-blog site. Or you can also have a hybrid configuration where WordPress looks like an “ordinary” website that has a blog section.

Since WordPress is open source, it is free to install, use and modify to your liking. Another positive aspect of WordPress’s open sourceness (yes, I just made that up) is the large community of developers who work on extending its functionality.

WordPress is highly expendable and customizable trough templates and plugins. Templates are mainly responsible for how an installation of WordPress looks, and plugins are responsible for adding functionality that does not exist in its core. Because of its great popularity, (largely due to the fact that it’s free and was developed early in the Web’s timeline) WordPress has a vast body of templates and plugins developed by individuals and companies across the world. And much of it is free. I don’t think there is another website creation platform that comes close to the number of templates and plugins available to WordPress.

The large body of WordPress templates and plugins, combined with continuous open source improvements to the WordPress core, gives website owners an opportunity to leverage a massive amount of work done by developers across the world for free. Consequently if you use WordPress, you get a highly functional website that can keep improving with easy upgrades and plugin installations as technology strides forward. All this is in stark contrast to basing your website on your own proprietary platform, that only improves as you personally invest in making those improvements.

There are other open source Web platforms, most notably Joomla and Drupal, that are considered more robust content management systems, however WordPress does hold several advantages over those:

• Ease of use and installation.
• Simplicity of development. Meaning that it easy to develop for, change and extend WordPress.
• A large number of developers versed in WrodPress. Consequently, it’s easier to find developers to do WordPress customizations.
• Larger number of templates and plugins.

Because of the above reasons, as I mentioned before, unless you’re doing something very special, creating your website with WordPress is a winning default strategy.

Even if you decide to completely outsource your website and have it built by someone else, most times, the best approach is to have your site build around WordPress. This way you’ll have an easy to use content management system, so that and even if you’re not a techie, you won’t have to call your Web designer for every little change on your site.

There’s another important thing I should mention. There are quite a lot of site builders and free blog platforms, such as the ones at WordPress.com and Blogger.com, that let you create a site on their servers within their system. While this is an easy solution, it has one big disadvantage, which is loss of control. On the other hand, if you get your own hosting account and install your website there, you are not limited by what you’re allowed to do. You can install any templates, plugins, or software versions you want. Just by taking a relatively small step of getting hosting and installing WordPress, you’ll be free to have your site which ever way you like, unhindered by policies and restrictions of a third party.

Further reading: How to Install WordPress Using Fantastico

]]> http://makeawebsitegreat.com/creating-your-website/feed/ 0 http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-change-wordpress-header/ http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-change-wordpress-header/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:44:39 +0000 Yaron http://webhotshot.com/?p=600 How to change WordPress header code? The answer is the HeadSppace WordPress plugin. You’ll love it!

The requirements of search engine optimization dictate that webmasters carefully manipulate their Web site’s pages’ title, description, keywords, and robots meta tags, which all reside in the header portion of an HTML document. And If you have a WordPress site (which you probably should) and you’re doing any SEO for it (which you definitely should), then you may have heard of the All in One SEO plugin. This plugin is designed to do just that, i.e. manipulate the SEO relevant header tags, and it has become very popular.

However, I think HeadSpace does a much better job at it. It’s an extremely flexible, and is not only an SEO tool, but also a general HTML header manipulation tool for WordPress. For example, it has modules that easily insert Google Analytics, frame breaking and Goggle Webmaster codes, just to name a few, into the HTML header.

So if you have a WordPress site, you should definitely give the HeadSppace plugin a try for manipulating the WordPress headers.

]]> http://makeawebsitegreat.com/how-to-change-wordpress-header/feed/ 0 http://makeawebsitegreat.com/web-hosting-company-checklist/ http://makeawebsitegreat.com/web-hosting-company-checklist/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:43:35 +0000 Yaron http://webhotshot.com/?p=183 The Web hosting market is full of choice. However, unless you know you have very specific requirements, such as a particular piece of server-side software that runs only on a certain operating system, then it’s best to stick to Web hosting companies that offer the leading industry standard platforms. And luckily, or actually by definition, the number of leading industry Web hosting standards is small. I suggest you pick a host that runs cPanel on a Linux server.

I will go one step further and let you know that this site is hosted by Host Gator, which I highly recommend because it meet all my requirements (see below) and has great customer support. This way you’ll save a lot of time by not having to sift through the vast number of hosting companies out there. Whether you’re looking for shared hosting or dedicated hosting, Host Gator is very competitively priced, and unless you have super special hosting requirements, it has all the features you need.

At any rate, as I mentioned above, I recommend you go with a Linux server with cPanel. In case you’re unfamiliar with these two terms, let me explain both:

Linux – Linux is an operating system based on a very well established and powerful OS first developed in the 1960′s called Unix. Linux is an open source operating system that runs on PCs, and this translates to cheap and dependable. Windows is another example of an operating system that runs on PCs, but it is proprietary to Microsoft.

cPanel – cPanel is a very popular Web hosting control software that runs on the server and lets users easily manage their accounts. The hallmark of cPanel is its ability to integrate separate software tools and operating system services into a single, easy to use, control panel, and hence its name. Some of the types of tools it integrates include database access & querying, Web mail, a script for adding domain names to your account, etc.

Since it’s inception, Unix was designed to manage time sharing, multi-user computer systems. Unix was managing multi-user, multi-tasking computer servers for many years until Microsoft finally came out with a version of Windows that can do the same. Consequently, unlike the desktop PC market, the server market is dominated by Unix based systems. And with the advent of Linux, a popular open-source Unix variant that can run on cheap PCs, there is no good reason to run a Windows based server, unless you specifically need it to run software based on Microsoft technologies. Furthermore, the open source nature of Linux sprung a world-wide effort to crate free open-source tools for Linux. And consequently, any Web host offering Linux, can also provide a vast array of tools and options based on software that doesn’t cost them a dime.

cPanel is very good at integrating all those tools, and if you pick a hosting company that offers it, you’re guaranteed to have a large set of these tools and technologies conveniently available to you. So instead of trying to keep track of all the acronyms, CGI, PHP, RoR, Perl, MySQL, SSH, SSL, etc., you just need to look for one thing, cPanel, and you’ll know you have all the standard technologies and tools. Of course, if have special requirements, then by all means, verify that the hosting company supports those.

Okay, so now that you know to get Linux and cPanel, here’s the list of things to look for when choosing a Web hosting company:

1. 24/7 customer support – Trust me, if you need help after normal business hours, you don’t want to get a voice mail message telling you to wait until the next morning.
2. Guaranteed up-time – Most Web hosting companies guarantee 99.9% server up-time, however, if they do not live up to their promise, don’t expect to be compensated for anything more than your hosting fee for the month. It’s not much if your site makes big bucks, or otherwise very important to you, but it’s at least some incentive to keep the servers in good working order.
3. Money back guarantee – You should be able to test drive your account and the host’s reliability for at least a month, and if you don’t like it, get your money back.
4. A reseller account or unlimited domain option – Technically, a reseller account is supposed to be used by people who want to run a virtual Web host business. They obtain hosting clients of their own, and set them up with separate accounts under their own main account with the hosting company. But a reseller account is also a very convenient way of separating your projects out completely, yet not have to sign up for another hosting account. It comes in very handy, for example, if you have your own projects, and then decide to work on another project with a partner. You would then want to give your new project a separate account as to not give your partner full access to everything else you’re doing. You might not need a reseller account, but it’s a good option to have with your hosting company should you need it. Another advantage of a reseller account is the ability to host an unlimited number of Web sites under your account. But if you don’t need to completely separate out your projects but still want to be able to have many sites, you can go for a hosting account that offers unlimited domains. It’ll be significantly cheaper than the reseller account.
5. A good backup strategy – You should keep a copy of your site on your local computer for backup, but with dynamic, ever changing sites, it could be cumbersome to keep a local backup constantly up to date. Therefore, make sure the hosting company you choose backs up their servers at least once a week.
6. Linux with cPanel – Last but not least, and previously discussed.

My current choice for Web host:
Host Gator – Host Gator has superb customer support and meets all the criteria on my list. That’s why I use it to host this site. Host Gator has great reseller, unlimited domain, and dedicated server plans. ]]> http://makeawebsitegreat.com/web-hosting-company-checklist/feed/ 0