crossing the ocean

When you cross the ocean to serve up web pages, such as having the server in America and you want the pages served up in the UK, for instance, you are crossing international boundaries. That isn't necessarily bad in itself, however when you do, you are using transatlantic communcation lines, which can be VERY slow, such as in the UK to the USA - try visiting a .com.tw site sometime and see how fast it loads.

Sometimes foreign servers are not high-powered or are overloaded.

getting hosting or domain services from another country

Something to consider is technical support, and whether you can handle the technical language in the tongue you have chosen or whether you need to choose a native-tongue hosting company and domain place that can serve your techhnical support needs.

domain transfers can be a hassle.

business tips

just to let you know, having a web site is NOT a guarantee of business, but everybody expects you to have one, such as a Facebook page.

the seo is hard to do by yourself if you are a business. paying for it can help a lot if you need a site. you have to do things like make sure the title of your site matches the domain name matches the title tag and the content is relevant to the title, the site is single-purpose (single subject), things like that. search engines seem to love blogs.

yola.com offers to make a pro site using HP Web Design (to do the template and site design) with a "site builder" but I don't think they offer seo. maybe it would be better to get the SEO+site package unless you like doing things yourself.

know that when you buy a package from someone, you usually pay THEM for hosting from then on and you are locked in. I have run into several people who said "I bought a site-builder site from X and I don't want to deal with them anymore and they didn't give me a cd of the site, etc, can you recover my site for me?" and their site is basically lost. when it's a template-based page, this is usually not possible, since it is database-driven. you need a copy of the database and the site files. the database is typically customized to the site and the web server it's on, and you need to know the configuration parameters. this is why I don't like template ("site builder")-based pages. the only templates I have used so far are dreamweaver HTML templates. those generate plain html files.

so take these things into consideration. that ease-of-modification means you are locked into a vendor for the lifetime of the site. you are far better off learning HTML+graphic design rules+, purchasing the site yourself, and have someone else do the SEO.

If you go with a CMS, you need to keep from dropping a payment or your site is possibly lost (unless YOU specifically do site backups and download to your computer for safekeeping). You need to think about your domain too. those domains can be snatched up by domain squatters.

If you choose a CMS (site builder), you can do the modifications via the web, but you are locked into a vendor (web hosting provider or web designer). If you choose HTML, and you made the site yourself, you can make changes any time you wish and keep it relevant and looking the way you want.

Endless revisions with the designer saying "it needs to POP" doesn't help you, it just delays your project, and makes the web designer feel bad. they want to be creative for you. so give them a break.

ask for a CD-ROM of your design's original files, including databases, site files, everything necessary to make it work, when the design is done. you paid for it.

As you can tell by my business's name "Jim's Computer Repair and Web Design", I am not a business expert yet (learning the ropes still with my small business), as evidenced by the mistake of making my business name really long (but descriptive). chalk that one up to experience. I remember someone saying something once about long domain names being a bad thing. They are: some web sites and business-oriented stuff breaks or truncates your name when your buusiness name is long.

I didn't type it out to see how long it actually was and what a pain it actually is to type. something to think about. keep it short and *sweet* (no grungy/bad names, bad does not equal good) first, descriptive second, easy is even better. You may not get the domain you were looking for (there's an overload), but try and be inventive, you just may get something that works for you. when I am typing, repeated letters seem to jam up my flow of typing. like the rR.

long business names break web forms for business-related things and mailing labels and business cards, long business names are a bad idea. don't do it.

godaddy.com is an expensive place to go for domains. it can cost $120/year for a protected domain with all the needed features, but this also means that you can get any hosting you want (as long as it's not a CMS/site builder). there are other domain places to go to out there.

got no talent?

don't want to learn or have a heard time learning? buy a domain from godaddy.com. you will get a control panel.

then use a CMS/Site Builder/template-based site such as webs.com (see free CMS section on this page) or a blog such as wordpress.com (see free blogs section on this page).

If you get any emails from your hosting provider, print them out and put them in a folder and file them under the domain name you purchased.

also, type-into/copy-and-paste-into notepad all your account information and print it out and file it. if you change it, print it out again and throw away the old copy.

webs.com may be something where you get a subdomain such as http://joe.webs.com or a subdirectory such as http://www.webs.com/users/~joe

CMS (Site Builder): Things to consider before you get one

some web hosting companies do not allow spaces in filenames (not that you should ever use spaces in the first place). some site-builder sites don't allow dashes, but they do allow underscores.

you have to do things like make sure the title of your site matches the domain name matches the title tag and the content is relevant to the title, the site is single-purpose (single subject), things like that. search engines seem to love blogs. yola.com offers to make a pro site using HP Web Design (to do the template and site design) with a "site builder" but I don't think they offer seo. maybe it would be better to get the SEO+site package unless you like doing things yourself.

know that when you buy a package from someone, you usually pay THEM for hosting from then on and you are locked in. I have run into several people who said "I bought a site-builder site from X and I don't want to deal with them anymore and they didn't give me a cd of the site, etc, can you recover my site for me?" and their site is basically lost.

when it's a template-based page, this is usually not possible, since it is database-driven. you need a copy of the database and the site files. the database is typically customized to the site and the web server it's on, and you need to know the configuration parameters. this is why I don't like template ("site builder")-based pages. the only templates I use are dreamweaver HTML templates. those generate plain html files.

so take these things into consideration. that ease-of-modification means you are locked into a vendor for the lifetime of the site. you are far better off learning HTML+graphic design rules+, purchasing the site yourself, and have someone else do the SEO.

If you go with a CMS, you need to keeo from dropping a payment or your site is possibly lost (unless YOU specifically do site backups and download to your computer for safekeeping).

got some talent? first steps

buy a domain from godaddy.com. you will get a control panel from your domain hosting. if you get any emails from your domain provider, print them out and put them in a folder and file them under the domain name you purchased.

Then buy hosting. I chose PenguinWebHosting.com because of their support (See free hosting, unlimited hosting, and large hosting sections on this page). you will get a control panel from your web hosting as well.

if you get any emails from your hosting provider, print them out and put them in a folder and file them under the domain name you purchased.

also, type-into/copy-and-paste-into notepad all your account information and print it out and file it. if you change it, print it out again and throw away the old copy.

Get Kompozer [wysiwyg] or Adobe Dreamweaver [wysiwyg] or W3C's Amaya for editing (see page editors section), or use a programmer's editor such as Notepad++ or, if you need the configurability, use the programmer's editor Crimson/Emerald (see programmer's editors section) and use the FTP client it comes with.

Get FileZilla FTP Client. it updates regularly. use it to transfer your files en masse (in bulk). it can transfer whole trees of stuff.

get a programmer's editor in case you want to just edit a little html without the WYSIWYG stuff and you want to whip out 10 files in a row (I use a copy-and-paste template file for consistent look and feel, and a PHP script to generate+manage the menus and content for my site).

most web pages should be a maximum of 960px wide, unless you choose a liquid layout.

read the dangers of ascii mode concerning using your FTP client.

if you want to do straight HTML+CSS or DHTML coding

install a web server on your local machine so you can do script development on your local box rather than on the production server! and look at the logs for your errors. the /htdocs/ directory is where you copy your files to on your local web server. the directory shouls already exist.

make your /robots.txt to exclude any files you don't want the robots to index.

buy a domain from godaddy.com. you will get a control panel. Then buy hosting (you may have to talk to billing dept.) you will get a control panel for that as well. if you get any emails from your domain provider or hosting provider, print them out and put them in a folder and file them under the domain name you purchased.

upload your site to the existing /public_html or /htdocs directory (or whatever they have). you will need to use some sort of FTP program like Filezilla. see this Filezilla tutorial.

read the dangers of ascii mode concerning using your FTP client.

if you want a CMS (template based) site

buy a domain from godaddy.com. you will get a control panel. Then buy hosting (you may have to talk to billing dept.). you will get a control panel for that as well. if you get any emails from your domain provider or hosting provider, print them out and put them in a folder and file them under the domain name you purchased.

install Drupal or other CMS using the control panel's elephante or fantastico - read the manual on the web site first (you may have to download the package to do that)!. research, download, and install templates and plugins (chore).

make your /robots.txt to exclude any files you don't want the robots to index.

upload your site to the existing /public_html directory (or whatever they have)

getting started

you really should start using filezilla ftp client or some sort of ftp client. If you don't have dreamweaver, then use kompozer to edit HTML & ftp files, otherwise using crimson/emerald or notepad++ programmer's editors to edit HTML is good.

read the dangers of ascii mode concerning using your FTP client.

dreamweaver is $400. the rest of the tools are free. if you choose kompozer, get the beta, it has an installer. the last link lists hosting places, domain places, tools, and tips.

By the way, you don't make a /public_html directory. it should already be there. and yes, that is the right directory. for a main page, you should have a index.htm or index.html or index.xhtml or index.php or index.shtml unless it is a windows site then it is index.htm or indesx.xhtml or index.html or index.asp or index.shtml

you should tweak your windows explorer to not hide file extensions. it is possible you may have filenames like .html.txt which won't render in a browser.

your html files should end with .html, or .htm or .xhtml or .shtml or .php or .asp (the latter 2 are server-side scripting).

and don't use a word processor to make your HTML documents.

also, start with a tutorial on HTML and then CSS. If you feel up to programming, take the javascript tutorial and then PHP and then SQL tutorial (but do development on your local desktop, not on the production server).

you should have gotten the FTP server information in an email from host-gator along with all your other server info.

also, the correct structure for an html document is critical. your html tags should go between the body tags. tags should be nested.

proper HTML document structure for html coders

the !DOCTYPE is optional and varies with the document type you are making.

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>title of page goes here</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
<strong>
<em>strong and em</em>
<kbd>what you type at the keyboard</kbd>
</strong>
</p>
</body>
</html>

properly nesting HTML tags

properly nesting your HTML tags is one of the things that is so important. otherwise your browser will call it "tag soup" and ignore or do worse.

for instance, <p><strong>he said<em>I</em> don't care if he <em>does</em> wear shoes.</strong></p> is properly nested.

what is bad form is something like <p><strong>hello <em>there</strong> bunky!</em></p>. this does not show proper nesting. when you look at nesting, you have to push the "open" tags on a stack to match them properly, like a pile of tires. each tire is a specific tag, and there can be multiple of the same on top of each other.

correct method of nesting:

when I put in a <p> in editor, I push on a <p> onto the stack. <strong> I push on a <strong>. after text "hello", I want closing tag. so I pop a tag off my stack and I get the <strong>. we know that the matching close tag for the strong is </strong>, so we put that in the editor for the closing tag. then comes the "there" text.

we want emphasis, so we put in a <em> in the editor and push on a <em> onto the stack. then there is the text "bunky!". we want to close the previous tag, so we pop and get <em> --></em>. close again, pop a <p>--></p>.

stack empty, hierarchy done.

example of a 2-column table and what it looks like:

<table border="1" cellspacing="0">
    <caption>recordable media</caption>
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>type</th><th>capacity</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td>cdr</td><td>738MB</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>dvd+r</td><td>4700MB</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>3.5" DSHD floppy</td><td>1.44MB</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>3.5" 2.88MB Floppy</td><td>2.88MB</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>3.5" LS120</td><td>120MB</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>ZIP</td><td>100MB-750MB</td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

tips for users who are used to using notepad

see the list of programmer's editors and web editors I have listed. they all do color syntax highlighting of html. $400 dreamweaver is going to do the best job and allow you do to debugging without opening a browser, and it can do cross-browser testing as well - just check the list of browsers you want tested and go.

but if you can't afford that, get a programmer's editor. if you can't do HTML, use a wysiwyg editor like kompozer, it can do css as well can can make some pretty nice pages for small sites.

if you are doing PHP, use a programmer's editor or dreamweaver, preferably dreamweaver. dreamweaver will save you LOTS of time.

and use FileZilla FTP client for your FTP.

read the dangers of ascii mode concerning using your FTP client.

the alternative to a programmer's editor is to do start, type in notepad and hit Enter, or drag notepad from All Programs|Accessories|Notepad onto your taskbar so you can use it over and over.

once you have started notepad, type in your document, OR open an existing document and modify it.

if you have created a new document, be sure to do a File, Save As, change encoding to ANSI, change type to All Files (very important!), and once you have browswed to the location where you want the file saved at, type in the filename. or, you can type in the full file path using backslashes between the directory names.

with dreamweaver, when you type in an open tag, and you start to close a tag, it figures out what tag it thinks should be closed and fill it in for you. my Dreamweaver 8 isn't always right, but now we are at Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, so I am sure it's a lot better now. If you can ever spend the $1700 on web premium without getting into debt, get it.

don't go into debt over any of my advice.

one trick you can do is indenting your properly nested tags in a consistent manner so that you can see the structure of your page. some editors, like emerald/crimson, have decent column block editing, which makes unindenting easier.

FTP'ing your files

If you are on dreamweaver, use Put. If you use Get, you obliterated your originals.

if you are using an FTP program such as Filezilla ftp client, drag the files from left to right, making sure first both sides are at the same folder, and that you are not dragging onto another folder. If you drag onto another folder, the contents will be placed into that folder.

Filezilla tutorial for pc, mac

read the dangers of ascii mode concerning using your FTP client.

Selling hosting internationally

reseller's accounts are available from certain web shoting companies. they seem to only allocate a very small 50GB of web space total for all your accounts!

if you are in USA and your target is in mexico and you get hosting in mexico you are going to have to pay in pesos probably, and the banks make money on the money conversion. it also depends on whether you are wanting to get a merchant account to process credit cards (if you feel that is necessary), or whether you want to do the payment with a paypal seller's account. you usually pay extra for doing checks.

If you live in the USA, and if you want to pay for the hosting, purchase in the USA. If you want *them* to pay for the hosting and them set it up and them use the control panel+stats, then get hosting in mexico (or whatever target country), because then you want a user interface in Español rather than in English I should think. That may also be another factor to consider - whether you can use a cpanel en Español if that's the way they offer it... getting the domain is going to be interesting...

one of the things you realize is that when you configure windows for regional settings or you have a Mexican or Russian version of windows, the Top Level Domains change for the browser's defaults. I have seen this happen. I can't remember if it does this for doing a regional settings change, try it (you do that sort of thing for a laptop).

You may also want to purchase a mexican (target country) keyboard since the keyboard layout is probably going to be different...

with the .com for commercial ventures becomes in UK becomes .co.uk or for CC it's .co.cc but for mexico it's .com.mx and I don't know what they do with .org and .edu there (I found out later for UK version of .org it's .org.uk).

so you might want to check what the proper domain should be for the target country and do some research first - try googling for .co.uk or .org.uk (commercial/company) I don't know.

Please note that when switching keyboards, the keyboard should NOT be plugged in/unplugged with the power on - it's not a hot plug device, unless it's USB, there is a chance of destroying the keyboard your your keyboard interface in the computer.

pay domains (such as nowhere.com - just don't pick that one)

free domains

interesting business hosting

large hosting plans

interesting "unlimited" hosting

interesting free web hosting

free blogs

free CMS/Site Builder/Template-based site (I prefer no ads)