Hosting, Domain Name, FTP questions. NEW GUY.

Zachery,

After looking at wordpress.com, it does look like you will need to transfer your domain name. I recommend (http://asmallorange.com). BUT! before you do that contact support at wordpress.com and make sure.

A.

Yes you are correct saying that "WordPress seems to assist you with your website building" in fact WordPress (http://wordpress.org) is an open-source content management system that takes care of many things for you, it allows you to run a blog, website even your online shop. It is very widely supported and very popular. However it is pretty advanced to start with if you are new to Web Design/Development. Wordpress.com has been formed to set you up with your own blog and is mainly for people with no HTML/CSS/PHP experience that want to have their own blog.

In order to start playing around with your own HTML/CSS code you can set your own computer to do that (and you should before you upload anything online) but if you want it to become 'live" you'd need your domain name and hosting service. Some of the hosting providers I can recommend are:

http://godaddy.com, http://www.hostgator.com, https://www.strato-hosting.co.uk

You only need a basic package to start you off, however if you discover it is not enough most of hosting providers allow you to upgrade at any time. Choosing your hosting package I'd suggest to pay attention to several aspects, all depending on what exactly you want to achieve in terms of learning. If you want to take your websites onto another level you will most probably discover that HTML/CSS/JAVASCRIPT is not enough and you'd probably want to get into some sort of server-side scripting, therefore you will need for example PHP to be supported and a database is a good idea too - MySQL is most typical one and I think very good to start with...

If you need more help feel free to let me know I will be more than happy to help you out as much as I can :)

Hi Zachery,

First off your going to need a application to write your code, there are a few free choices and many paid for to choose depending on whether your using a Mac or PC.

The same goes for FTP clients, there are free and paid.

A little bit of google foo will get you the names of them.

There are many posts on the forum about web hosts, it would pay you to read them, see which ones suit your needs and then look them up online before making a choice. The web hosting account you decide on will have its own way of transferring your domain.

If you have trouble finding what you need, just post if your using a Mac or PC and we will help point you in the right direction. The same goes for web hosting, if you have any specific questions try to explain what it is you want, e.g. a host that just hosts your personal website or one that will host sites you will build for clients. Give as much information as you can and you'll get better answers.

:)

Wordpress is a content management system that is supposed to make it easier to build and maintain a website. It allows you to build a website with just a WYSIWYG editor and you can use different 'widgets' that people have made to add functionality and features to your site. While it can be useful for people with no experience building sites, If you are trying to learn how to build sites from scratch, its probably not the best place to start. (I speak from experience here).

I would suggest you start by using a free hosting site such as freehostia or atspace.co.uk. There are tonnes of them out there. Then either register a free domain or (as you already own one) change the DNS settings to point your domain to the new host. See this tutorial for help doing that. It can be quite difficult to get your head around at first but keep going and you will get there. The process will differ slightly depending on the host but its the same principle. Depending on which host you go with they will usually have a tutorial on the FAQ/Docs section of their website that will walk you through this process. You can also have your host transfer the domain for you, but sometimes they charge you to do this.

Free hosting companies will give you a small amount of disk space on a server and a (usually) limited traffic allowance per month. The good thing is the servers normally come with cPanel and other software pre-installed that makes uploading and maintaining your website a lot easier. You can login to cpanel and use the file manager to upload your website easily. Or use an FTP client such as filezilla which is the method I prefer.

If you don't mind spending a bit of money and want more control over your website, you should look at getting a shared hosting account with a provider. I personally use heart internet for both hosting and domains. But you could use someone cheap like goDaddy for the domain and point the domain to your webhost.

It's good that you excited about learning this stuff, I too find it fascinating. Good luck and I hope this helps!

Thanks for all the info!

I have Sublime so far but do I need to purchase this? I keep ignoring the purchase code pop up, which I probably shouldn't but just keep watching videos and coding away :).

For FTP I was just going to use Cyberduck, the one Nick uses in his videos. If there are better ones out there, I guess I'll learn that on the way.

I'll look into the wordpress.com transfer of domain to godaddy.com and point to Dreamhost for web hosting.

Again, thank you for all the information gentlemen. I'm very excited to continue my progress with HTML, work my way up with CSS and Javascript and eventually PHP. Knowing that these forms are here make the journey less daunting.

THIS IS SOO COOL! I'm mainly looking to build a website to show my photography and another simple site for my dad's gutter company – both just for informational purposes (but I’m sure I won’t stop there once I get the hang of it.)

I'd also suggest AsmallOrgange and registering your domains via Namecheap!

Update: I have a basic site up and running!

My question now: Do I have to keep my FTP open (Cyberduck) for the site to keep up? Or can I turn off my computer?

You can close it, and turn your computer off. Whats the link?

I figured it would :)

zaccampbell.net

Again I have no idea what I'm doing so I gotta learn somehow haha