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 PathwayCaribbean.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 AddressesPathwaycaribbean.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.

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• JavaScript

Simple HTML– <h1>David Bolton</h1>– <p><b>David</b> is a web

designer and <i>programmer</i></p>

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.

JavaScript runs programs in your browser. – It’s how GoogleMail, Google

Maps etc works.– Need to be a programmer!– Many websites never use

JavaScript

• 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 Sweethttp://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

– WordPress CMS/Blog • http://portent.org

– Both use software that’s totally free and are running on the same server as http://PathwayCaribbean.com

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

Some Statistics– There are 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