The Casual Tech

The internet has brought so many great innovations into our lives, both personally and professionally. When we lived overseas on military assignment in the late 90’s, many of our colleagues spent hundreds of dollars per month on telephone bills because the rates to call back to the United States were so high. We avoided those costs because we took advantage of web conferencing to stay in contact with our friends and family back home. Not only did we not have to pay outrageous sums of money to stay in touch, we also were able to see our loved ones since we utilized video capabilities as well.

It turns out we were ahead of our time back then, as we learned from our business associates once we came back stateside and left the military behind for the business world. When I had my first web conference at work, I was already very familiar with the technology and the software, which went a long way towards impressing my boss. It led to me organizing and leading many web seminars for our department when we communicated with vendors.

The same cost benefits that we experienced while living overseas are being realized by the business world today when they take advantage of this technology. Web conferencing means no airfare, gas, toll, hotel or other travel related costs and no long distance phone call rates. Even when commuting with a few people, travel expenses can sky rocket – and how frustrating that must be when the result of a visit does not end in a sale. Smart companies are regularly using web conferencing as a means to connect with potential customers while paying close attention to the bottom line. If the meeting doesn’t result in a sale, much less is lost.

Have you taken advantage of web conferencing either personally or professionally? What were your experiences with it? Mine have been mostly positive – I’d be interested to hear your views.

I spend a portion of time in my day job working on website design. It’s something I enjoy, but when there are 8,549 other projects going on, it’s hard to get my mind really set in design mode. It takes a fair amount of relaxation and quiet, creative space for me to be successful when designing websites, and I don’t always get that at work. So I don’t have any shame in getting help from some of the great sites out there offering website templates. These sites have saved my hide a number of times at work when I’ve been asked to put something together under a tight deadline. I can imagine these templates are even more helpful for people who don’t know – or desire to know – the first thing about designing a website. Everyone wants a website these days, and templates are a great way to get started.

On the personal side, I maintain a few websites for friends, family, and business associates. For a while we were hosting the sites on a laptop in our home office, but one of our clients’ sites have really taken off, so we needed another plan. We decided that a business web hosting or ecommerce web hosting solution would work best for their needs. I’ll still maintain the site, taking care of any redesigns or changes that need to happen, but I’ll be able to rest easier knowing the site won’t be going down at whim because it was slammed with traffic.

There’s still some web development work that needs to happen before we can make the switch, due to some technology limitations – so I need to get busy with that. Unfortunately, there are no templates for what I need done on the programming side!

Are you looking to get a website up and running? Consider using some templates to get started; you’ll save a lot of time – time that could be better spent on more important business matters.

Problem: You’ve been blogging on Blogger or Xanga (or any of those free services) but have found not everyone takes you as seriously as those who blog on their own domain. You want to blog on your own domain, but you’re just not exactly sure how to go about it. The whole process seems intimidating to you.

Solution: The Casual Tech’s Guide to Getting Your Own Domain for Blogging! I’ll show you how to get your blog on your own domain so you can start blogging with the “big boys”.

This is post four in the series. Go here for the rest of the series:

Post One | Post Two | Post Three

There are four main elements involved with blogging on your own domain: domain name (duh), hosting, blogging software, and FTP. A common newcomer misconception is that once you register a domain name, you’re all set. Not true. A domain name is just that – a name. You own that name on the Internet. No one will see it, however, unless you also have the domain name hosted somewhere. The hosting is where all of your actual files for your website will reside. Your job is to tell the company you registered the domain name from where the hosting resides, so they can point it in the right direction. (I’m over simplifying here for the sake of, er, simplicity.)

If you’re just getting started, make sure you check out the first three posts in this series before continuing on to STEP FOUR below:

STEP ONE – DOMAIN NAME
STEP TWO – HOSTING
STEP THREE – BLOGGING SOFTWARE

STEP FOUR – FTP

Now that you’ve bought your domain name, secured hosting for your website, decided on and downloaded a software package, you need a way to transfer the software and files to your web host so you can begin blogging. For the sake of this tutorial, we’re going to assume your host is Host Gator and that you are using Wordpress software.

A Real Basic FTP Primer

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is basically a method to transfer files across the Internet between two computers. When you have files on your computer that need to be on another computer, too, a common solution is FTP – much like the WordPress files you downloaded earlier that now need to get to your web server.

There are two main methods to utilize FTP: your browser or a software program. Using your browser doesn’t allow for many options that you’ll need to run a blog, so we highly recommend you download an FTP program to use.

Here are some of the more popular FTP programs available on the Internet today.

• FileZilla – FREE. This also comes as a portable app, which means you can take it with you when you’re not on your own computer. This is the FTP package we recommend and will be using for this tutorial.
• WS_FTP Home – 30-Day Free Trial. Pricing starts at $39.95 after the trial ends. Excellent, intuitive software with all the advanced features you’ll need.
• CuteFTP – 30-Day Free Trial. Pricing starts at $39.99. A very popular FTP program.
• CoffeeCup FTP – 30-Day Free Trial. $34.00 to buy. Very nice, easy to use software package.
• Smart FTP – FREE and Licensed versions available.
• FTP Commander – FREE. Very bare bones.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. If you’ve already got an FTP program that you’re happy with that’s not listed here, don’t worry. Keep using the FTP program that works for you, as they all basically do the same thing and operate in the same way.

Download and install the FTP software of your choosing (refer to Part Three if you need a refresher on downloading) then meet me back here. I’ll wait.

Okay, do you have your FTP program running, waiting to add your host and user information? Good.

Using FileZilla, go to File/Site Manager. You should see something similar to this:

Click on the “New Site” button and name your site in the program manager. Use a descriptive name for yourself; no one else sees this.

Next, you’ll need to enter your Host name and user name information. This is information your hosting provider sent you in email when you signed up. The values in this screen shot are for The Casual Tech blog; you will need to supply your own personal credentials here.

Click on the “Connect” button. If you entered all of your information correctly, you will be connected to your account on your web host’s server and should see something similar to this:

Here’s a break down of what each section of the program is.

• Section 1 – All server messages and statuses will display here. When you connect to your host’s server, you will see all the steps it takes to do so in this window.
• Section 2 – View of the files on your computer. This is basically a Windows Explorer window looking at all of the files on your computer. You can navigate in this window to get to the directory where your files for transferring are stored.
• Section 3 – View of the files on your host’s server. The same as Section 2, except these are all the files on the server at your hosting company. In order for anyone to see your site on the Internet, the files need to reside on a web server somewhere – this is where you place your files that you want the rest of the Internet to be able to see.
• Section 4 – All transfer status messages will display here. When you transfer files, a list of each file being transferred and its status will display in this window. This way you can tell if all of your files successfully transferred or if there were any problems encountered.

Please note that all panes can be resized for easier viewing. The panes are small in all of the screenshots in this tutorial, but you can customize yours to suit your needs. Using the guide above, in Section 2 of the FTP program, navigate to the location on your computer where you saved your WordPress files. Still referring to the guide, in Section 3, navigate to the “Public HTML” directory on your host’s web server. Your screen should look something like this:

Now it’s time to transfer all of the WordPress files to your host’s server. All you need to do is double-click the “Wordpress” directory and the files will begin transferring. Alternatively, you can highlight the WordPress directory on your local computer (Section 1) and drag it to your host’s server (Section 2). IMPORTANT: Please refer to the WordPress documentation for more specific instructions on uploading all of your WordPress files.

Congratulations! If you’ve started from the beginning of this tutorial series, you have chosen and purchased a domain name, researched and selected a web host, decided on and downloaded blogging and FTP software and have uploaded the basic blog software to your host so you can truly being blogging! Great job.

Please leave any questions in the comments.

Good luck and happy blogging!