17
2012
It can be frustratingly difficult to figure out how to use the webcam on your laptop. It took me about 20 minutes to get my webcam/digital livecam up running on my Samsung QX410 laptop. The solution? Installing some Samsung software called Play Camera.
First, check to see if the software’s already installed on your computer. If it isn’t, you can download it here (make sure you scroll down on that page to see the download link as they’ve got a ton of crap at the top of their web site).
Follow the installation instructions, then launch the program. Once it’s up and running, it’s incredible simple to shoot video with your livecam. Just click the red record button, and your Samsung laptop will start shooting. When you’re done, it’ll save out a “.asf” file (which stands for “Advanced Streaming Format” and works with Windows Media Player).
The nice part is, you can upload “.asf” files directly to YouTube without having to do any sort of file conversion. Check out my review of the Otterbox iPhone 4S Commuter case that I just shot with my Samsung:
18
2011
I often use the excerpt field in WordPress to populate my meta description tags. By default, the latest versions of wordpress hide the excerpt field until you proactively add them to your post and page editing screens. To re-add the excerpt field to WordPress, do the following:
1) Login to the WordPress Admin.
2) Click “posts.”
3) Click “Screen Options” in the top right of the page.
4) Click the “excerpt” checkbox under the heading “Show on Page.”
5) Minimize the “Screen Options” drop-down.
Now, you’ve retrieved the missing excerpt field in WordPress and you’re off to the races!
15
2011
As a beginning web developer, the first time you try to paste some HTML code snippets into your WordPress blog can be annoying. You want to show off the actual code, and your browser converts that code into commands! Don’t worry, though. You have a few options:
1) The built-in code tool. If your wordpress theme supports the “code” command, you can simply paste your code into your post, highlight it, then click the “code” button above the text-editing window in your WordPress admin.
2) Convert all your HTML symbols into entities. This is a favorite trick of mine. Character entities are converted from a string into the underlying symbol they represent. That way, the browser doesn’t interpret them as HTML. One of the more common character entities you may have run across is the copyright symbol (©). Since the symbol doesn’t appear on most keyboards, you’ve got to use a character entity to get it to appear on a web page (and that character entity is ©).
Similarly, you can use character entities to get your browser to ignore brackets and quote marks in your text. Just paste your code snippet in Notepad (or Dreamweaver or whatever), and do a find and replace on the brackets and quotemarks. Here are the character entities you’ll need:
< = <
> = >
" = "
Just do a find on this symbol: “<” and replace it with this: “<”. Repeat that step for the “>” and quote symbol (using the entities above) and then post the code chunk into your blog.
Want to turn off smartquotes for good? If you don’t want smartquotes to appear anywhere on your blog, you can try setting up a php plugin following these instructions from Lance Bledsoe. Note: I haven’t actually tried his suggestion, so proceed at your own risk. I’m assuming it works, though, since Lance’s post doesn’t contain any smartquotes!
10
2009
It’s difficult to grasp the power of XML without understanding what metadata is. Metadata is simply data that describes data. A good example of this is HTML (the Web code that’s allowing you to view this blog). If you’ve seen HTML at all, you’re familiar with some basic tags; these include things like <head>, <body> and <p>. These tags are simply data or information that a Web browser uses to decide how particular lines of text should be formatted. Words that fall between an open bold tag (<b>) and a close bold tag (</b>), for example, are displayed as bold text by the browser. That’s pretty basic stuff. But there’s power in it.
Think about it: why do people bother making text bold? They do it because the words in bold are important. They represent titles, dates, names, etc. So, if you have a document that’s filled with plain and bold text, you’ve got a very rudimentary form of metadata. The plain text is probably less important than the bold text. And, since you’ve got <bold> tags in your data (and content between those <bold> tags), you can manipulate the important text.
This is where things start getting exciting. What if you had a document filled with information, but somewhere inside that information were a bunch of important dates that had been made bold? Suddenly, you could use some search tools (like Ultraedit) to extract all the dates from that document. Then, you could import those dates into a spreadsheet, and use them as a dayplanner.
XML takes these baby steps and starts running with them. See, XML is extensible. That’s where the language got its name: Extensible Markup Language. Once you make a form of metadata like HTML extensible, you’re no longer forced to use very simplistic tags like <b>. You can actually describe the data that’s you’re wrapping inside tags.
For example, if you have a bunch of important dates in your document, you can suddenly wrap them in much more useful tags. Instead of <b>, you could use a tag like <date>. Then, for all of your titles, you could use tags like <title>. See, XML doesn’t lock you into using one set of standardized tags.
Wait a minute, you’re saying, that’s all good and well, but a Web browser can’t interpret tags like <date>. You’re right there, but the lovely folks who brought us XML thought of that, and they came up with a way for us to “transform” our XML documents into whatever format we want whenever we want to transform them. We can do that by using XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations).
Now, let’s say you’ve got an XML document filled with tens of thousands of lines of text, information and tags. You want some of that text to get formatted for your Web page, but you also want some of it to be formatted for a PDF book, and yet more of it you’d like to use as a database. No problem. If you’ve got some stylesheets laying around and an XSLT processor (of which there are free versions like Saxon), you can alter your data easily.
You can write a stylesheet to transform all of your data into HTML. For example, you can convert your <date> tags into <b> tags and all of your <title> tags into <i> tags for italics, and you can keep adding from there. You can wrap everything in <body> and <p> tags, and suddenly you’re ready to throw your data on the Web. You can also format your data for PDF (by outputting XSL-FO), or you can simply use your XML document as a database and query it whenever you like.
Sooooo, the beauty of XML is that it can be used in multiple ways. HTML is good for the Web, but pretty lousy when it comes to using it in other media. Also, HTML doesn’t truly describe the data it’s displaying. XML does, and it still lets you manipulate your data with ease.
These factors are why XHTML is getting so much hype these days. XHTML (which stands for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), can be used for Internet browsers, but it’s also valid XML. That means, it can be used by other data processors as well (such as Saxon, which I mentioned earlier). Once you allow for that, you’re suddenly able to manipulate your data much easier and put it to use in other media (often with minimal effort). Therein, lies the full power of XML.
Thirsty for more on XML? Check out XML.com, one of my favorite resources when I’m stuck on a problem. Or get a book like Beginning XML (published by Wrox, 2007).
27
2008
Blogs are often written by one- or two-person teams with little professional editing or oversight. Newspapers, on the other hand, are staffed with droves of editors. In fact, some of the biggest papers in the country push stories through eight editors or more before publishing them on paper. Somewhere on that totem pole of newspaper editors sits the noble copy editor.
In a former life, that was my job at the Dayton Daily News in Dayton, Ohio. Responsibilities? Lay out stories on the page (we were using Quark at the time), edit stories for length and content, and write headlines in the space allotted for each story. That last part about “space allotted” is key. Sometimes in a newspaper, you’ve got room for five-word headlines, sometimes 10, and sometimes two. In the parlance of the time, it was our job to make the headlines “pop” no matter what the length.
If I wasn’t able to write a headline I was happy with, I’d lean over to one of my coworkers (many of whom had been in the industry for 20 years or more), and ask for help. Sometimes, there would be a group of us standing around a computer screen trying to figure out the best headline for a story featured on page A1.
I tell you all this to stress the eternal and undying importance of headlines. Newspapers have this figured out in their particular niche. Bloggers often don’t. Your headline isn’t just a descriptor of what’s inside your story, it’s a call to action. It’s a flag that tells the reader something important lies inside, and they’d be remiss if they didn’t check it out.
Of course, newspaper headlines and blog headlines are different machines with different goals. In a print product, you don’t have to convince the reader to buy your newspaper, since it probably showed up in their driveway that morning. Bloggers need to sell themselves with each and every headline. Newspaper headlines are hampered by design goals. If you can’t fit five words in a headline, you’re going to have to make do with the space for the two words you’ve been allotted. Bloggers have more space and flexibility to say the things they want … and that means their headlines should be BETTER than anything they read in print.
As newspapers struggle to make the transition to the online world, one of their biggest failings is to capitalize on the power of headlines. Too often, they simply take the headline they used for print, retag it for the Web and run. Big mistake. The rules have changed. It’s like getting drafted by a professional baseball team and showing up for practice with an aluminum bat.
It takes time to make the transition, though, and some newspapers ARE reworking the way they approach headlines in the online world. For instance, I tromped over to the New York Times and looked at their “Most Popular” stories. One headline in particular jumped out at me, “Heaven for the Godless?” I followed the link and found an opinion piece on a new survey that showed that 70 percent of Americans believed you could make it heaven by “following a religion other than their own.”
Contrast that headline with this particularly repugnant one: “Bob Herbert: Stop Being Stupid.” I haven’t clicked through to figure out what “Stop Being Stupid” is about because I don’t want to be told I’m stupid. My guess is no one else wants to either.
So, we’ve come to a crossroad: what makes the first headline better than the second? For one, the first headline probably appeals to Americans more than any other nationality. We’ll always choose the path of least resistance to get a grand reward. So, if there’s a way to get to heaven without having to practice a religion, well, I’d like to know about it.
Perhaps the most important thing that makes the first headline better than the second, though, is the fact that it’s controversial. It presents a paradox that feels like it’s daring us to learn more. There is no wiggle room for free thought when you’ve got a headline that says “Stop Being Stupid.”
That brings me to the reason for this post, a guide to writing good headlines from a guy who spent two years doing it five days a week:
1. Intrigue the reader with the promise of more knowledge. We read for one reason: to educate ourselves. It doesn’t matter if we’re seeking info on the gravitational pull of Neptune or the hip gyrations of Shakira, we read because we want to learn more about a particular topic. If you promise readers they’re going to learn about something they’ve never encountered, then they’re far more likely to click your link.
2. Don’t make the reader feel stupid. Of course, this applies just as much to the content of your post as it does to the headline, but readers don’t want to be berated about anything. It’s like a teacher who believes humiliation will help slow learners. You’re more likely to produce the opposite effect. Positive headlines are always more effective than negative ones.
3. Accentuate the controversial. We live in a postmodern world. Nothing’s cut and dry anymore, and it’s easy to find two sides to any story. If that’s the case, don’t shortchange your readers by choosing one side of the story. Find the gray area of the pool and dive right in. That’s where the juicy stuff is.
4. Stay away from puns. I’ll never forget when I was a cub reporter at a small daily paper in North Carolina, The Rocky Mount Telegram. One of my co-workers wrote a military story he was particularly proud of. It had something to do with a soldier recounting his days on the battlefield. After he turned the story in, he came over and said, “I hope the copy desk doesn’t write a cheesy headline for my story. I think it’s one of the first stories I’d be willing to put in my portfolio.” When we finally saw the headline, he groaned, and I started laughing. It read, “Tanks for the Memories.” Puns are the easiest ways to trivialize any topic. If you’re afraid you might be dancing on the line of propriety, you need to pick something more direct.
5. Choose words that “pop.” OK. I’m not a big fan of the word “pop,” but it gets the idea across. Your headlines need to use powerful, active words in the present-tense. Sometimes, all this takes is a trip to the thesaurus at Merriam-Webster. Replace lackluster words with words that punch your readers in their bellies. Another way to find intriguing headlines, is to go to the New York Times Bestseller lists. The books that stand out there not only have unique content, but they often have unique, brandable titles, too. Books like Barack Obama’s, “The Audacity of Hope,” or Artie Lange’s, “Too Fat to Fish.” Both of them use words that don’t crop up that often (“fat” and “audacity”).
6. Accept that you’re a writer and words are your only tool. Too often bloggers look at things in terms of numbers: how many posts they can produce, how many readers they can get, how many clicks they garner. But you’ve got to remember that first and foremost, you’re a writer. I’m going to repeat that again, you’re a writer. The only tool writers have at their disposal are words. So since you’ve chosen to be a writer, you’re going to have to use words properly. Writing a headline in a hurry means you could end up with typos or missing prepositions. There’s no better way to get ignored than by posting something that looks like it was cobbled before you collapsed in bed. Take time to craft your headlines. Newspapers do it because they realize that headlines are the single most important entry point to any story. Bloggers would be well-served to do the same.
Just getting started in Web publishing? Check out my post on picking your domain name, “How to Pick a Domain Name that Ruins Your Web Site.” Your domain name is the only that might be more important than your headlines. Contact Fred Marion at fred(at)webpublishing.me.
24
2008
There are a lot of web publishing sites that offer you tips on picking domain names, but not many of them point out the pitfalls that you need to avoid. Rest assured I’ve been in your shoes before. I’ve got a degree in creative writing, not Internet publishing. That means I’ve made almost every mistake on this list, and I’m still learning today! If you’re not quite sure what a domain name is, read my post, “What is a Domain Name?” If you’re ready to buy your first domain name (or your 100th), here’s what not to do when picking your very first domain name:
1) Never buy a domain name that infringes on someone’s copyright. Not only is this is a slimy tactic, but there’s actually a Federal law against it in the United States (the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999). Still, what exactly does it mean to infringe on someone’s copyright? Laws are murky on this, but, in general, cybersquatting refers to the act of purchasing a domain name with the intent of profiting off the brandability of the name and/or reselling the domain to the owner of the copyright. A good example of this might be someone purchasing www.google.net (a name that’s actually owned by Google.com), then throwing a search box on the site so people believe they’re visiting the real Google. When a user types in a search on the fictional site, they might be shown a number of ads relating to their site. That would definitely be illegal. On the other hand, if your site offers reviews and/or criticisms of Google’s policies, you’d be allowed to include the word, “Google” in your domain name. A good example of this is www.google-watch.org.
2) Don’t bank on typos when picking your domain name. This concept is similar to cybersquatting, but it’s actually called typosquatting. As in cybersquatting, there’s blatent bad faith on the part of the site owner to capitalize on the brandability of a copyrighted term. An example of this would be buying a domain like www.frigedare.com, then filling the site with ads related to refrigerators. Not cool. This will likely lead to a lawsuit (one you definitely won’t win). That said, there are instances where typosquatting isn’t illegal. If you discover a domain for a generic word (say, “donkey”), and you’re convinced a lot of Web users interested in donkeys might type in www.donkee.com instead of www.donkey.com, you’re more than welcome to capitalize the traffic you get. There might be a few instances where this type of approach might work, but I tend to think it’s not worth the effort — especially since it looks like you don’t know how to spell the word that’s the very subject of your site.
3) Avoid names that sound cool but don’t really mean anything. This is a very common rookie mistake. Rookies like to think that if they create compelling content, Web users will automatically find their content. Having tried to find audiences for my work on other sites since 2005, I can attest to the fact that content isn’t everything. You’ve got to have a basic understanding of search engine optimization (the practice of optimizing your site through your HTML metadata — and the use of other technical tactics — to get the most out of your search engine ranking). One of the basics of search engine optimization (or “SEO”) says you should include keywords in your domain name. That means a site about organic restaurants would best be served by picking a domain name that has the words “organic restaurants” in the title (even if it’s something long like www.bestofthebestorganicrestaurants.com). That’s an extreme example, but it illustrates the basic principal beyond domain name selection: choose words that MATCH your content.
4) Don’t pick a domain name that’s difficult to remember or difficult to spell. Ever since the advent of spellcheckers, our ability to spell out complex words has deteriorated (that’s my theory anyway). So, if you decide you want to buy a domain name, stick with something that’s spelled phonetically (the way it sounds). That way, people won’t get frustrated when they try to revisit your site. You’ll be lucky if they try more than twice. The same concept applies to domain names that are hard to remember. If your user can’t remember your domain name, they’re not going to come back.
5) Don’t choose short domain names over quality domain names. If you’ve been researching how to pick a good domain name, you’ll likely run across articles that say things like, “stick with a dotcom name no matter what, and make sure it’s short and snappy.” I even ran across one article that recommended only buying dotcom domains with seven characters or less. Welcome to 21st Century. That’s not really plausible anymore. Finding a dotcom that’s remotely related to the content of your site is going to be HARD — even with 15 characters or less. If you want a domain that’s seven characters or less, you’re going to have to pony up some cash. So, I say ditch that advice. Pick a domain that has valuable keywords in it, even if that means it’s going to be long. My last word on this? Definitely avoid names that include excessive hyphens or numbers. Getting a user to remember lots of hyphens or numbers (i.e. www.babyreptiles4less.com) is like asking them, “Who was the 12th President?”
6) Don’t be afraid of domains that have extensions other than dotcom. Have you ever heard of the dotnu (.nu) extension? Probably not, but it ranks in Google alongside any dotcom site. In fact, the lifestyles blog www.haha.nu receives roughly 160,000 visitors a month. As the Web grows, domains with extensions other than dotcom are going to become a fact of life, and I’ve heard nothing definitive that says Google penalizes such sites. Other factors like incoming links (links to your site from other Web sites) are infinitely more important than your domain extension. In any case, you can see that I’ve put my money where my mouth is: I’m running this site on a dotme (.me) domain — www.webpublishing.me — and you found it, didn’t you?
7) Don’t register a lot of domain names then duplicate your content. This tactic is picked up by search engines, which might delete your sites from their rankings all together or else add only ONE of your domains to their index. You also shouldn’t buy a bunch of domains then use them to link to one another in an attempt to get higher search engine rankings. This will likely to your sites being labeled “domain spam,” and you’ll again be punished by search engines. As a caveat, it is possible to do this for legitimate reasons (i.e. protecting your brand name by buying domains with different extensions — i.e. .biz or .net — or buying common mispelling or common search terms). Linking those legitimate sites your main Web site will require a bit of technical savvy. You’ll have to use an “IP funnel.” IP funnels push all of your registered domains to a single single server and hosting account. Then, you can push all of these redirections to a different server and hosting account without being penalized by search engines. I learned a lot about this particular tactic at BruceClay.com.
8) Don’t rely on your business name to determine your domain name. A lot of people make this mistake, and they damage their chances for widespread traffic by using their business name when they pick their domain name. Business names are often associated with difficult-to-spell names, cutesy phrases or hyphens and apostrophes. Always think about what people are going to be searching for when they try to find your service. For instance, if you own a dog washing business in Cincinnati, Ohio, chances are, someone’s going to type “dog washing, cincinnati, oh” into a search engine. Knowing that, www.cincinnatidogwashing.com, would probably be an excellent domain name (if it’s available — in not, pick something similar).
9) Don’t pick a domain name without doing some keyword research. One of my favorite tactics when trying to pick between a handful of domain names is to visit Google Trends and determine which keywords are the most common. Google Trends won’t show you actual search quantities, but it will show you which search term is used more on a percentage basis. Simply visit the site and type in two sets of keywords separated by commas; Google Trends will take care of the rest.
10) Don’t be afraid to pay for quality. There’s an entire online industry called “domaining” that’s devoted to buying domain names simply for the “type-in” traffic — people who type diamonds.com directly in their browser navigation bar instead of going to a search engine and seeking out a site on diamonds, for example. If you’ve got some cash, you can buy one of these high-traffic keyword domains and exponentially increase the traffic to your site. Two of the most popular auction houses for these domains are Afternic.com and GoDaddy.com.
Hopefully these tips will help you on your way to making money online. If you have further questions, email me at fred(at)webpublishing.me. If you’re still a Web newbie and you need advice on building your first Web site, visit my post, “A Guide for Newbies: How to Build a Web Site in 6 Easy Steps.” Want more ideas for making money online? Return home, or sign up for our email newsletter.
23
2008
I’m assuming you’re savvy enough to throw up a blog posting using a free online service like Blogger.com or WordPress.com. This guide is written for people who want to go a step further and have their own “domain” name: something like, fred.com or webpublishing.me (not fred.blogger.com or fred.wordpress.com). Once you can do that, you’re on your way to becoming a professional Internet entrepreneur :). Without more ado, then, here’s the Web’s Simplest How-To Guide for Building Your First Web Site:
1) Buy a domain name. In order to get a site like webpublishing.me functioning, I had to purchase rights to the domain through a provider. Common options are registrar giants like GoDaddy.com or Register.com. Both are large enough to offer competitive pricing and large support forums to help you over the inevitable roadblocks when lauching your first site. When you “buy” a domain, you’re typically granted you two years of ownership with the option to renew. A common rule to keep in mind? Pick a name that contains keywords that match your content. That’ll help your Google ranking, and that’s one of the most important factors in driving traffic to your site. Prices for domains start at about $8 per year. Want more detailed advice on how to pick your first domain name, visit my post, “How to Pick a Domain Name that Ruins Your Web Site.”
2) Get a Web hosting company. Once you have a Web domain, you’ve still got work to do. You’ve got to find a “server” that’s connected to the Internet. This server will store your files so that when someone visits your domain, they’re readily available for download and viewing in someone’s browser hundreds (or, perhaps, thousands) of miles away. I recommend www.hostgator.com (my wonderful host), or a domain registrar like GoDaddy.com, which allows you to bundle your domain purchase with your hosting service. I always recommend going with a dedicated hosting company, though (i.e. a company that only handles hosting — not domain registrations). They’ll be much more responsive when you have a technical problem — which you probably will when launching your first site.
Buying hosting services ranges from $5 to $100 or more per year — depending on the bandwidth you’ll need. I currently pay $10 per month with “unlimited” bandwidth at hostgator.com. Bandwidth describes the amount of traffic your site receives. The more visitors who view your site, the more file requests you’re feeding your server. Since the amount of traffic a server can handle is static, you’re going to have to pay for it if you use a lot of bandwidth — especially since the costs of maintaining a single server can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
3) Associate your Web domain with your Web host. If you’re one of the lucky ones who bought your domain name at the same place you plan to host it, you probably can probably skip this step, but if you decided to go with a host that differs from your registrar (the place where you registered your domain), you’re going to need to update your domain’s nameservers. Do this by logging into your hosting account and searching for the “nameservers” provided by your host. These are the specific servers where your Web files will be saved (typically there are two — a primary server and a backup). Copy the nameserver names, then visit your registar. There, with a little bit of searching, you’ll be able to figure out where you need to update your nameservers. Paste in the information you obtained from your host. This action will link your domain name with the specific server where your files are served, so that browsers know where to look when they get a request to visit your site.
4) Decide whether you want to use a Web template or write your own HTML code. If you want to use your own HTML code, visit Step 5. If you want to build your first Web site using templates (which I strongly recommend), visit Step 6.
5) You’re one of the brave and proud who wants to code your own site? Great. You can do it easily with a simple text editor like Notepad. Just paste the following code into Notepad and save it with the filename index.htm (sorry you can’t name it anything else):
<html>
<head>
<title>Your Simple Web Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello World! This is my first Web Page.</p>
</body>
</html>
Now, that you’ve got an index.htm file saved, you’ve just got to upload it to the root directory of your server. You can do this by visiting your Web host, and finding the file manager for the domain that you purchased. This might require some rooting around, but you’ll eventually find the spot where you can upload files directly to your server. Unfortunately, the “root directory” isn’t called the “root directory.” It’ll likely be labeled with a simple slash: /
Once you’ve uploaded your index.htm page to your root directory, you should be able to visit your domain name (fred.com or some other such name), hit refresh, and — presto — you’ll have your first Web site. Keep in mind, there might be some lag time. If your site doesn’t show up right away, do something else for an hour or so, and try again. It sometimes takes a while for your nameserver changes to propagate across the Web.
6) So you’re one of the brave and proud who wants to use a templating service to launch your Web site? No shame there. I’ve become addicted to these services over time. One in particular stands out: WordPress.org. It’s important to note that wordpress.ORG is different than wordpress.COM. WordPress.COM is designed for people who are OK with a web site that runs on WordPress’s servers. That means the domain name will be something like fred.wordpress.com. Now that’s not very professional looking is it?
WordPress.ORG is different. Here you can download a full suite of HTML (a language that browsers use to display content) and PHP (a scripting language) files that will allow you to create your Web site on the fly. You’ll be able to upload images, videos, sound clips … almost any form of media you can edit on your computer, and then you’ll have control over the display of it on your screen. Cool, huh? You’ll also be able to write your site’s content ON your server, which means you don’t have to mess with FTP accounts (explained below) after the initial setup process.
The first thing you should do (and the most fun) is pick out a WordPress Theme. That’ll give you an idea of what’s possible with just a small amoung of technical skill. Download the theme to your computer, then, download the latest version of WordPress. After you unzip those files, you’ll have to visit your Web host to set up an “FTP account.” FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it’s a very efficient way of sharing files across the Internet. Your host should have instructions on setting up an FTP account (just be sure you save the user name, password and port you specify during the setup process). Now, you should download an FTP client, which will actually communicate between your computer and your host’s servers. I recommend the free service Filezilla.
At this point, things get a bit more complicated. You’ll now need to visit WordPress’s “Famous Five-Minute Installation” in order to set up your unique wp-config.php file. This will also require you to set up a MySQL database through your host. When you set up a database, you’re simply creating a place on the server that can accept changes (or edits) on the fly, then spit them back out on your Web site. That’s what will allow you to edit pages for your Web site directly on your server. I won’t beat a dead horse here. WordPress’s instructions for your wp-config.php file and the associated MySQL database are incredibly exhaustive, and you shouldn’t have any trouble setting it up. Still, if you’d like some advice shoot me an email at fred(at)webpublishing.me.
Now, that you have Filezilla, an FTP account and a MySQL database, you can begin transferring your HTML and PHP files from your computer to the Internet server(s) provided by your host. Open Filezilla and plug in the information you saved (user name, password and port) when you set up your FTP account. When you’re connected to your server, you’ll be able to transfer your files very quickly. Simply specify a target location (the root directory for your domain, which will be indicated by a slash: “/”), and then doubleclick on the files you want to transfer. If you’re using WordPress like I recommended, you’ll want to transfer three entire folders (wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes) directly to your root directory. Also, transfer the individual php files that you unzipped when you downloaded WordPress in the same place. Do not place them in a folder.
Now, deep breath, you should be able to visit http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php (filling in your unique domain name where the above link says “example”), and begin the simple process of building your site.
Follow these tips, and you should have your first Web site up in no time. One of the best sites I encountered when I started trying to make money online was www.thesitewizard.com. It’s a no-frills site with down-to-earth advice that doesn’t beat around the bush. I won’t lie and says there’s no learning curve when you’re first getting into Web publishing, but thanks to the experts out there who’ve devoted their time to helping us along the way, it doesn’t take quite as long.
Hopefully these tips will help you on your way to making money online. If you have further questions, email me at fred(at)webpublishing.me. If you’re still a Web newbie and you need advice on how to pick your first domain name, visit my post, “How to Pick a Domain Name that Ruins Your Web Site.” Want more ideas for making money online? Return home, or sign up for our email newsletter.
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