MS FRONTPAGE INFO

Creating your first website?

It can be pretty easy to get lost in the new web terminology such as FTP, SSL, Domain Names. Hopefully after reading this article, you will have a basic understanding how to create and display your very own website.

We will start from the very beginning and by the time you have finished reading this article, you will be well on your way to creating your first website.

* Creating your Website

There are many different programs that make creating websites easy.
One of the most common programs is Microsoft FrontPage.
This particular program is a WYSIWYG, otherwise known as what-you-see-is-what-you-get. This will allow users to build their website without knowing any complex HTML (hyper-text markup language). You can see how your page looks, while you create it! You can insert images with just a few clicks, and even change the page colors. FrontPage has many great starter tools such as built in Hit Counters (that show how many visitors have been to your website), and search tools (that allow people to search for pages on your website).
Other options, such as the free 'FirstPage' are also available and are worth a look if you don't currently have a WYSIWYG editor.

One of the most time consuming ordeals is creating your actual website!

While you are in the process of creating your website, you will need to find a domain name, and a hosting company before you can display it online.

* Getting a Domain Name

A domain name is a unique identity for your website that will allow people to easily remember how to get to your website.
An example domain would be: FrontPageWebmaster.com.
A domain will contain two parts to it, the first part is the actual name (in the example above, FrontPageWebmaster) and the second part is known as the domain extension (in the example above, .com is the extension). Domain extensions vary, and choosing which one is best for your site really is just a matter of personal preference. The most common extension is .com; this is just because it was the first extension available. This doesn’t mean that more people will be able to see your site (domain names will have no affect on how many people can see your website).

Once you have an idea about the domain name you want, you have to pay a Domain Registrar to get the domain name. First you must find out if the domain name is available for purchase. A few places you can check if a domain is available, and purchase a particular domain, is NameCheap.com and GoDaddy.com. These two places have been in business for a few years, and are known for their excellent service and low prices.
Places like NameCheap and GoDaddy charge less than $10 per year.

Once you have an idea about the domain name you would like, and you know it is available, it is time to search for a hosting company to host your website. Be sure not to purchase your domain just yet!

* Finding a Host

There are literally hundreds of thousands of hosting companies on the market today.
It is hard to find out which one is best for you. I will give you some tips about who to avoid and why to avoid them. But let’s begin with what a hosting company is, and why you need one.

Once you have a domain name, you still need someone to host that domain name so it is online for everyone to view. This is what a hosting company does, they will host your domain name, and allow everyone to view your website using that particular domain name.

A good hosting company will have your domain name online for more than 99% of the time.
These hosting companies use what we call servers that are made from high performance computer parts. We all know computer parts can go bad, so your website might not always be online.
Some factors that determine how good a hosting company is, how long their websites are online (this is determined by how many minutes per day the website is available), and how fast the hosting company support is. Many hosting companies will take days to respond to support requests, and by the time they respond, the problem no longer exists, or it is already too late!

Some companies prefer a high quantity of customers over high quality service. This is why you will see some hosting plans for only $5 per month for more hosting space than you could ever use (usually around 2,000-5,000MB+). Just about every host that has these ridiculous prices will have very poor support staff, and your website will not always be online.

Hosting is broken down into plans. Among these plans, you will compare pricing, space, and features.
The hosting industry falls into the, “you get what you pay for” category.

If you pay extremely low prices, your service will usually be poor. When you look at the size of most websites, they are usually less than 20MB. Many hosting companies know this, and provide very low prices to lure you in, and offer 100 times the amount of space than you really need; they try to make the plan look good, knowing you will not use the full amount of space. These types of hosting companies work off of quantity, not quality, and do what we call “overselling”. Overselling is when a hosting company has a server, and sells just enough accounts to use up as much room as possible, but if all or maybe even 10% of the accounts actually used their full space, the server would go down.
While some hosting companies will place 100-1,000 websites on a server, others that charge low prices, but provide more space than you will ever need, will have over 2,000 websites on a server. Can you imagine having over 2,000 different websites on your computer?
These companies that do that usually say their equipment is top of the line, but there are very few computers that can handle that many websites.
In the past two years or so, this idea of low prices and tons of space has taken the hosting industry to a new low.

* Setting up your DNS (Domain Name Servers)

If you notice, both hosting companies offer domain registration, be advised that it is not a good idea to purchase your domain through a hosting company. If you need to host your website, go to a hosting company. If you need a domain name, go to a domain registrar.
The reason behind this is that most hosting companies just resell for other domain registrars, and you are going to a middleman to make your purchase. You have a lot more flexibility with your domain when you purchase from a true domain registrar.
If you do decide to take this advice, and purchase your domain from an actual domain registrar, you will have to do one small extra step.
This involves modifying what we call DNS (domain name servers).

When you sign up for hosting, your host will tell you that your domain name needs to be setup, or “pointed” to two name servers. These name servers are basically just like websites, but they are what handle your domain name. This is actually quite simple to do, and not only will you get help with this change from your domain registrar, but your hosting company will also assist you with this process. The most common way to do this, is by logging into your domain control panel (by visiting the place you purchased your domain from) and click on “Modify DNS” from there you will have to enter the two DNS addresses that your hosting company gave you to use. Usually this will be NS1.YourHost.com and NS2.YourHost.com. But this will vary, so be sure to enter the correct information.

Once you make this simple change, you might have to wait up to 24-72 hours for the change to take effect.
This step is called “domain propagation” which is a rather hard concept to understand, and doesn’t need to be covered in this article.

* Publishing your Website

Now you have an understanding about hosting, domain names, and websites. But how exactly do you take what you have on your computer, and put it online for everyone to see?

Well there are a few things you can do. If you are using FrontPage, like I suggested earlier, you can click on File, then Publish.
Type in your website using http://yourdomain.com, and click the publish button again.
It will ask for a username and password; this is the same username you use to log into your hosting control panel, and the username that your host gave you inside of your welcome e-mail.

Now if you don’t have FrontPage, there is no need to worry, you can also easily upload (the idea of putting your website online) your website using FTP (file transfer protocol).
In order to upload using FTP, you must first have an FTP Program to use.
There are many to pick from, and most of them are free. One I would choose, is WS FTP, which is free and works perfectly.

Once you pick out an FTP program, you have to connect to your website using that program. You will need your website address (the domain name), a username, and a password.
When you enter your domain name (which is also known as a host or address) be sure to include the ftp:// prefix at the beginning of your domain, for ex: ftp://yourdomain.com.

On the left hand side of the FTP program, you will see a list of files on your computer, you have to navigate to your website on the left hand side, and select the files to upload by highlighting them, and click on upload, transfer, or publish.
The right hand side will show you where you are publishing to on the server. If you see a list of folders, on the right, and one of the folders is named public_html, www, or home, be sure to double click on the folder, and transfer your files into that folder. These are the basic website folders that most hosting companies will use, your host might have a special folder to upload to, so double check your welcome e-mail to determine the proper folder to upload. The public_html, www, and home folders are the folders that your website files are usually stored in. If you don’t see any of the above mentioned folders, then you should be fine (but you might want to contact your host to be sure), if you see more than one of the folders listed, you can upload to either one.

Once you finish uploading your website, verify that it works by visiting http://www.yourdomain.com. If it comes up, then everything worked, if nothing shows, (make sure you have waited the 24-72 hours for the domain to propagate) contact your host to resolve the issue.

* Advanced Website features

Many people are confused about more advanced website features such as shopping carts, and SSL. A shopping cart is software that allows users of your website to add items to a virtual shopping cart, and purchase their items together when they are ready. I have worked with many different shopping carts before, and would recommend SalesCart Pro as the #1 shopping cart. SalesCart Pro is a plug-in for FrontPage that will allow you to add an item for sale with just a few clicks. You can easily setup a fully functional shopping cart in minutes with SalesCart Pro. Unfortunately SalesCart Pro will only run on a host that has ASP, so you need to make sure that your host supports this.
Another shopping cart I love, that falls one step below SalesCart Pro, is called OsCommerce. This shopping cart works on a host with PHP, and it is free! OsCommerce allows you to have a shopping cart that is updated online, through an administrator interface.
Unfortunately this is not a plug-in for FrontPage, so it is a little harder to setup.
The last recommendation for a shopping cart is the PayPal Shopping Cart. The great thing about this cart, is that you can create products using an online interface, and insert the product information into a pre-existing page. This is great for websites that only plan to sell a few products, but still would like to have a shopping cart. The PayPal Shopping Cart is also free.

Once you establish a shopping cart, you need to have a way to accept money. This Is accomplished by having a merchant account. A merchant account is a 3rd party that processes the payments (by using a credit card) through an online interface. Most shopping carts will require a special add-on in order for you to use a merchant account. Authorize.net is a pretty solid merchant account, their pricing is reasonable, and the setup is simple. Both SalesCart Pro and OsCommerce have free add-ons that allow you to use Authorize.net as your payment method.

However, if you use the PayPal Shopping Cart, you will already have a merchant account (through PayPal) that is secure. The downside to this is that PayPal will be shown as name of the company that took the transaction. If you had a merchant account, your name would appear on the customer’s credit card bill. Is it really worth the extra money to have your customer’s bill say your name instead of PayPal? Yes & no. It is a lot more professional to have your name appear, but it is not necessary.

Before you can even think about taking orders with credit card numbers online, it is a must that you make your shopping cart secure. In order to do this, you must use an SSL Certificate.
This will allow you to place your shopping cart on https://yourdomain.com/shoppingcart where there is an s after http. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, which encrypts the information that is sent so sensitive data such as credit card numbers are secure.
The PayPal Shopping Cart will not require this SSL Certificate, just because PayPal uses their own website to process the transaction, and the credit card number is secure on PayPal’s website.
Some hosting companies will not allow you to purchase an SSL Certificate from a 3rd party and use that on your website, they will require you to purchase the certificate from them. Unfortunately the only thing you can do in this case is buy your certificate from your host. You might pay a little bit more than you would going with an SSL Certificate from a 3rd party, but this is just something you must put up with.
If you are able to purchase an SSL certificate, I highly recommend CompleteSSL.com. These certificates work great, and are reasonably priced.


* Getting Support

If you ever run into a problem, don’t hesitate to contact your host. Hosting companies deal with common problems all day long, and their friendly staff are there to help.