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Preparing to
Publish
We are going to look at the various elements
of your web site and how to upload your pages, so the rest of
the world can see what you have to offer.
We will actually be uploading
your pages that you have been working on, to your own server,
for which you will use a free site called Topcities.com
which we talked about at the beginning of this tutorial. It
costs you nothing but will give you the experience of actually
publishing your pages. You can look at the hosting page later
to find other ways of hosting your pages. Once you master this
aspect of the Internet you can use it to advertise all of your
products.
Setting up
your FREE web host
The first thing to do is to
sign up for your free hosting. Go to Topcities.com
if you have not already done so and click on Join Now at the
bottom of the page. You will be directed to their plan page.
Scroll down and choose order button under the free plan.
You will now be asked to choose a name. I
picked mywebpage and you could try your name here. Remember
that your site will be whatever name you choose .topcities.com
so try and pick a good one.
This is what it will look like http://www.yourname.topcities.com
If your name is not available then try
again.
Go on to fill out the form. Be sure to give
a valid e-mail address so you can get your password etc. Also
make sure none of the boxes are checked as you don't want a
lot of extra advertising. You will almost instantly get an
e-mail with all your info to be able to start uploading your
pages. Gloss over the advertising and lets get going.
This site gives you two options to upload
your pages. They have a resident file loader or you can use
FTP. While their uploading program is very simple it is not
how most professional sites work. Mainly because they are so
limited.
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I know you
want to see one of your pages now so you can use the
uploader to send your graphics and index.htm file to
the server. Choose file upload when you log into your
account and then go to the easy uploader. Use the
browse buttons to find the graphics you have used like
the background and index.htm file on your hard drive
and then choose the upload files button. |
Now when you go to the site they assigned
you your first page your web page should be visible. The
banner add at the top is their way of covering the costs for
your free site and this is why we usually don't use them
except for demonstration and training.
What we will do now is load the rest of your
pages using an FTP program which is a direct link between you
and your server host at topcities. Your server host is a
computer which is linked to the Internet full time and the
company allocates you some space. Depending on the company and
how they do this is what sets the price.
FTP - Another
way to load your pages
Click
on play to watch the video
FileZilla is a
powerful FTP-client for Windows 9x, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP. It
has been designed for ease of use and with support for as many
features as possible, while still being fast and reliable.
(See FileZilla
for more information)
This guide
will help you to configure and use FileZilla.
The main
features of FileZilla are:
-
Ability
to resume Uploads/Downloads (if the server supports it)
-
Custom
Commands
-
Site
Manager with folders
-
Keep
Alive system
-
Timeout
detection
-
Firewall
support
-
SOCKS4/5
and HTTP1.1 Proxy support
-
SSL
secured connections
-
SFTP
support
-
Upload/Download
Queue
-
Drag&Drop
-
Multi-language
support
-
GSS
authentication and encryption using Kerberos
You
can pick up your free copy in the software bonuses area. You
must be online.
Go to your welcome e-mail now from Topcities
and click on the link they sent you and hey presto your
website is active. If you now want to experiment a little you
can open up your front page express program and change one of
the pages.
For example on my first page I put a picture
of Amanda. On my second page I put in an e-mail graphic. When
you have adjusted the page you can go back to your ftp program
and just upload the pages you changed and any graphic files
you added. If you leave your FTP program open it will log out
after a certain amount of time so you need to reconnect.
Go to your site again and click on your
refresh icon in your browser or use f5 and your changes will
be instantly shown. It is quite usual to have your browser,
ftp program and front page all open together and edit, upload
and then refresh to see the changes.
Anytime you need to check something like a
link or graphic use the right click function in your composer
or in your browser and click on text or graphic and you will
be given a list of options. Just choose the one which applies
to your problem. If you click on a graphic that is not loading
correctly choose the properties option and it will show you
the link. Remember the links to graphics are retaliative and
that means that it should have your website address and then
the file name.
You can now direct all your friends to your
own web site. A small suggestion. Create another folder under
"my webpage" and call it "testing". Make a
copy of all the files into this folder. You can now open each
file and have a play, and if you make a mistake you can just
copy the original back again and start from scratch. Try
adding another page or add some of your own personal
information. Upload and get ready to tell the world.
Other Files to
FTP
When you create an e-book or want to share
another type of file other than the standard Internet file you
can simply upload them in the same way to your server. Most
free servers will not allow you to load anything but the
standard files so you will need a paid hosting service for
these. You will then put a link to that file in your web page
if you want it to be public or else you would just give the
link to your friends etc if you want to keep it private.
Locking Files
Locking a file is important if
you are selling a product or a group of files. Once you have
uploaded your files you can lock them in one of two ways. Most
paid servers will have a system of locking a folder. You would
go to the file you want locked and simply lock it and apply a
username and password. This is usually done through a private
menu system your server provides. I have a private site which you can try at
http://www.mywebsitemanual.com/Members.
If you click on the link you will see that a password
protected box appears in your browser and you cannot continue
unless you have the right username and password. Also notice
there is no file name like login.htm.
If you use an index file in any
folder you only need to use the folder name for your clients
to gain access. It is like setting up a sub domain in looks.
So on your web site you might set up a product folder. If you
then put an index.htm file (web page) in this folder it will
open automatically when people type in
http://yourdomain.com/products
The second option is a third party system
that will also lock files for you. One such company I used
when I first started is Bravenet. We used them before for our
forms. They also provide a password gate. It is free and all
you do is enter the username and password and the location of
the file. Once you have set up the information it is simply a
matter of copying and pasting some code into a web page and
you now have a protected file area.
I have set one up for you
to see how it works. http://www.msincome.com/enter.htm
Your user name will be "secret"
and your password is "msincome" without
the " when you enter the words. The username and password
are normally case sensitive. Just enter these and you will be
allowed into our secret site with a little bonus for you.
Another great tool to lock your
software away for private delivery is
As with most free services you have to put
up with their advertising however if you are not to fussed it
is a great service when you are just starting. You can also do
a search in the engines for other similar services however
most of them are paid services. A good hosting service should
have this as a part of the package with no adds.
Email me, tell me
how you go and I will have a look. To view your test page you
will enter an address something like the one below with "yourname
" being replaced with the name you chose when you
registered your site. http://yourname.topcities.com/test.html
Preparing
To Promote
Power Tip: A secret here
is to check it on another computer to see if it acts the same.
Sometimes when you add a new graphic or something it will log
it to your c drive so when you look at it on the web it seems
to work fine on your computer however when you look at it on
another computer the graphic will not show up or something
strange happens. This is when you need to be able to trouble
shoot and check your work.
Well I hope you are feeling good about your
achievements.
Let's now test
your site.
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