Some help?

[billyb]

Well.. not much to say. I have basically no idea what I am doing. I am looking into the website thing and I am forced to say that it is much more complicated then I thought it would be. I registered through godaddy.com, I have basically figured out all the DNS CNAME and hosting stuff, what i havnt figured out is how I make my site... -When i said that i figured out the hosting situation i was speaking in broad terms, because I dont know who is hosting my site right now(maybe just my computer....????...)- I can mess around with HTML and all that and i am just trying to make this site for fun buttttt i have no clue where to start. The site is americansense.net and at this moment it will say can't connect to server but that is because i messed somthing up not becasue it isnt being hosted, I know this because i have the google apps. I turned all of them off basically but before that there was a working website when you went to it. Really after all of that typing all i am asking is if anyone knows of a good online tutorial or somthing like that to tell me how to make and publish my pages. That would just be great.

[AmbulanceBlues]

Sitepoint dot com has some really good tutorials, and would be a place to start looking for info about hosting. Also www.w3cschools.com has some good stuff about HTML. I have bought a couple of the sitepoint books in my noobness and they were also quite good. The basic web site building book did include instructions for finding and using a host... though everything above is really only the small glint at the top of the iceberg if you intend to try to make money on the internet.

[Chris]

You should buy hosting at a company, they will provide you with nameservers (like ns1.hostingcompany.com) you will then login to godaddy and insert those nameservers for your domain.

Then you can upload your HTML files using an FTP software program to your space at your hosting company, and your website will work.

[billyb]

after i buy a hosting plan they will give me the nameservers, then i just put those in on my domains dns settings, correct?

What FTP software program should I get??? does it matter?

[Nico]

Yes, that's correct. Like Chris said, you should find a hosting you like and sign up with them. Then they will give you their nameservers info so you can update your domain DNS settings.

You can use any FTP program you like. It doesn't matter with one you use...for basic things they all do the same. Here you have a few: FileZilla, CuteFTP, WS-FTP Pro, etc.

[billyb]

Alrighty, thank you everyone.

[AmbulanceBlues]

I used Filezilla and it was great, but it's even easier (for me) to use the built-in network connections in windows. Just go to your Network Neighborhood (I think... I just upgraded to vista and things are a bit different) and click to add a new network connection and then follow the prompts. After that, you should be able to treat your web hosting space like any other folder on your computer. You might have to use your hosting space's IP address rather than the domain name you reserved - I did.

(BTW... In Vista, open "Computer" - There's no "My" anymore - then File-Add Network location. Same thing as above for XP.)

[billyb]

On that note, does anyone know anything about IIS? Should I use it, the details and such? I don't really want to look for my windows XP cd's if it not worth it at all...

[allout]

If you plan to update your pages quite often, a great FTP program is called Child's Play FTP. I purchased it with some ebooks a while ago. It updates all pages from a file on your computer with just a click of one button. Everytime you update any of the sites in that file you hit the button and only those pages that were updated will send to your server. It is very basic so I use Filezilla for major tranfers but the Child's Play for quick updates of my main pages.

As far as being new, you will learn from your mistakes and get better each time. When I first started I had no idea how or what a FTP program was. I just added my sites from the control panel. Imagine how excited I was to discover the FTP. LOL

Good luck and listen to the good members here for advice

[AmbulanceBlues]

If you're only going to develop HTML on your system and then upload it to a host, then IIS is completely superfluous. You can just open the file in your browser directly.

If you're going to learn some kind of scripting language then yes, you do need a HTTP server, along with something to parse whatever language you're going to learn. Even then, IIS does not interact with the parsing engines of many languages (the ones typically hosted on linux) the same way as it would with a linux-based server (Apache). Even Apache server for windows will not parse php (what I'm trying to learn) exactly the same way that it would on a linux-based machine; though you and I both might never really encounter that problem in our development. It just depends what you're doing.

If you're going to buy some hosting, get linux hosting unless you want to learn a scripting language designed for windows. But until you want to start doing some programming/scripting (which HTML is not), there's no reason to install IIS (and I might argue that apache is still preferable even then).

[billyb]

I might have some misconceptions about what IIS does. I thought that it made it so that my computer could host my website and I wouldn't need to purchase any hosting space. Is that right? As far as my website goes I have every intention of getting into ASP or PHP. I don't know, the website I am going to make I am really only doing it for enjoyment and paying for monthly hosting seemed superfluous itself.... So would IIS allow me to run the webpage from my computer with out paying, or what is it?

[MaxS]

So would IIS allow me to run the webpage from my computer with out paying, or what is it?
While it's technically possible to host your website on your home computer, I definitely advise against it. Your home connection just won't cut it.

What hosts are you looking at? I believe hosting may be more affordable than you think. A Small Orange (http://asmallorange.com/services/hosting/) is not a bad choice; at $25 a year, you can't go wrong.

[billyb]

yea i have looked into it more myself. I am just going to purchase some hosting.
Alright, that about solves my problems up to this point, thank you everyone.

[andyf]

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