Technical IQ #1 – How to handle the technology “monster”

I thought I’d start off this post because many people are afraid of battling the tech “monster”, and really want to do business. I’ve got several people who are technophobics, and all they did was break their old beliefs about it – by simply testing out the software they had to use.

For instance, if you are not familiar with Web Hosting, understand this.

A web host is the place you keep or store information. It is a specialized computer, which is stored in a rack. These racks are housed in something known as a datacenter.

Your computer can’t be seen by external visitors without specialized software. If you want to have a page from your laptop to be seen by an external visitor, you need a permanent internet connection, and you also need a server software to be installed on your computer.

So, what this means is that you have to upload files from your computer through the internet connection into a web host.

The way to do this is via FTP, or File Transfer Protocol. The software, Filezilla, allows you to do this easily. It’s free.

Once you upload content to your webhost, visitors can then view that through the web.

A typical webhost will have an address (URL) that looks like this:

http://66.112.31.21/

If you have registered a domain name, you should be able to get a domain name that you like. Be creative in selecting your domain name!

Then, in your account set up from your Domain Name Registrar, you will be able to do something known as a DNS (domain name server) change. Change your DNS to the one indicated to you by the web hosting provider.

Once you pair up the domain name with the web host DNS, instead of typing in

http://66.112.31.21/

you can now type in the name you registered that goes to this web address.

Now, you have a webhost, with a regular domain, your house is in order! All you need now is to have some content uploaded to your site, which I will deal with in my next post.

Resources:

STEP 1:
Get a domain name

STEP 2:
Get a Web server

STEP 3:
Change the DNS from your domain name registrar to suit the name servers of your web host. If you are not familiar, you might want to either get someone to install this for you, or you might want to learn how to do this yourself!

STEP 4:
Learn to create web pages. You will need a visual HTML editor to do this, such as Microsoft Frontpage or Pagebreeze.

STEP 5:
Get a free FTP program.
Learn to upload files into your web server using the FTP program.

STEP 6:
Continue to upload more content on a regular basis!

STEP 7:
Learn to drive traffic to your website.