Step 14) Uploading a site. Now that it's finished, it's time to show the entire world. Or at least the internet world. :D

Some basic concepts to know:

- Domain name is the name of a website. (i.e. shadilyn.com)
- Subdomain is something.something.com (i.e. key.shadilyn.com)
- Hosting is a server that is in charge of putting your site online.

 

1) Find a host.

You have to pay for domain names, but most of the time you can get a subdomain hosted for free. For free webhosting, you can just go google up "Free web host" and compare the different packages that're available to you. Some have ads, while others don't. Some offer more space, bandwitdh, others less, etc. And some hosts are pay-only, as they don't offer any free hosting service. I recommend atspace.com. It gives you a nice subdomain without any ads. And it's pretty easy to use.

If your website is relatively small, then using a free host is no problem. But for bigger websites, I suggest switching to paid hosting. I'm hosted by lunarpages. :D

2) Upload it! If you don't know FTP, now is a good time to learn it. While you can manually upload files to your host website one at a time, it's much easier to use FTP. FTP = File transfer program. I use CoreFTP (It's free, but it's only for windows.)

Install the program. When you open it it should give you something like this:

Your host website should give you instructions about your FTP information. Enter in the info accordingly and you will be able to connect to the site.

Then, find your website folder. Usually it's right there, or under a _public folder.

The first page that's displayed when you go to a website is the index.html page. So name your homepage index.html.

You should see that your FTP has your computer files on one side and the internet on the other side.

Now find your files using the directory tree or just type it in directly if you know where it is. (Just in case you couldn't read my handwriting, which is remarkly more illegible when written on a computer)

Highlight everything you want to upload. You can select multiple things at once by holding down the shift Key. (LOL I just subconsciously capitalized Key right there.) You can also use Ctrl key (command key on a mac) to select multiple things that are further apart.

 

Finally, click the arrow in the middle to transfer your computer files to the internet. You can also use the backwards arrow to transfer something from the internet to your computer. I've had to do that on multiple occasions when I accidently overwrite my files.

You can use FTP to store your work files / backup files and a ton of other stuff since (paid) hosting gives you so much space.

And I think That is all~! For now, anyway. :) If I ever have more time to kill, I might write some tutorials on how to make a CSS dropdown menu (because it was a pain to learn from google. :< Took me like 4 hours, but maybe I'm just stupid.) Aaand any other little tips and tricks, etc. Thanks for reading. Have fun making websites. :D

 

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