by Matthew Bates www.mattbates.net
Step 2. Buying a Domain Name
Having saved away your primary materials or content to make your website, you are now ready to learn how to register a domain name, or web address. There are many providers who sell domain names and offer space for your website and there are a few things to consider before you put down any money.
1) Location: Your web provider should be in
your neck of the woods. This is because you will need from time to time
to call them and get some information and it is best if they are in the
same time zone and speak the same language. I use www.aruba.it
which is here in Tuscany, where I live. I have only had to call them a
few times, but it has always been helpful that they were near by to answer
my questions.
2) Price: There is no need to spend hundreds of dollars on a web domain
name. I spend about $40 a year for my service. This is a good price. You
can spend less, but it is inconvenient because of space restrictions.
3) Space: You should get unlimited space for your website. You never know
what you will happen in the future and not having enough space to show
your artwork is just unprofessional.
4) Name: Your website should resemble as close as possible to your actual
name such as: www.yourname.com . You will be offered several options,
especially if you have a common name which has been surely taken by now.
The ending .com is not obligatory. It actually means very little to the
search engines, they look at the yourname bit to differentiate sites,
so if your actual name is available in .net , .biz or any other dot, you
should consider buying it for your website.
O.K. You have finally bought your own website domain and are ready to upload your precious images onto the internet. The only problem is that you have absolutely no idea how to do this. Have no fear! It is easier than you think. At this point you need another computer program, you need a WYSIWYG HTML Editor. Now you think that I am completely mad, except that I'm not. WYSIWYG is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get" and HTML means Hyper Text Markup Language, which you may or may not know is the language of the internet. You know when you click on a little blue word or phrase like www.mattbates.net and it goes to another webpage? That is called a hypertext link and it is why the internet is so much fun. The absolute best WYSIWYG program is called Dreamweaver. It works really well with your optimized images and creates entire websites in just a few easy to learn passages. There are other less expensive and even free WYSIWYG programs available to be downloaded on the internet from www.tucows.com for example.
The first step in starting your webpage is to connect to your server. Using Dreamweaver open the Site Menu and choose Edit Sites. Click on New and a window will pop out with more options. At this point, name your site, any name will do. For the Local Root Folder choose the folder you have prepared with your name. For the Default Images folder choose the folder with your paintings, or the original folder with your name. For the HTTP Address add your new domain name, it should read http://www.yourname.com . Now click enable cache. The next step is to choose the Remote Info from the list on the left of the window. Here you will need to get the email from your provider with all of your username and passwords. On the Access tab Choose FTP. The FTP host is almost always ftp.yourname.com. Check with your server if this is not the case. Add the username and password and you should be golden. Make sure you are connected to the internet and Press the Test Tab to see if your are connected. You may need to add a host directory, ask your provider if this is the case.
Now that you have connected to the space on
the internet that you have bought it is time to fill it up with your artwork!
The first page that you should make is your homepage. This page will be
the page that most people see first. It will be the page that you see
when you type www.yourname.com . This page is your storefront window to
the world.