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Information Technology News Use open source to build your own top-class online presence for nothing, part one
Information Technology News Use open source to build your own top-class online presence for nothing, part one | Use open source to build your own top-class online presence for nothing, part one |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Sunday, 11 November 2007 | |
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Page 4 of 4 You need all these bits of information or you will not be able to proceed. Be certain to record these before leaving the web host’s control panel:• The FTP server you upload pages to • the FTP username and password • the MySQL server name • the MySQL database name (note, this generally will be the name you gave plus a host-specified prefix. This avoids problems with multiple sites wanting to use the same database name.) • the MySQL username and password. • the primary and secondary name servers (e.g. ns1.01x.net) Featured Whitepaper
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You now must return to your domain registrar. Go back to their page and find where you can sign in to update your domain. This will require either a username and password or the registry key you got when you signed up for the domain. On GoDaddy’s site this login box is located on the right-hand side of the home page. Search for the fields where you specify the name server addresses for your domain; by default the registrar will have listed their own name servers but you now need to change these to the two supplied by the web host. These changes won’t happen instantly, but over the next few hours you should find that your new domain name is becoming known to the Internet: running the command nslookup in a terminal window will let you check your domain can be found; for instance nslookup http://www.opensourcerecruitment.com/ advises that the address exists, and what its IP address is. For a brief while, you may find the details on your domain can’t be found; that’s normal until the information propagates. WordPress You now own a domain name, and you have free web hosting. What more could you want? Ok, content would be nice. Let’s go and get WordPress, the well-known and very popular free open-source blogging and content management system. Download WordPress from www.wordpress.org. The current version is 2.3.1 at the time of writing. The software comes as a compressed archive. Unpack it to extract all the files and folders. In the top folder you’ll find a file called wp-config-sample.php. Make a copy of this and call it wp-config.php. Edit it using any text editor and be sure to set the lines specifying the MySQL database server, the MySQL database name, and the MySQL username and password. Without these set correctly, WordPress can’t function. You got these details from your web host earlier. Next, upload the whole extracted WordPress folder – including your new wp-config.php file – to your web host. To do this, use an FTP program (like Filezilla) and connect to the FTP host, using the FTP username and password. Again, these details came from your web host previously. Be sure to upload to the right spot; you might need to refer back to any instructions your web host gave you. For instance, PHPNet.0lx.net requires you to store files under a subdirectory called htdocs, itself under a subdirectory being the name of your domain. You have to move into this sub-subfolder before uploading files. Once they’re uploaded, and once nslookup shows your site exists, go visit it! In my case, I went to www.opensourcerecruitment.com. WordPress picks up that it hasn’t yet been set up and takes you through its dead simple one-click setup, constructing the database, prompting you for a site title and your e-mail address and performing all its other work under-the-hood. You are now online! Note carefully the random generated password that WordPress gives you. Both www.opensourcerecruitment.com and www.opensourcerecruitment.net are now live sites, and it cost us nothing but the price of the domain name. All else is free, with no sacrifice in quality. Depending on how soon you visit those sites after this article going live, you might find the standard WordPress launching page, or something more substantial as we evolve the site in part two. As always, you might find other packages you like better other than WordPress, but in the second part of this article we’ll show how to really take full advantage of all WordPress has to offer – including making postings and announcements, selecting a great visual theme, cutting down on comment spam, setting up a forum, and even making money yourself. See you in part two! |
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