Building a Web Site...Account Setup with Host Company
In this article I am going to discuss “Setting Up your Back End Items”. Again, I will talk about each of the steps, breaking them into smaller chunks of data as to be able to give the proper space for each.
- Obtain a Domain Name
- Find a Web Hosting Company
- Setup account with the Web Hosting Company, and setup any backend items needed
- Produce a Web Site
- Post your Web Site to your Web Hosting Company’s Server
- Update your Website as needed
Setting up your Web Site Back End Items
In this article we are going to look at the backend items that you might be considering for your web site. Here is a list of the different topics that we will cover:
- Establishing a Web Site Plan
- DNS Settings
- Domain and Sub-domains
- FTP
- MYSQL, Databases
- Additional Software / Example
Establishing a Web Site Plan is the basis of understanding all the components that will be making up your web site. From additional software needed to setting up FTP accounts and other user accounts. Your plan will be the bible to your web site. I suggest getting writing pad used for college note-taking. One where the pages are not easily removed. This will allow you to keep all of your notes, account information, etc. all in one place. Your web plan needs to include additional software that you might need, accounts settings, etc. The items that we will talk about in this article will be great items to keep in your web journal, for you will need this information in the future and during the maintenance of your web site.
DNS information is provided by your web hosting company. However, you also need to supply this information to your domain registration company. Find out from your web hosting company the DNS servers being used to resolve your domain name. Then go to your domain registration company, and update in the admin area the DNS servers info to match the ones from your hosting company.
The other DNS entry that you need to think about is related to how you are going to manage your email for your domain site. There are 2 main ways of managing email from your domain.
1.) you forward all email to your office and have an email server (Exchange, Lotus Notes, Etc)
2.) You setup POP3 accounts and configure each user’s email program to pull down the email from the web host’s email servers when they open their email application.
Both are legitimate ways of managing your email. What is best for you will depend on a number of factors which I will discuss in another article. If you are going to have all emails pushed to your email server, you will also want to setup the MX records with your hosting company so that they will forward all email that belongs to your domain name to your email server.
Domain and Sub-Domains are setup within the control panel for your web site. Normally what happens is that your host company will setup an account for you, give you a user name and login password. Once you login you might have to setup your initial domain, but usually not. All one usually has to setup with their domain is FTP users, Email accounts, databases if being used, additional software items and possibly some hosting features such as FrontPage Extensions. If you develop your web site via FrontPage you will want to have the extensions installed so that your web site can be uploaded via FrontPage, as well as, having features of FrontPage work properly. If you need to setup any sub-domains (revert to your web plan) this is a good time to set them up as well. I cannot get into specifics on how since all companies use different software for their admin sections.
FTP accounts are used to move documents to your web site. Most software will want you to use a good FTP software to upload your completed web site to your domain folders. In this case you build all the files needed for your web site on your computer and the use a good FTP software like (CuteFTP, SmartFTP, WSFTP, etc) to upload the files.
The second use of FTP is to change file and folder permissions. By right clicking on a file or folder one can change the permissions from none (cannot change anything) to full (rights to change anything)
Email configuration again depends on the direction that you want. If you wish for the hosting company to be your email server, then you will want to setup all your email accounts within the admin area. So look for a link to email, and look for setup or new. You can make the email account names anything that you like, but you might want to adopt a policy of naming convention. For myself I use the first letter of my first name and my entire last name. This keeps it short and simple. Other use their first name and first letter of their last name. It is all about what you feel comfortable with, but I would like to make one suggestion….remember that someone—somewhere will be needing to type this email account name in to their email program. So be kind to them when choosing an email naming convention.
MYSQL is the most popular database these days, but there are others. If you need one for your software the things that you want to keep in mind are that the database needs a name, user id, and a password. Most often the software that you will be using will do one of the following.
- They will tell you to use a particular user name and password
- They will ask for you to modify a configuration file and insert the username and password that you choose.
As an example, this blogging software asked me to select a particular username and password. So I setup the username and password first, then I added a database and added the user to that database. Again, this is where that notebook comes in really handy. For then you can keep all the notes about different usernames, etc all in one place.
Additional Software might be needed for your site. As an example, this blog site needed a database, a FTP user, and Blog software. So I started by logging into the control panel for the web site. Creating a FTP account so that I could connect to the site and move files. I then created a database user name and password. Once they were created, I created the database and added the username that I had just created to be the administrator of the database. I then opened the configuration file for the additional software, in my case Moveable Type. I modified the configuration file to include my blog database name, user name, password, etc. I then used the FTP software to copy all the files to the web site and placed them into the correct directory. I was then able to launch the blog’s software installation program that setup the connections between the web site html pages and the database. Once this was complete I was able to log into the blog software to begin the setup of the software fonts, style, etc.
