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This Website is about -

Building your own Website.

Build a Joomla or Wordpress Website Yourself - here's the Roadmap .



We have opened our sister site: Business - Do It Yourself and hope that, once you have your site built, you go there for a more concentrated approach to the business side of running a commercial website. If you are building a personal or non-commercial website, we hope you are already in the right place.

Overview

I want to show anyone that they can set up a great web site all by themselves.

You can sell your own products, sell other people's products, show off your photos, or start a blog on what interests you, and almost anything else you can think of.

Is it work? Of course it is, but anyone can do it by following a step by step plan. Don't worry about the mountain in front of you, concentrate on the path under you.

By the way, if you don't understand what a server is or how it relates to your website, then read this. It helps to have a mental picture of what is actually going on when you work on a website.

I lay out all the steps and I point you to the places to download the tools. Most of them, especially the fundamental ones, are free. This rather long front page is the Roadmap. From here you can find the step by step instructions to build the website you want. It's a great way to set up a site for your company when the budget to hire a web developer is small. Believe me, I've been there.

First, lets talk about what you want and how that affects the path you follow.

I'm covering two different situations.

  • BLOG: Blogging is one person's way of publishing their thoughts, writing, photos or audio on the internet. It can be commercial by hosting ads on the blog.
  • GENERAL SITE: A general purpose site can sell products, or be a source of information or create a community of like minded people.

You may have read enough to know that websites are built with

  • HTML pages,
  • databases,
  • software such as PHP and javascript,
  • flash animations and photoshop images.

We don't want to reinvent the wheel, so to get something up and running as quickly as possible we will use two free website installation packages that give you a fully functioning site in a matter of an hour or less. Then we will customize it to give it a unique appearance and behavior.

  • Wordpress creates a blog site.
  • Joomla creates a more general site.

By using these packages, we get a head start and most of the setup is handled for us. Because we are all human, sometimes the installation goes wrong and we have to fix it or start over. It is often easier to erase the files, reinstall and start over. I'll give as much support as I can by anticipating the problems.


Before you download Wordpress or Joomla, you need to decide if you are doing a manual installation ( you have to upload files, set permissions, create a database and do eveything yourself ) or does your website host provide pushbutton installation using a script such as "Fantastico" ( Answer two or three questions, push a button, and your site is ready). Hostrocket does provide pushbutton installation.

So, if you know what package you want to use, you can start accumulating the tools you need. Let's define the tools in detail.

Tool Overview - make sure you have these first.

  • A fast internet connection to your own computer. Preferably broadband DSL or cable.
  • An FTP program to upload files from your computer to your server. Even with automated installation, you will need an FTP program like Filezilla to maintain your site.
  • A internet host company that wiil provide the actual site.
  • A domain name.
  • Software to run your site. Either Wordpress (blogs) or Joomla.
  • Add on software that provides other functions to your site.
In more detail,

A broadband internet connection is the best way to work on a site. A dial-up modem is too slow in my opinion. Your mileage may vary. Sometimes you have big files or a huge number of files and it would take hours on a slow modem. I suppose in theory it is possible, but i would never try to build a site using a 56k modem. DSL or Cable or something that fast is essential.

An FTP application is a small program that does one thing. It uploads and downloads files to your website from your personal computer. It allows you to set the permissions on each file to control who can use them on the server. That is a security function. You need this program to upload the first version of your site before you make any changes. Uploading means that files are copied from your personal computer "up to" the server computer.

To create a site on the internet, an internet host company must provide the physical site, that is, someone must provide the disk space, Server computer, Server software and facilities and people to run the server room.

You can find many other hosts, but we recommend and explain the services that are found on HostRocket. We have used them for over four years and have had excellant service without loss of data. Their support people are the best I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. The wait time to talk to them is generally a few mintues. I use them for my own sites and can't ask for more.

It is recommended that you get your own domain name. There are certain situations where you can make do wih a subdomain hanging off an existing site, but I would not recommend that for a business. A subdomain is like a domain but it is created by putting a new word in front of an existing domain name of a top site. For example, http://www.somesite.com can have a subdomain called http://mysite.somesite.com and the mysite version will act like an ordinary domain. But to get a first domain like http://www.mysite.com you will need to register a new name with a domain register such as Dotster.com Once you have one domain, you can add up to 8 other domains (under the hostrocket plan ) with their own unique domain name. A subdomain is not the same as one of these 8 "lower" domains. It's confusing, but the lower domains are full domains in their own right, they are merely hosted below the top domain. Whereas, the subdomains don't really have their own domain name, but only a new word added to an old domain name. Don't worry about subdomains, there is little reason to use them. You only save $15 a year due to not having a domain name to register.

Now for the software you need. We are blessed with really impressive open source programs that can be used for free.

For blogging I recommend Wordpress because it comes in two versions. One offered by http://wordpress.com provides free blog sites that you don't even have to set up. They handle everything. Just start blogging. But you have to use a subdomain name like http://mysite.wordpress.com . If you want a professional doman name you need to use the free downloadable version of wordpress from www.wordpress.org . That version is more complex to set up since you have to install it yourself. But you are not limited in very important ways like you are with the wordpress.com prebuilt sites. The .com version has a very limited selection of themes and you can't do any significant customization to the prebuilt sites. Whereas with the .org version you have unlimited ability to modify and choose from hundreds of different themes. A theme is an easy to install front page and artwork that is different from other themes and changes the appearance of a site.

For a general website, I recommend you use a wonderful content management system ( CMS ) called Joomla. A content management system is designed to handle posts, articles, images, and ordinary web pages without requiring you to design the pages yourself. Just create the content by writing or uploading images and the system will store it, allow you to edit it, display it in a manner you choose and organize the site in a way that is secure and usable. There is a strong developer group and a huge active user group. Joomla can handle registration of users, and send them all email newsletters. It notifies the administrator when events happen like a new member registers or someone comments on a post. It even includes a simple upload facility that could reduce your need to use the FTP client.

NOTE: The latest version of Joomla is 1.5.2 (April 08) and I think you should go with this one rather than the older 1.015 version. The main reason is the user interface has changed a bit and there is a significant speed bump when you upgrade from the older 1.015 to the latest version 1.5.x They overlap in time, to some degree.

I've had time to build several websites with the new Joomla (1.5.2) and I love the changes. The interface is much cleaner and the most recent version of the program works better in my view. Easy to install and use.

Why use a CMS system when you only want a few pages to show photos? Because it is a standardized way to install a working website which you can then customize. It would cost thousands of dollars to develop all the functions from scratch that come with Joomla. The user interface is pleasant to use and after a few days you will feel at home using the software. Especially when you have this site as a Roadmap!

One issue with both Wordpress and Joomla is that they need a database connection on your server site. Hostrocket prvides 10 databases for each server account. I will walk you through the process of setting up the database for either one of these programs. A database is a software program on a server site that stores information and gives it back on request. This way, all the content is stored in one place and can be backed up easily. You don't have to set up a database if you use one of the wordpress.com prebuilt sites for a blog.

Customization

Once you have either Joomla or Wordpress setup and working you will want to customize it to some extent. Maybe something as simple as changing a poll or adding a new logo at the top of the header on each page. It might be as extensive as changing all the colors, moving everything around and adding plugins that add new functions. These plugins are generally free and easily downloaded from the the website that gives them away. Once you have the file on your system, Joomla can upload and install these plugins without a problem. Wordpress also has plugins that add functionality.

The primary modification that almost everyone uses is a new theme. This is the way you change the appearance of the site. Both Wordpress and Joomla have a rich mix of free and commercial themes.The commercial ones cost between $20 and $60 generally. It just depends on which template you decide looks best to you.

Examples

So, what can you do with these programs? Here are a few websites I set up in 2006 to 2008.

Where do we go from here? Follow these steps and work on it one thing at a time.

Get Your Tools

Set Up a Blog on your own Website

Set Up a General Website

Bells and Whistles

How to promote your site.

How to Make Money We have divided our material into two parts. This site handles purely website issues and all business information has been moved to our sister site:Business - Do It Yourself This is where you need to go for more business information when you decide to build more than just a site, when you decide to build a business.
 
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