Really dumb website building question

black-saturn

OK this is going to sound really dumb to everyone on here but I'm unfirmiliar with this stuff so please bear with me. I'll thank everyone who's been a help :j

Once you've built the website you want and bought your webspace and your web address how do you upload your site to it and link a name to it? If you've bought a www. address is this the same as buying webspace?

Please explain in easy terms.

earner

If your website and web address are at the same place then you would normally use ftp software to upload the site you built onto the server and straight away your site is live. You can get the ftp address from your host.

If your domainname is somewhere different to your webspace/hosting, then you need to log into your user panel at your domainname company and make it point at where your website is (forwarding). You will have to separately ftp your files onto your host still.

If they are on different companies, then it can take up to 2 days from when you point your domain name at your uploaded site

I hope this helps

Oh, I posted something in the freebies section I found - about email promotions, which you might want to know about next. A free video set about email promotions. Just found/downloaded it myself.

I can't post it here as this is the wrong board, but click on my name, view my last posts, I posted it just 10 minutes ago.

billywhizz

Buying https://www.yourdomain.co.uk is not the same as buying webspace no. It depends on who you bought it from and what package you bought, it may just be the domain or it may include webhosting as well, do you know what you bought?

Astaroth

If you have bought a domain name and a hosting package you simply need to "point" the domain at the hosting package. If the 2 have been bought from the same company then they would normally do this for you automatically for you. If they are from seperate companies the web hosting one will give you the address to point the domain to (normally a pair of nameservers) and you then go to the domain registering company with these details and update the name servers. Most domain registering companies allow you to do this yourself but others have to do it for you and may charge a fee. It is important to remember that once you have changed the name servers it can take up to 48 hours for it to take effect because of how the web works.

To upload the files it is best done with an FTP client. Many design programs have one built in for you but there are many decent freeware ones available from the likes of https://www.downloads.com

Again, going to the webhosting package company they will tell you the server address to point the FTP client to and the username/ password to access it. You also need to check which folder you need to put the files in as in many cases it will not be the route of the space you get to by logging in with the FTP client

black-saturn

Thanks, that was all about as clear as mud

tobyosbourn

In laymans terms

You can buy three things for websites.

The domain - which is the name eg https://www.yoursite.com - which is just a name.
Space - which is where you can upload your website
Hosting package - which is the above in a handy mix.

If you have an entire package then you can upload your site using an ftp - which if you use Internet Explorer will just be ftp://www.yoursite.com then log in with the details given to you by your host.

If you haven't got an entire package, you need to tell your webspace to point to your name, this is done in a control panel type thing.

Hope that helps.

black-saturn

Sorry to be thick again. So if I just bought the website address I want I can upload my site to it without buying webspace?

nickmack

black-saturn wrote:

Sorry to be thick again. So if I just bought the website address I want I can upload my site to it without buying webspace?

No, if you just buy the name, you must have some space on a server somewhere to uplaod your files to. Probably best for you is to buy a package as tobyosbourn suggests.

black-saturn

Could someone point me in the direction of a good one then? Sorry to be such a pain but you will have to treat me like a primary school child on their first day who doesnt know how to read

Ian_W

Or you can use free webspace to lodge your site on and the co you bought the name off can direct anyone looking for your site to it.

So if your ISP provides free space then sign up for it and that webspace will get a label like https://www.black-saturn.myisp.com. You upload your site to that space and through the control panel at the company you bought your name off ask them to forward anyone who types in the name you bought to that website. So the punter types in https://www.sexy-black-saturn.com but is actually viewing what you've parked at https://www.black-saturn.myisp.com.

There are co's who provide free space if your ISP doesn't but often you have to use their site builder rather than FTP from your own programme and they're always supported by ads often annoying pop-ups and pop-unders.

The one I use is http://122mb.com/ but this isn't a recommendation, google for free webspace and see what suits you, if any. Otherwise you pay for the space as well as the name, though you can use the same co if you want.

esuhl

If you've just got a small website for "fun", you will probably be allowed some free web space with your ISP. You can upload your website there (using an FTP program such as http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/).

You don't need a separate domain name, but will have a not-too-pretty address such as http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/insanity/. If you want something more catchy, you can also register a domain name and get it to point to your not-so-catchy address.

http://1and1.co.uk/ and http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ are popular, reputable companies for both hosting (allowing you to store your website on their servers) and domain registration (allowing you to register a domain and point it to your webspce - either the webspace at the same company or elsewhere).

Hope this helps...