Ken’s Hosting Help
A Website Publishing Guide
A guide to WordPress. Avoid common pitfalls and obstacles.
Get your site online step by step
Site Basics
Setting up your first site
Choosing your Host
Where to park your website.
Connecting your site to hosting
Use your domain.
Building your site
Getting Content.
Speeding up your site
Go from slow to fast.
Security
Protecting your site.
Web Terms
For people stepping in to the world of websites and hosting. There are a lot of unknowns and terms thrown around that are unique to web hosting. Everyone will just assume you to know what these mean. Click on any term to read about it. They’re not in any perticular order.
Hosting
Where you park your website. Hosting usually refers to the company you pay to house your website with the Internet.
There are many types of hosting, and it helps to compare.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language. The language that tells the browser where and how to display things. Every page you visit will have HTML code you can view. Right-click on the site and go to ‘view page source’ to see what it looks like.
HTML by far is the easiest computer language to learn.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator. This is what sits in the address bar of your browser. A URL consists of the whole line: https://example.com/about
A URL on a website is called a ‘link’.
Responsive
A responsive website means it can scale up to a desktop view or change shape to a small phone and still look good.
Specifically, something responsive means it’s good for phone usage.
IP Address
Internet Protocol address. A finite, unique computer address. LAN is a local area network, WAN is a wide area network, or what we call the Internet. Everything online uses IP addresses. Your computer connects online using an IP address.
See DNS.
ISP
Internet Service Provider. The company you pay for Internet access. Your ISP will provide a resolving DNS server as well as bandwidth for upload and download.
Without the DNS server, your Internet wouldn’t work.
Data going to the Internet is called upload. Useful for streaming, calls, gaming, and putting media online.
Data going to your computer is called download. This is usually the measurement that people care most about.
The round trip is called latency.
Cookie
Software the Europeans are allergic to.
In reality, a software cookie is data that can be locally stored on your computer. Rather than identifying every visitor, a cookie can be used to keep settings or a login active on a website.
They can also be used for an unwanted behavior, like tracking you.
Plugin
A piece of software that drops into your existing program to add additional features.
Registrar
A company that sells domains. You register a domain with them.
Cloud
A fancy marketing term that just means “online”. That’s it really, people like to pretend it’s more than that, are likely trying to sell something.
Domain
This is the human-friendly address part of the website. Like example.com is a domain. When you buy a domain, it’s more like you’re renting it for a year.
Some domains types have restrictions on what they can be used for. Like .edu is for schools and places of learning. The .gov is only for government websites, local or national.
Sub-Domain
Subdomains are very similar to a Domain in that they’re friendly to use. Once you own a domain, you can create an infinite number of subdomains for services and other sites.
Some examples:
login.example.com
store.example.com
email.example.com
minecraftserver.example.com
portfolio.example.com
testsite1.example.com
testsite2.example.com
From the examples, you can see how useful these can be.
Browser
Software used to pull up websites and media online. IE Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Brave. Modern browsers have become the universal backbone of our work flow these days. To view this page, you are using a browser.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization. The term is used to get a higher ranking in search engines like Google, YouTube, Bing, DuckDuckGo.
HTTP / HTTPS
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (secure for the s). This is the standard on how websites are transferred through the Internet to your browser.
Speeding up this process is called ‘optimization’.
DNS
Domain Name Service. This service ties an IP address to a domain. When you look up a domain, the DNS will locate where the server is and what IP it’s using.
When you buy a Domain, you will get Name Servers as part of the DNS. Giving you full control over your domain.
Cache
Cache or caching, like storage of something. When you visit a website, some data can be stored on your computer for faster access later. This is called Cache.
This also refers to your website having a per-rendered version it can give to people for faster access.
Some issues can occur when your browser and the website have miss-matched cache. This is why it’s important to sometimes clear your browser cache.
Alt text
Text that is hidden behind images so those with screen readers can be given context on what the image is about. Or you can add funny messages for people to look at.
Also helps search engines know what the image is about.
Widget
Means gadget. On a website, it’s a software application to provide a specific piece of information. Like the weather, for example. It can also just be a section for a specific piece of information.
VPN
Virtual Private Network. This is a secure tunnel to another part of a network. Usually through the Internet to make things more secure. Highly recommended in this day of age.
Don’t panic!
No one starts off knowing everything!
Websites are easy, not complex and just take some time to get right. It’s just like hiking, you can’t start at the top and you won’t get anywhere unless you just start walking and keep going. Get started today and keep at it.
Websites are here to stay, but how we go about that is always changing. Whether it’s to open up a shop, set up a store, a travel blog, nothing beats a good website.
Learn by Doing
Want to hear a million-dollar idea?
Just do it. Fail. Write garbage. But keep at it consistently. Eventually, you’ll get better, find a way. If you’re writing music, just do it, regardless of how bad it sounds. You get better.
Achieve your goals
Pushed as far as you can go alone?
Are you stuck? Not happy with your website? Is the site not loading? Problems with hosting? Need a new website? Problems connecting your domain?
I’ve been there. I’ve fixed thousands of sites. Don’t let a bump in the road slow you down!
Just want it done right?
Don’t want to deal with it?
Sometimes it’s easier just to let someone else deal with a headache.
