How do I develop my website further and upload it?

22 Mar 07 2:15 am

Sounds to me like you've jumped in headfirst! I've got a lesson on how to FTP in the works since it's a REALLY common question on this forum. In the meantime there are a couple of methods you can use.

1) In lesson 2 of the 6-part mini course I show you a way top upload using cPanel, which is your website administration panel. Your host should have given you information for accessing the cPanel. Typically you enter something like

http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel

and you'll be asked to log in. Your host will have given you this information too.

2) Another simple way is to get an FTP program. Do a search for "Filezilla" -- it's free, and pretty basic. Here's a tutorial I found that seems to cover the basics: http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/howtoupload.shtml

3) You can use Dreamweaver if you're creating your site in Dreamweaver, but it's a little complicated to wrap your head around when you're first starting. My choice would be for method 2... it's pretty intuitive if you're used to working in a windows environment.

with hostgator I get free website templates. Do I use these?

You can if you want, but it will probably be more complicated in the long run, since you'll need to modify things and it sounds like you don't have the HTML knowledge to know how to do that. (I'm not familiar with the free templates Hostgator offer... someone can correct me if I'm wrong.)

I recommend that you either do a hunt around the internet for some basic web design tutorials (eg. http://www.yourhtmlsource.com for basic HTML tutorials, but also other things) or go out and buy a "web design for dummies" book. They're not just for dummies! What you need is some perspective, since it doesn't seem like you know how things connect together.

In terms of getting your site linked to, all you need is one link from a site that is currently being spidered by the search engines. A lot of people recommend posting in blogs... this is good, so long as the blog hasn't elected to block spiders from following links on their page. Another really good way is to write an article (it doesn't need to be very special at all) and post it to an article directory. This is free, and by including a link to your site in the bio box, it should get the search engines spidering your page.

Let me know if that clears things up for you, or if you need some more help. I'll definitely get to work on that FTP tutorial!

All the best,
Mark

22 Mar 07 4:12 am

Was one of the pages you uploaded to your site called "index.html"?
Unless you upload an index.html page, you won't see much happening on your website, since the HostGator placeholder index.html will be the first thing that comes up.

If you *did* upload an index.html, did you put it inside the /public_html/ directory? When you first connect to your site in the FTP program, you'll probably see a whole bunch of files. You need to find the file to put all your website documents in, and then upload your files into that. If it's not called /public_html/ it might be called /http_docs/ or something like that. If you really can't find it, or you're really not sure, consult Hostgator's support information. This will be a really common question, so it will probably be in their FAQ. It's something that differs between hosting providers, I'm sorry I can't be more specific.

Let me know if you have any more problems.
Mark