Forum Moderators: mack
I want to start sort of book club. This is a fun project and wont totally be for the money except hopefully enough to pay the few bucks a month for hosting :).
My question is actually a few in one. The site will be simple enough to make, ill have a main page and a forum where the book of the month (or week, dont know yet) will be discussed. I figure this will help me not make any mistakes on the money making site I am planning, and help me figure out search engine optimization and the one thing I really want to know how to do.... PUT IT ON THE WEB. I know how to write the site now, but what do I do with it? When I purchase a name for my site and a host what do I do then? How do I actually upload my site onto the net? Where do I get a forum? How do I put that on my site? And will I need 2 different domain names? 1 for the webpage and 1 for the forum?
Thanks guys.
Not too much detail but I have to go so made it short and sweet.
The first thing you need to do is choose a domain name. Try and think of something that will be easy to remember for your visitors. Do a search for "domain name registration" or similar. This will help you find companies who can register the domain for you. Shop about, prices can vary, but so can service. Make sure you know what you are buying, and at a price you like.
You also need web hosting. Many people think the domain is were a site is hosted. In reality the domain is no more than a name, pointing to a piece of disk space. The disk space is your hosting. You can choose to host your domain and hosting space with one company, or set up your domain name to point to another hosting company. Your host will be able to explain this in more detail, because it varies a lot from company to company.
Once you have a domain and a hosting account all set up and working it is not time to move your files from your pc to the web. To do this you use an FTP tool (file transfer protocol) this is almost like moving files around on your computer, except you are moving them to the web.
Once you have moved your files to the web they will be accessible through your domain name.
With regards to your forum, you should have a look through hotscripts.com for a suitable program, there are many free forum scripts and they will come with installation instructions.
Hope this gets you started.
Mack.
I think Ill have this site up in a couple of weeks, I am VERY excited since it will be my first site, easy, and hopefully attracts alot of people
