Hosting is what you need to allow other people to
access your site. Once you have built your site it can be seen on screen,
but only on your own computer! A host is a computer that is switched on and
connected to the internet all the time. You lodge your own site on the host
and then other people can access it via its own unique url.
url
This is a website’s name and stands for universal
resource locator. The full url contains the domain name that you register.
You choose whatever name you want, but there are a couple of issues to think
about. Obviously you can’t have a name that already exists. Whenever you try
to register a name the hosting site will check that the name is available.
Remember that domain names come in different types - .com, .co.uk, .net,
.biz etc. The .com sites will be indexed most effectively, but they are
usually the most expensive ones. But the name you pick should do two things:
a)It should be unique both to you and to the internet. I chose
philipspires, i.e. my own name without any spaces. I did this so that I
could find exactly where my site was stored, indexed etc. When I type that
one word into a search engine, I know that no-one else will be using it – or
indeed looking for it! If I was called John Smith, however, I might have
chosen johnsmith992 rather than johnsmith, for obvious reasons.
b)Instead of your own name you might want to create something which
relates to your book. You could use words from its title or its genre. This
may help your site to appear on general searches, but then you will have a
problem when the next book needs to be included.
Obtaining domain names
Try typing any combination of these words into a search
engine: cheap, web, website, host, hosting, domain. There are thousands of
hosting services available. On
www.streamline.net, for instance, I paid about GBP26 for two years of
hosting with the domain name registration included. The deal you choose
depends on where you are and the type of domain name you want. Most hosting
packages will also include and email service. This is a good thing, since it
will be allow you to direct the book’s traffic to that address and keep it
separate from your private material. Once you have your website, a
registered domain name and a hosting deal, you can publish the site.
Publishing the site – ftp
The host you choose will provide you with information
on how to upload the files that make up your website. Usually this is done
by a program that operates under file transfer protocol. The method is just
like logging into an email system. You have a user name, usually your domain
name, and a password. If you use web design software, the whole process is
made very easy and works through a window where all you have to do is press
a publish button and the files are transferred. If you use Word to create
your site, you will have to find each file separately using a window that
looks like My Computer.
Free subdomains
Many companies offer free websites. Amongst the best
known are Lycos Tripod and Yahoo geocities. Some of these even allow ftp
access just like paid hosts. Some, however, only allow you to transfer files
a few at a time to the host, which can be tiresome. But these sites still
work!
In general you will only get a subdomain, however. I
have a Tripod site at:
http://www.members.lycos.co.uk/philipspires/
This format of this url is worth noting. What it means
is that there is a website called member.lycos.co.uk and within that there
is a subdirectory called philipspires. There are two consequences:
a) free
websites often include advertising banners that obscure part of the page.
This why they are free.
b) Because
they are subdomains, search engines will often not register them as
something separate and different from the main domain. Hence your own
content and name will not be indexed separately from the details of the main
site. My own Lycos Tripod site, however, has been effectively indexed for
some years!
Because of these limitations, however, it is a bad idea
to use free sites as your main method of promoting yourself.
But free websites are very useful to you. The first
point is that they are free and can get indexed in their own right if you
are lucky. The second point is that you can link to and from these sites
from your main site. The internet is driven by links and these come for
free. My advice here is that you create a main website with all of the
details you want to publish and then create a second site which contains
just one page of information about your self and your book plus, of course,
a link through to your main site. Publish this second site on several free
providers. If you write the content carefully you may never need to update
these sites once you have published them. Finally, link to these sites from
the home page of your main site so that you achieve this:
To create a link to a website, simply type some text,
highlight it, choose Insert Hyperlink and then place a
copy of the url you want to link to in the relevant box. If you click
the hyperlink in this sentence, for instance, it will take you to my site. I
use five or six free sites to make links in this way. Each site has to be
submitted to search engines separately, of course.
