First off, I'll be going over some terms that you'll need to know.
cPanel: Control Panel.
This is the area of your website where you will do all your maintenance, backups, ect. You get this with your webhost when you sign up. After signing up for a webhost, you'll be asked to specify a "Control Panel(or cPanel)" name, and password. Something you will easily remember is best. Try something like "yourname123", or even your website name. Your password is VERY important. As cPanel gives you access to your entire site, files and everything, you MUST have a VERY difficult password. Passwords with Symbols and numbers are allowed and recommended. Password such as "password123", are very insecure and not recommended. Even if you're choosing a password you can't remember, it's better then an insecure one. I never suggest you save a password on a computer or paper, as it can easily be stolen. If you have a flash drive, you can put it on that. So you'll always have it with you. Make sure you don't label it "Password for http://mysite.com". Just a blank document.
After you've chosen you cPanel name and password, you'll probably be asked to pay. Do this. Some sites will take up to 24 hours to process your order, due to unverified paypal accounts, and fraud. Make sure you're paypal verified before you do business with it. Next step is choosing a domain. I suggest getting a domain with the webhost you've chosen, as it's much easier to set up. I'll tell you both ways of doing it, but we'll start off with it as if you bought it from your webhost.
Bandwidth:
This is also referred to as "transfer". It's hard to explain what it is, so I'll give you an example. Say you upload a 1MB file. Your "Transfer Usage", will go up 1MB. And a member of yours views or downloads that 1mb file, your bandwidth will go up another 1mb. The more files, the bigger the files, the more bandwidth you use. If you run out of bandwidth your website will be shutdown until the month is over. Make sure you always have enough. Bandwidth resets every month, and if there is a server issue bandwidth will SOMETIMES reset.
FTP:
File Transfer Protocol. This is how you upload files to your website. Quick and easy, most the time. I'll be teaching you how to use it later on in this tutorial. If you don't have an FTP client please download one! I suggest smartFTP.com. Get it installed before you go on to the FTP tutorial here.
Domain Setup:
- Domain Propagation: Domain Propagation is the time it takes for your domain to be available world-wide for everyone. Good domain hosts(godaddy.com) have close to instant propagation, 5 minutes at most. Others could take up to 3 days, so choose your domain host wisely. Cheap isn't always better.
- NS's: Stands for "Nameservers". This are the servers your domain connects to. Say you sign up at computinghost.com, and register your domain with godaddy.com. You'll need to change the nameservers to the ones the host provides. In most cases the nameservers will be "ns1.webhost.com", and "ns2.webhost.com". If you're unsure, as your provider. If you bought a domain from your webhost it will automatically be changed, so you won't have to worry about NS's.
Ok. Done with that. Now you're all set up, and your website is working. You probably see a page that says "cPanel has been successfully installed", or something of the sort. Good. But now what?
Your domain name is example.com
Your cPanel name is example
And your password is example123.
Now we need to find the cPanel! It's easy. Just go to example.com:2083, or example.com/cpanel. Both are the same. Enter in your name and password.
Here you go:
You should now see this;
Depending on your webhost, you may see a different style. But it all functions the same.
Take note at the numbered items.
1: Disk Space Usage - this is how much space your website takes up. Please remember that your host only provides you with a certain amount. If you go over, you will either have to buy more, or delete things.
2 Disk Space Available - this is how much space you have left, after the amount used has been subtracted.
Here's an exmaple
You have 10GB's of space. (10,000MB's). You use 2GB's of space. (2,000MB's).
Your "Disk Space Available" should show up as 8,000MB's or 8GB's. Moving on.
3: Bandwidth (this month) - This is how much Bandwidth you've used. Don't go over or like I said, you're site will be shut down. Check your host to see how much you have. You're told when you buy it.
4: File Manager - this is another alternative to FTP. It lets you upload files to your website. If you have big files, I suggest using your File manager. It's a lot more reliable with big files.
5: Server announcements will flash up here. Pay attention to them to make sure you don't miss anything. As you can see this server will be rebooting as Midnight tonight, so OT-Design will be down shortly.
Time to get your website up. We'll be using SmartFTP, which I assume you downloaded earlier in this tutorial.
Open SmartFTP, and get to this screen shown here. I will then go through everything by numbers.
You should see this;
1: Address(host) - This is your FTP address. It will either be ftp.yoursite.com, or ftp.yourhost.com. Check with your provider to find out.
2: Name - This is the same as your cPanel name, unless you made an FTP account yourself. But since one is made when you set up your account, it won't be. Just use your cPanel name.
3: Password - Your cPanel password.
Once you have all your info entered, click the green arrow or "connect".
You'll be brought here;
Skip everything else and go right into "public_html". Double-click to open.
You'll see something like this. Please note that this is my actual website. Your will have close to nothing in it.
Delete the index.html(or .php), and the images folder. You won't be needing these. Don't delete ANYTHING else.
All that's left is to upload your own index.html and images folder. Then the rest of your pages. And you have a website! You'll need to go back to your FTP client every time you make a change to your website, and re-upload changed files.
If I missed anything please feel free to PM me.
This tutorial is brought to you buy Kubi at http://ot-design.net. Thanks for reading!
questions.
.
