The first thing you need to do is open Wordpad or text edit. This is a new document and you should save it as "my passwords".
You will need to know all your user names & passwords. Now this has to become a habit of yours to log every username & password. Once you start creating databases with MYSQL, it gets tricky so you must log and save everything.
You will have an FTP username & password, a MYSQL username & password, a Username & password for your hosting etc.
Once you have bought your hosting & domain then you want to create your folders. Every hosting company does things a little bit differently.
This is what GoDaddy's file manager looks like.
Go to your domains and make sure that your domain is connected to the folder that you are going to upload all of your files to. I usually create a name that is very similar to my domain, how else will you know which domain goes with which folder?
Once the domain and folder are linking then you can upload your Content management System of your choice.
You can choose any of the free open souce Content Management systems out there. I am going to start calling "Content Management Systems" CMS from now on.
You can chose any CMS you like Joomla, WordPress or Drupal. I'm sure there are more out there but we will be focusing on these for now.
When you are downloading any type of software make sure to download it from the official site.
Joomla is http://www.joomla.org
Wordpress is http://www.wordpress.org
Drupal is https://drupal.org
Once you download the CMS of your choice, it may be in a zip file or a regular folder. Creating folders has to become a very good habit of yours as well. Every download needs to be organized into a folder.
You may need these types of folders- Name of CMS you downloaded i.e. Wordpress then download the wordpress install folder and put it in there. You may need a Templates folder, all of your templates should go in there. You may need a Plugin or extension folder. Wordpress uses "plugins" Joomla uses Extensions, Components & Modules. Joomla can get tricky.... So try to create folders for things that you will be downlaoding or else you will spend too much time looking for things.
I have usernames & passwords (most Important),Wordpress,plugins,themes and images as my main folders. Then whenever I download something I make sure to copy and paste it into the proper folder.
One important thing I use a MAC, not a PC. Some things I refer to may be obsolete to a PC not a Mac. As an example I compress my files, Im not sure how a PC does it.
With my experience in Wordpress & Joomla all files need to be a zip file, on a mac you just right click and compress.
Another important tool you can use it's not necessary but I find it to be faster is Filezilla.
I learned about Filezilla in school but of course the teachers rarely used it so they didn't know what they were doing, but Once I practiced and practiced I finally got the hang of it.
Filezilla can be downloaded at
https://filezilla-project.org/
You can upload any of your CMS .zip files directly into your folder that is linked to your domain from the file manager in your hosting.
Once you are logged into your hosting provider, you should go to your file manager, in file manager click on public_html then you can see all of your folders that you created. Each of folders that you created should be linked to a domain that you purchased thru your hosting provider. If you purchased a domain from a company other than your hosting provider than you have to point the domain to that host.
Thats somewhat hard to explain but you can leave a comment or email me.
Once in the file manager click upload it should ask which folder, than you can select the folder.
If you are in Filezilla, then you need the main FTP username & passwords to connect.
Once you are connected then you can click on the public_html folder, underneath will open up with all your folders.
On a Mac all you have to do is drag your CMS file that you zipped into the file name you are uploading to. Example you downloaded wordpress, you zipped it so now it's a wordpress.zip file, open the window which has your files in it.
click and drag it over to your filezilla where the folder is of your choice is. Once the file is placed in the proper folder it will begin to download into your server i.e. Godaddy, Arvixe etc...
One important thing to always remember is whenever you upload a CMS file ex. wordpress.zip you always have to unarchive the file.
It will be imported as a zip, you unarchive it. Then once it's unarchived then you expand the main folder. In the main folder you will have to highlight & move all the files out of the original folder. Remember now the file is extracted so it looks like a normal folder. Your folder structure needs to be corrected. You can delete the .zip file that was imported which has been extracted from. You can delete the unarchived folder that was probably named Wordpress.
You should have opened the folder highlighted and copied all the files out of the wordpress folder and moved them directly into your domain folder which is the website that you are creating.
Written by : Danielle Boyd
Owner of Locals Publishing INC.
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