Launching your Site.

 

Now that you have the site ready, the Domain name selected, and the Web host account created it is time to launch your site. This is the most exciting part of the journey, well maybe the second most. I think the absolute most is when you see your site show up in a search engine.

 

If you are using Dream Weaver, launching the site is fairly easy. When you set up your Host account, you should have been given or chosen your sign-on name and password to access the account with the host. Most hosts have a panel where you select more features and control access. The panels vary, but somewhere in there will be the information for FTP access. This is important because in your web host you have a set of folders that all hold different parts of information that a web site uses or needs, especially as your site grows. There is a database area, and server side script areas, etc. All this is structured based on how your host set up every account. Generally there is only one folder that is considered public access and that folder is where your site has to go in order for the URL to resolve to the viewable IP address.

 

In your FTP program, and I have used several all of them very much the same, you select the ftp address to upload to and the folder to which the upload should happen. If you use Dream Weaver this folder is where Dream Weaver will synch to, so in that application you have to set the initial folder correctly. The folder name is case sensitive! This is important. Some FTP will allow you to upload to a folder you named incorrectly due to case sensitivity, if the folder does not exist then the FTP will create it on the server. This has caused me a fair amount of headache in the past as the error is so subtle that you do not notice it or see it quickly.

 

If you do use a stand alone FTP application, you can sign in to what ever folder level you want to. I normally leave mine at the root. However, if you want your site to appear when you type in the name in a browser, you must upload your site folder to the correct level of the public accessible folder on the server side.

 

Once you identify the correct folder to place your web site structure in, you set up your FTP connection with the user name and password the Host gave you, and you connect to the server. Usually your FTP path or name is ftp.your_domain_.com on port 21. Sometimes it can be different depending on your host, but that is the normal way to enter it. If your site is already up and being hosted on another host and you wish to upload your site to a new host, you will need to use the IP address the new host gave you when you created your account instead of the ftp.domain_name.com as listed above. This is because your ftp.domain_name is pointed to a different server with a different IP address and trying to upload the files to your new server will not work with that domain name resolution. Read all the instructions you can find for your web host and your FTP client. They will help you get your FTP connection and upload your site.

 

Here are a few FTP clients to use: WISEFTP, COREFTP, or CUTEFTP. There are others, but these seem to be the most common and therefore have the most support should you run into trouble. I currently use Core FTP, and Dream Weaver’s built in site manager.

 

After loading up your web site, you are not quite done yet unless you have already pointed your domain name to your new DNS (Domain Name Servers). You do this by logging into your Registrar’s site and making the changes to your name servers on your domain. The Registrar should provide detailed instructions on how to do this. If your Domain Registrar and your host are the same company bought at the same time, this step should be done for you. If however, you registered your name and later chose a host that is not the same as the Registrar, you will have to go into the Registrar and point your domain to your new servers. You also must do this if you had an existing site, but decided upon another host. Before having the domain pointed to the servers you just uploaded your site to, the site will not display when you type in your domain name. In fact, after re-pointing the servers it can take up to 48 hours or so for all servers in on the web (read that as in the world) to index your new IP address that your domain will resolve to.

 

If like me you are using WordPress, all you have to do is publish each page in your site. You will want to make sure the Allow Comments, and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks are not checked before launching the page, otherwise this will become a commentable page. Unless you want comments on your pages, then leave them checked. Most of us will use the Blogging features of WordPress to allow for that communication, or the use of social media.

 

 

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