What does it take to get on the internet with your business, hobby or interest? I’ve been helping people do exactly this since the internet went public.
Step 4: You need software.
There are so many options that I can’t cover them all here, so I will stick with the most popular ones, which are also the ones I have used the most. My web server software of choice is Apache. It has been around and very stable for many years. There are versions for many platforms, including Windows, but I prefer to run it on a Linux server.
There are also many ways to build the website itself. You can type the code by hand as a text file, but that is tedious, there are many rules to remember, and you don’t see what the page looks like until you open it in a web browser. I have done that, and I have used many other tools over the years, including FrontPage and Dreamweaver, but my current favorite is WordPress.
WordPress is a content management system rather than a simple page editor. It gives you a lot of power, with an endless number of plugins and options to build the website you want. I can edit its templates to make a site look however it needs to. My biggest weakness (if you haven’t guessed by now) is that I am by no means a graphic designer. But if you are a designer, or have one, and want a site laid out according to your vision, that is something I CAN do.
One tip: keep WordPress, your theme and your plugins updated, and delete any plugins you don’t use. Out-of-date plugins are the most common way WordPress sites get hacked.
The last piece of software I recommend is cPanel. Usually you don’t buy it yourself, because the best hosting companies include it in the server’s monthly cost. cPanel keeps backups of your site and manages the back end extremely well. It automates updates and SSL certificates so you don’t have to worry about them. One of its best features is moving your website seamlessly from one server to another.
Click the links below to read the other parts of this series.
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