Website Tutorial - To Publish Your Site.

Uploading your website files from your computer to a hosting server via FTP.

To publish your site to the Internet you will need to have a Domain Name and hosting.
If you don't already have a domain name and hosting go to the two links in my header above and learn about Domain Names and Hosting.

Domain Name Server [DNS] [Where you purchased your Domain name] example: GoDaddy

ACTION: Point your DNS to your hosting server.

Hosting Server This where you send your website files to via FTP. example: Hostgator.

Note: If you are going to host your site with the same company as where you purchased your domain name  you won't have to point the DNS to the hosting server.

Let's look at the process in an example where I purchased a Domain Name with Godaddy and I want to host my site with Hostgator.
Step1. I go to Goddady and purchase the domain name myscribeweb.com.
Step2. I purchase hosting with Hostgator.
Step3. I save the email with my account details that I recieved from Hostgator.
Step4. I sign in to my account at Goddady and select Domain Manager. Where I tick the domain name I want to host at hostgator see image below: Tick MYSCRIBEWEB.COM



Then select the "Nameservers" icon from the toolbar within the DOMAINMANAGER that takes me to the "Set Nameservers" page at Godaddy: see image below:



The image above shows:
I have selected the "I have specific nameservers for my domains" option.
Then I filled in the Nameserver1: and Nameserver2: text boxes with the information I got in the email I saved [in Step3 above] from Hostgator:
NS some number.HOSTGATOR.COM [I blured out the number of my NS in the image above for privacy]
Then hit OK.

Now that my Name Servers are set I can go and download all my files for my website to the Hostgator Server. It may take up to 72 hours for the Domain to propagate all through the Internet but usually it happens a lot faster.
Note: you only have to set up your name servers to point to your hosting server once, not everytime you load files to your hosting server.

OK now everything is set up for me to transfer all my website files to the hosting server.

A hosting server is just another computer that serves your files to  the internet.
The hosting computer is known as the "server"

Your computer is known as the "client computer" and what we have to do is transfer all the website files we created on our client computer to the server.

The easiest and fastest way to do this is to use an FTP program. "FTP" stands for "File Transfer Protocol"

You can download a full working version of  the FileZiller FTP program  for Free.

Download the file to your "Tools" Folder you created on your desktop and instal it on your computer.
The following video will show you how to use the FTP program.

note in the video it tells you that you need to get the FTP details from your hosting company. If you saved your email as in Step3. above your FTP details should be included there.

Load all the files you saved in your "My Website" folder on your desktop  including the "image" folder - excluding the "Tools" folder to your hosting server via the FTP program.

Make sure to read this FileZiller Tutorial


Here is another video showing a common mistake made when uploading your website files via FTP.


Go to the next step for additional applications