Hosted Joomla! website

How to take your first website and put it out on the web for all to see.

Presented by:Douglas Pickett

forJoomla! User Group Toronto

23 September 2014

What you need

Hosting provider, and credentials Domain name (optional in some circumstances) Joomla! content

What we'll cover here

Some background on how to get a domain name, hosting account, DNS, email, ...

Use the Protostar template to create a very simple Joomla! brochure-style website in 15 minutes (or so).

Domain Names

Just what are they, and why to I need them? They're a friendlier way to remember IP's addresses

IP (Internet Protocol) uses IP addresses to communicate, not names.Higher level protocols, like http, will work with IP addresses or names, but virtual hosting on a web server makes use of the names.

You'll need your own domain if you want a website or email in your own domain.

IP naming, some history

Once upon a time ...people just remembered IP addresses, or had a local lookup table (/etc/hosts)

IPv4 addresses:192.168.1.1

IPv6 addresses: FE80:0000:0000:0000:0202:B3FF:FE1E:8329FE80::0202:B3FF:FE1E:8329 (short(!) form)

DNS (Domain Name Service)

Provides a way translate names to IP addresses, and IP addresses to names, where to deliver mail, ...

gTLD (Top Level Domain) originally .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, .orgestablished in 1984.

Added 2 letter country specific domains (ccTLD )starting in 1985. The first were .us, .uk, and .ilnow include .ca, .cc, .tv, .to, ....

Some country domains restricted to local registration, others to anyone.

DNS now

New domains like:.info, .biz, .company, .email, ....

If you want your own domain, and have about $100K, you can register it.

Increasing support for UTF domain names (example from http://www.w3.org/International/articles/idn-and-iri/)

ICANN list of TLD's

In the list updated Tue Sep 16 07:07:01 2014 UTC

712 top level domains listed

from .AC (Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha)

to .ZW (Zimbabwe)

Domain names – why do I care?

If you don't have your own domain, you can look like a lightweight

It can be used as part of your branding It can make a statement of where you operate

(.ca vs .com) Some domains are cheaper than others – and

if your budget is really tight, maybe you don't care.

Pricing comparisons

Price per year (most registrars will give multi-year discounts) – these prices are just representative, YMMV

.ca - $10.45 to $13 .com – $0.99 to $13 .tv - $30 .menu - $39.95 .xxx - $129

Why are some registrars so cheap?

They're using the domain registration as a loss leader.

They hope you'll also purchase hosting and other services from them, so they can make up for what they're losing on the domain.

Not all supplementary services are equal. “Special” offers – e.g. two years, $3.99 first

year, $17.99 second year.

Additional services from Registrars

By definition, a registrar will register your domain name

Often they'll offer DNS services, email services (forwarding, hosting), web hosting, ....

Virtual Hosts

Once upon a time one, and only one, set of web pages would be associated with an IP address

But that is pretty wasteful of address space Virtual Host feature of a web server looks at the

URL and decides based on that which set of web pages you're really trying to connect to.

Hosting types – Why do I care?

Virtual host – you're sharing with many other websites on what is probably a “best effort” basis

Virtual machine – you're sharing a server with fewer other websites, with defined amount of resources

Dedicated server – you have your own system

Pricing (from least to most expensive) Vhost -> Virtual Machine -> Dedicated server

Hosting – what are they telling you?

Cost – quoted per month, for at least a year but sometimes longer

Bandwidth – how much data per month your website can use (up + down) for clients connecting from the Internet

Storage – how much space the files that comprise your website take up on their server

Terms ...

Unlimited – probably the most abused term Unlimited portion of a small pie shared with

hundreds? thousands? of other websites Unlimited as long as your usage doesn't exceed the

profile of all the other users they're comparing you to.

Unlimited as long as you don't use too much in the way of resources

If you really need a lot of resources, you really will need to pay for them

Terms...

Memory – probably not an issue for most simple sites Cores – with a virtual machine, how many CPU

equivalents are you guaranteed to run your website code

CPU time – how much time a CPU is tied up doing the calculations for your request

Requests – more with cloud storage, how many times can a request to upload or download a file can be made per month.

Terms...

Control panel – web application for updating DNS, creating mail accounts, installing CMS, ...

Support method – do they only communicate by email or web ticket, or is there a phone number to call and talk to a human?

Email

Not required for a website, but you'll probably need it

No cost option is Gmail/Yahoo/Outlook – but it may not give the right image

Once you've got your domain, you can have an email address of myname@myshinydomainname.ca

Instead of myname20483@gmail.com

Options

Your registrar will probably offer something Mail forwarding – take mail for your domain and

forward it to your Gmail/Yahoo/Outlook account But when you reply, the from address may still

show the free account name Mail hosting – mail hosted on their server, with

both to and from address being @yourshinydomainname.ca

Hosted Email

Limits on number of distinct email names Limits on size of stored mail Web vs client For client, POP3 or IMAP (clear or encrypted),

authentication options

Demo vs Hosted

First thing you'll notice is the URL, it'll be something like:

http://yourwebsitename.hostingcompany.net If you have your own domain name:

http://www.myshinydomainname.ca With hosted, you can decide which country your

info is stored in (some types of info must be kept in Canada)

Cloudaccess.net

Current demo hosting company for Joomla! 30 day limit

New demo hosting company Siteground.com 90 day limit Unlimited duration free hosting should be in

place by the end of the year

Demo.joomla.org

Getting started – sign up for demo account

Basic Demo Site (front end)

Basic Demo Site (Back End)

Useful Extensions

Your choices may vary, but I like certain extensions

I'm going to install: JCE NoNumber manager, and Add to Menu DJ-ImageSlider Abivia MultiTwitter

Add Install from Web

Change default editor

Change the Getting Started Page

Quick Home Page

Change Module status

What changed

Published DJ Image Slide, MultiTwitter Unpublish front page Login form Now we'll assign MultiTwitter a position

Assign position, follow

Enable where it appears

Change site title

What it looks like now

Replace Image at top of page

Upload images to folder

Add a “Staff” menu

Define a Category

Adjust some settings

Set up the heirarchy you want for your menus

Adjust some of the article options to reduce some of the clutter (Author, publish date, hits, icons, etc.)

What it looks like now

Add a contact page

And now...

Not fancy, but there

This particular web site will get erased in 30 days (soon to be 90 days) unless I start paying for it.

By the end of the year you should be able to get an unlimited free web site (but without your own domain name).

This isn't really pretty, it is functional and fast The hardest part is usually creating the text and

images

My soapbox statements...

Make sure your spelling is correct Make sure you haven't got homophones mixed

up (to/too/two, their/there/they're, ...) Don't only use images from a stock photo

service Don't steal text or images from other sites

If you need to contact me:

Email: dpickett@voggtech.ca

This presentation is available on Slideshare