Category Archives: Internet-General

Can a Blog be used for your Business Website?

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We are always seeking web options for website creation that best fit the needs of our clients: ease of use, breadth of features, flexibility, and security. For many cases, WordPress is a great and quick solution for business websites.

What is WordPress?
While WordPress started in 2003 as a tool for online blogging, years of contributions by developers from around the world, WordPress is much more than a blogging tool.

Here’s what you can do, without any customization:

1. Content-management: A user-friendly password-protected dashboard provides quick and easy web access to manage and update your website content. Techie-type capabilities are available, but if this is not your concern, you never need to worry about it.

Content-management includes:

  • Make Posts. Posts are articles that are displayed on a web page chronologically. These include a headline, author, date and an area to post text as short or as long as you like. In these articles you can add pictures. Similar to the menu options for paragraph, text, and picture formatting in Microsoft Word, a WYSIWYG panel provides similar formatting options. Posts appear chronologically either on your blog home page or a page dedicated to posts.
  • Make Pages. In addition to chronological articles, you can create single page entries that can be edited like a post. Unlike a post each page becomes a new menu item. And, you can create sub-menus for each page.
  • Dashboard. The WordPress dashboard is where you can manage your blog and its content. Included in the dashboard is the ability to install themes, plug-in, and manage widgets. Sounds a bit like a foreign language, but with about an hour consultation or just poking around the dashboard and some googling, you will be able to navigate your dashboard and understand these terms about as well as you can manage a remote control for your television.

2. SEO solution - Search Engine Optimization – meaning you want your site and its content to be found in google searches – is built-in.

Are all WordPress sites created equal?

No, not all blogs are created equal. We say this from experience having had to rescue many WordPress sites that have been hacked and designers who don’t have the programming expertise to properly “skin”/design a WordPress site and customize plugins. The basic blog software is set up with the components listed above. While, this seems like a lot, there is much, much more you can do.

Since August 2011, over 22% of all new websites use WordPress. Developers have contributed over 17,000 plug-ins providing the ability to expand features from galleries, to ecommerce, to event registration, to almost anything you can think of—a developer has thought of or is working on it.

The advantage of these plug-ins is that they are modular components that you can “plug-in” to your website without having to build calendars, event registrations, full e-commerce sites, etc from scratch. You get the power of a database to organize your content that can be assembled and re-assembled when needed.

WordPress Template & Ecommerce

 

 

 

 

 

 

WordPress Full conversion site  (and donation database)

 

 

 

 

 

 

WordPress as blog

Keys to your domain: Ownership and Registration

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Getting a website requires getting into the web System. The genesis of this System starts with DNS, the Domain Name System. Following are a few key points that you will keep your domain in the system and website up.

To get started with a website, the first thing needed is a domain name, such as www.mydomain.com, which can be purchased at a domain registrar, where it is registered so that no one can use your domain.

Then, you need to assign your domain a nameserver. A name server includes the information that directs people to the hosting service where your website pages will reside.

Think of your domain nameserver like a telephone number.  If your dns or name server is pointed to a place where your web pages are not residing you will not see them and you will not get email. Every hosting company has an application that reads and directs your domain name to your website pages when it is used by somebody on the Internet. When a sequence of letters is typed into a web browser it is like dialing into a switchboard, a bunch of information about that domain gets relayed to various places—most important of which is your hosting provider where browsers and customers get access to your website.

Along with your domain name is email. Most hosting providers include email service with their hosting packages. With your hosting information you will receive SMTP information that is required for receiving and sending information from your desktop email. For high volume email, an email server designed for email rather than web and email, can be set up to traffic company email more efficiently. In this case, your domain’s MX record-Mail Exchange-can be assigned a server designed for handling email. When you set up your email, you will be asked to include the correct information for your outgoing and incoming SMTP server. This information is based on where your MX record is pointing by your host.

The process for getting started includes:

  1. Register a domain name called domain registrar.
  2. Select a host where your website pages reside. An isp or hosting services-here you will be given a nameserver to give your domain registrar so that when people enter your domain name you are contacting the correct location for your website
  3. Set up email for your domain. Either follow the instructions given to you by your host or
    ask your host to update your MX record to another SMTP server.

    4. Where things go wrong:
    1. If you forget to renew your domain name with your domain registrar you will lose access to your website. If you wait too long, someone else can buy it.

    2. If you don’t register a domain name in your name, then you do not own it. Often a developer will set this up for somebody, but without your name and credentials as the registering party, you have no control over what happens. This is not a tech job—registering a domain name is an administrative responsibility that requires correct contact information along with payment.

    3. Server problems. If your host experiences any problems, power or hardware failures—even with all the ups back up systems and precautions in place, a machine is a machine.

    Additionally, server issues can be software not hardware related. Out-dated software or a poorly designed website can result in someone hacking and taking down your website.

    4. Email. A separate conversation

    5. Internet. If your service provider, Time Warner, Verizon, etc is not working in your neighborhood, you will not be able to get access to your website or email—or anyone else’s for that matter.

    And, always check power. I had a client call because email had stopped. I asked if she could get to google, she could not. I heard a colleague in her office yell out, lights are off, power is out! This will also affect your domain access—but only for you in your office. :)

    SUMMARY: To get a website you have get your domain in the web system-
    1. Purchase a domain from a registrar
    2. Get the nameserver information pointed to your hosting service.
    3. If you have hired a developer to set up your website for you, both the domain registrar and hosting company are important. The payment and registration information should be done by you and in your name.
    4. Keep all of this information in a file. If there is a problem you will need to know (a) name of your service provide (b) name of your registrar (and login information) (c) name of your host and hosting log-in information.

    Best not to lose the keys that got your website launched in the first place.