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Choosing a Host for Your Site

Lesson 2 from: Creating a Responsive Website with Wordpress

Brian Wood

Choosing a Host for Your Site

Lesson 2 from: Creating a Responsive Website with Wordpress

Brian Wood

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Lesson Info

2. Choosing a Host for Your Site

Lesson Info

Choosing a Host for Your Site

What we're going to do now is I talked a little bit about how it works just generically I want to go through and get started let's actually like make a wordpress site okay, now there's a couple ways you can approach this actually more than a couple but I'm gonna narrow it down to two. All right? I said before that we have ah wordpress dot com versus wordpress dot ord and I said wordpress dot or you can download wordpress and put it somewhere and install it on a host and work with it. Okay, now I'll tell you right now that how many of you actually have ah host right now like you pay for hosting you just tell me a little bit about like, what hosts are you using? What? The name of the companies go daddy, I use best web host because it for me it's more flexible and I could pick up the phone and call her cool that's what I call her okay? And it was blue host louis okay, greedy five point. That is so cool. Yeah, no, I've heard of them before there's a lot there's a lot of hosts out there. I ...

am not advocating one host I'm gonna tell you that right now, okay, I'm not saying you got to use this one that one this one to be perfectly frank everybody has issues with hosts at some point, every host, every website has some kind of down time at some point, if you've never had downtime, consider yourself lucky or you just don't have any traffic, okay? If the pains I don't know, you know, so so I'm taking a look at blue host here, for example, and we're also going to just take a quick look. Let me make sure I'm still logged in here quickly go, daddy, just some of the bigger ones, okay? You're also going to find that so we we can install wordpress here just by clicking a button basically, which is sweet you're going to see I'ma show you how to do it. Uh, we can also use other hosts. They're our host out there that are looking look at this wordpress posting specifically forward press they've got it dialed in and optimized okay one example w p engine I'm not saying to use it. I'm just saying it's an example, okay, there's a bunch of mt here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go to blue host now now there's there's two main ways to work with a wordpress site okay, weaken, create it, design it at our content through the host which essentially means that we need to have an internet connection, right because your work it's you know it's up on the hosts right? So if we install and we're like all right let's do this thing and then we're going to get into what's called the admin I'll show you guys that don't worry we're going to start to add our pages are content, but we're doing it all over the internet so if we don't have an internet connection we're on a plane what happens? All right, so we can't we can't editor site while we're doing that, okay, so if you use wordpress enough and you start to do this stuff enough, you start to realize that well, first of all, this is kind of live you know what I mean to the world and don't get me wrong you're not going to have like a million visitors the first day I can almost guarantee so you know not not the rain on your parade but it's one of those things where you know if you develop live and you've got your girl and you're all awesome, you could develop the thing without anybody knowing you know what I mean? You can even wordpress lets you turn something off that says don't let search engines find me yet, which is actually good it's pretty cool because then you could just make it and that we don't grab the garbage you're practicing with you, not me so we can do it live like this? We can also what's called developed locally. Okay, now this is a little more advanced and it's something I'm just gonna show you and I could actually I'd be crazy if I could do it, but anyway, so to develop locally check this out. Watch us. You're going to look at look at this site. This is actually honestly, we're going to see this in a second. But this is what your site looks like when you first install wordpress. Okay, it's it's, blackish. Alright, so but anyway, okay, take a look at the oil. Can you see different local host slash c l start I'm not working off the web right now. I could have no internet connection and usually be pretty pretty good. Okay, now, how does that remember? I'm telling you guys database, but magic this how does that work? I mean, I thought all they do is type that in I'm good, but if you guys go home and you type in, you go on your computer and type in local host into any browser and hit return you're probably gonna see something like that. Ok, you got there's a little set up involved that's what I'm telling you it's a little more advanced, okay, okay, so what? What we're going to do is I'm gonna kind of go through it I'm just going to mention right now that it actually requires in some cases depending on how you do it that you download software that is a a server and has all the things you need to make the database run okay that's what I'm telling you I'm not telling you you got to do that I'm just saying this is another example another way to do it when we get back to the first for example, I'm showing you guys you're gonna be like that was too easy okay, but further get down a lot of people will start to do this if you develop enough okay, we'll get we'll get back to a door okay? So back to our host so I'm on blue host here and I'm like all right, let's get this thing set up maybe I have my girl already maybe I don't they could give me a temporary one I get into my account and I start looking and usually with like a host like this, you're gonna have something like control panel that's usually what you see first, okay? And they're going to show you like all your stuff and honestly, if you check this out, I'm gonna go to go daddy, this is like typical old school control panel, okay if I go to go daddy and I take a look like they're going to show you all your stuff like web hosting whatever I'm gonna go look at my web hosting the idea is that we're going to get into the hosting part of what you're working with okay, so you're going to see go daddy exercise okay there's your you're hosting we can launch it so I'm gonna go take a look at it I'll click on launch and my point here is this it's eventually going to take you look at us it's the same thing pretty much to me it's just a little prettier because these air like flat icons don't mean so it's kind of the same thing you're looking at and you're like it like that that's great but if I go from here to blue host for instance I'm going to see it's it's very similar this just looks uglier. Okay, so anyway, not all hosts gonna work the same so we're gonna have little different ways of doing it. But my point here is this when you get to your host what we're gonna do is we're gonna go find wordpress somewhere you're going to see that like ninety five percent of hosts out there already have wordpress there that you can install so you'll see there it is right there wordpress you can also do a little finding a kind of sort if I click on wordpress right there now this is my hosting count for my host for my sight him about the build I just click on wordpress it's gonna go out and do some weird whatever chick around here a little bit what's gonna happen here is it's going to take us over to this insult forward press and once we get in there to take a look now the thing about some of these hosts were gonna find they're going to sell you on stuff they're going to sell your hard okay they're going to sell your really hard you're going to see look at the bundle here wordpress themes okay ah theme is a super template okay? Like a template on steroids, you'll find that we'll see that so if I scroll down a little bit I'm like, okay, do it yourselfer free sweet can I do it? I don't know we'll find out and you're going to see a big old button right there called install typically how we do it down here will also see let's do it for you so little let you do it people if people try it and it fails something something in half and sometimes you know what I mean don't do this, you know and then you go down further and you'd be like let's let's show you what you've already installed we can install wordpress in several places and kind of tested out just kind of work with it a little bit okay it doesn't have to be live to the world so here's what we're gonna do I'm gonna go in and just install this thing and pray that it works right now so I'm gonna click on install don't ask me for another log in and you're going to see okay loading now what is going to do here is going to say I love this hurry it all ends they're selling the stuff um themes selling you're gonna be right over here where do you want to put wordpress you're probably gonna have doesn't mean you get to have the girl you brought okay all right it's gonna probably list your girl's here okay um so you're gonna go in and say okay well I'm gonna pick the right one if you don't you gotta be really careful okay because of you I've done this before you picked the wrong one you already have word press there it's going to try and override it and ruin and get rid of all the stuff you've done so you got a kind of yeah this did so its web you gotta be you know think about it cry actually going to ask a question on now when you say it overwrites said I mean I haven't existing site I wantto make a new sight with a new theme so I should not select my domain okay so this this is that's a great question let me answer that if you have an existing site like I brian with training you saw it that's my site it's a wordpress site if I write now were to say let's go in now luckily you guys look att look at blue host check domain it says it's going to go look yeah it's gonna look see if it's right and if there's something already there it's gonna be like a you already have okay if I want to make something and keep it secret what I can do is I can actually type in a name over here for directory and it's gonna actually on my host it's not going to take that word press folder and just stick it out there and put all the stuff you put all the files slap it out there it's actually gonna make in some cases going make a little folder here I could call it like brian or test or something like that in that folder is going to put all those wordpress files to stick him in there so you could then go in and work and work and work and who's going to know to go to brain with training conn dot com slash like test x one for a don't name it test every does that okay so you I know we actually I have and you will find stuff at times so not now that the thing to think about, though, is that if you do put it in a in a folder directory means folder if you just stick it in a folder your girl brian would training dot com so many types it in will not point to that website it won't go there because it's in a folder you've got to talk to your host and have them change it say okay instead of going from the main folder here and looking in there for like an index page, I want you to exactly point into this folder and there's my site you can talk to the host about that if you want to do it that way, okay, most people honestly when they start well, just stick it out there, just put it in the main site and be good and go okay as you start to develop it as you start to work more and more, you'll realize it's it's kind of helpful of times to keep things organized because it's going to take that whole remember that whole folder full of files I was talking about. So all of this stuff is going to take all this stuff and just put it on the main site level basically, so if we have a bunch of sites we're working on for our own stuff, we can actually put them in separate folders and keep it and have different girls point to them you see what I'm saying? So just to start you're probably gonna put it in the main remain directory okay, I have a sight here already I do not want to destroy it, so I'm just going to take something else in I'm gonna type in hey, there, whatever you guys can figure it out, okay? Keep it. This is too simple, but anyway, er keep it simple, so I'm going to say let's check domain, check it out. Bam ba bam is going to kind of see what's going on here now you're gonna find it. Like I said before, the one click install it could be a little different. Last step you're almost there. I've read the terms conditions I love this. Okay, we're press you guys is open meaning it's you can edit stuff, you go in and just hack if you want to so that's like really cool if you look right here, you're going to see you can show the advanced options if you really want to. All right, I'm going to do that just so you can see it advanced options are actually really good. I got to be honest even though they say advanced because it's gonna lie to pick a few things when you first start okay so like site title weaken this stuff we can change later okay at least at least some of these things we can so I'll say like you know I want this to be like creative live this can always be changed later this is something that you know you're the admin user named the initial admin username you're not going to change the username later but you can create another admin user okay another admin log in if you will but the password I don't like the fact that it creates my own you know it's gonna give you that's going to tell you here's your password you can change it later but right now I'm going to just type in adobe or something because it was going to show my password which is awesome that's a little crazy on the little surprise by that okay I'll just type in adobe okay you guys remember that password please do not type in a password that simple obviously all right okay all right so it's going to say bam bam bam I've read I gotta username admin block I'm gonna install now going click in full of brian we're training adobe we got to remember that okay it'll tell us it later though I'm gonna install now you could do it in style now brian why would you change the install location the only way okay right here. Yes actually this is awesome that's a good question because in case you decide you like, you suddenly panic and you're like no, no, I need to put it in a folder they're trying to say like, this is almost like back you don't mean like justin kids, they know people I've done it before I've installed and been like then you got to goto uninstall and reinstate you could do it, but okay, so I'm gonna say let's install now. Now, I want to show you this to automatically create a new database for this installation. That's good that's. Good. We don't do that. So I'm gonna actually click install now and maybe it'll do it. Ok, invalid field, please check to make sure the field data conforms to field requirements. I bet you money it is. Yeah, it should be. Okay. We're gonna do a dhobi admin. Dobie. Dobie. There you go. Yeah. Okay. So, it's supposed to be doing something now? Install install last step. You're almost okay. Here we go. Here we go. Check this out. It's still trying to tell you they were signed, so they're trying. They're pushing hard, you know. So but it's actually nicholas, his view progress. Here, let me close this thing, look up here, this is pretty cool. So it's going to kind of show you I love this view details so you can view details but I'm not gonna pick on that so it's saying let's install you don't need to look at this but it's just kind of cool to see it's taking that folder that zip file I showed you guys sticking it up, they're expanding it, putting it out there, going over and making a database for you guys and just hook into two together and you're set you're ready to go so now it's going to say okay, you're done, you're installs complete to be perfectly frank you have to I would view what's called view credentials go look and see what you did username password get that stuff in a safe place you can get an email later from it, but just make sure I've actually for gotten my password before and been locked out and it's somebody yes jumping really quickly so speaking of selling things, bryant this is a free live event here today and I just wanted to let you guys know if you're new to creative live or you're not sure how things work. We do offer the workshops of her purchase and we were just looking at at themes and themes khun really cost anywhere from ten, fifteen dollars all the way up to one hundred dollars, but with this workshop if you do purchase for forty nine dollars and that's just available today during the live event we're actually giving you guys an exclusive free wordpress theme so you can get started so if you've already purchased I would encourage you there's a zip file on our course page you can download that and go ahead and get started and work with us today with the exact files that brian's going to be working with so I just wanted to give you guys the heads up right back to you cool thanks all right, so what once we install it says install complete what I'm gonna do is going to kind of go take a look at what we've got here and you're going to see your install is finished let's take a look at your credentials and usually don't kind of show you this stuff right away I'm going to head in view them here you're going to see that now this is this is the key stuff okay? This is stuff you have to keep keep uh uh written down if you will be going to see that this is the actual earl of where wordpress now lives meaning that's your sight okay not normally if you don't put it in a folder remember hey there folder it's just gonna be your girl okay, so watch what happens here I'm gonna go ahead and click on that and open up a browser and you guys are going to see that we are alive we're ready to go we have a wordpress site ready to go now the other really big humongous, crucial part of this thing is going to be what's called the w p admin or the admiral right here and then you were out now this is the place you're going to go to you have to log into this this is where you go to add everything ok? Make it pretty and you're content and this is where your clients are going to go if you decide to let them make changes usually so I'm gonna I'm gonna go and open that up to and take a look at it and you'll see okay, forget this stuff you know you could try and get it back but so I said, what info at brian went training nice and then it why would I do without you guys never write this stuff down? I just always like yeah, yeah yeah so I'm going to be okay remember please remember me maybe remember me okay? And I log in and if you take a look it should just take a couple seconds here but we're working over the web don't forget now look look at the world says brian with training slash hey there w p admin every sight in the world usually that is a wordpress site if you want to get to the admin you just type in the name of the oil slash w p hyphen admin and you can get there okay, so as a developer of a lot of times what I'll do is I'll have a client um call me up and be like oh, we have a problem we're gonna hire you so I'll just go to their site and just type it in and see if I can get there and see what's going on you know what I mean? So you can tell so this is called this is called the admin this is this is your wheelhouse this is where you live okay? If we want to do something like change the template change the theme this is where we do it if we want to add pages if we want to add content this is where we do it a lot of people will talk about you know you can go in and, you know, edit the files and do all kinds of crazy stuff. But most of us when we start this is it so let's let's do this I showed you guys how to install on the host like this okay, I just want to go in really quick and say like and go daddy's case it would be pretty much the same thing okay, I'm on go, daddy. Now I went to my hosting and if I got a wordpress it's just going to go in and say, all right, do you want to install it or not? And it's just it looks a little different, but it's going to be the same thing I install it's going to go through and say, ok, do you want to put it in a folder? A directory exact, same stuff hey just looks a little different and then it's going to give you some options, things like that, and usually you're not going to touch this stuff, okay? Because you don't know what it is usually, so leave it alone. Install once you install same thing, click through a couple times, do some things, you're going to see that it's going to show you it's called, like my applications all hosts going to do something like this and it's going to say, well, here's, your block and here's, your info where you're located, et cetera. So that's, really crucial. This is how you can get back there. I saw one of the selections on when you scroll down there about backups, you and I don't feel going to get into that, but, uh, it is a phenomenal question about backups, because one of the things and let me tell you a quick story I work with a designer and we create websites okay? And she's awesome she's really cool she's great. Whatever, uh actually had an issue where we created a series of sites and there was a bug in one of the things we're doing okay? There's an issue basically crashed three sites we had so we have two of them were backed up meaning they had the content in the data base they had all the files and everything we're saved externally outside one of them was not it was a nightmare. It was a veritable nightmare. We had to rebuild half the site because it was going so a lot of these hosting companies will actually have something called backups. Now some of them are manual like this one most manual I just did this to, you know, show you guys but some of them emmanuelle some of them you can actually schedule and say, like daily weekly, whatever back it up somewhere so I can get back to it. Okay, wordpress also has capabilities inside that you can grab a plug in and there's a ton of like one plug and I use is so cool I'm the many of you use dropbox he's dropped ok or something okay, yeah, yeah, I can live without it there's there's a plug in for word press that backs up to dropbox automatically so it's sitting up there and I could just pull back in when there's something crashes or something happens there's things like that that are awesome but you have to that's awesome. We're going to talk about that at the end of today we're going to talk a little bit more. Okay, so this is this is the install process this is their once we get there like I already said we actually are going to go to our our site that's our live site and this is the dashboard right? Of course have expired that's fine. Now here, let's take a look at the other method for doing this. Okay? Remember I said that we can actually stall locally okay yourself uh what what do you think about that method, right? They're making a sight getting it ready doing wordpress it's not bad, right? Okay, you get it done. You there all right now, like I said, I develop a lot of stuff. Okay? I did do a lot of sites like this, so I don't want to be tied to the internet, which sounds crazy because we all are I mean, you know, it's kind of dumb, but what I want to able to do is I want you to do something like okay, let me give you a test case here. I've got a client in san francisco, actually, who has an existing website. Okay. And it's a big site and they wanted to do a redesign. They wanted to go responsive because their site right now, it doesn't look good on mobile. Okay? So instead of me working over the internet and kind of doing some some things that are a little slower and trying teo, you know, figure out where to put it, etcetera, I make it on my machine locally, and then I can actually put it somewhere just so they can see it. Ok, just kind of quickly throw it somewhere, but when we're ready to go live to the world, I can take the entire wordpress deal and just put it up on the server. So so is that the same concept? Like I did a redesign, I was going through a bunch of themes to see how they would look, and then I really wished I went back to the old original theme. But then I had to go in and make changes to get it back because I played with all the changes and all the themes to seo do that lot, like local, local, then you can say, forget about it. Yeah we can just I can just take as matter of fact let me just say this is what I mean I think that's totally make sense I do this all the time you could back up on your machine easily despite copying folder right so I could take the themes I have like one day and be like let's take him over here for a second this is ah site we're gonna work on today that I did as a backup case the other one failed I could just throw that trash out of sight anymore so however you back up in your own machine it's how you can do it right now but we can easily do it you can easily just copy stuff all over so so let me just do this let me just show you the generic process for how this works I don't expect you're going to do this at home right away okay just just know that okay I actually created um this yeah that's me from a few years ago so that's two thousand ten there is actually a uh by the way all the girls you're seeing there's a pdf with u r ls in it that you can get ok we've got you can have this one I believe is not in there and that's my mistake my bad but I just wanted to point out that I created an article for adobe and it talks about how to run it locally and I do a little and says dream ever forget that we don't need that but you're going to see right here setting up your local web server it's called and just talks to through it little human you know I mean county didn't have done let me just show you real quick okay take a few minutes so here's what I'm gonna do I'm deciding up I wake up one day and like I want to make a wordpress site but I want to do it here there's one big thing we need okay well there's three big things we need uh you need a browser simple I need an internet connection I'm going to say four things in interconnection and these are just done ok uh you need wordpress so we need to go to wordpress dot org's not wordpress dot com download wordpress it gives you that zip file and you need that okay, the last humongous thing we needed this is this will not work without it is what's called now there's a million of these out there. Ah, local server okay, a server running locally and I first heard of this and I was like a server I'm going to set up I was like there's no freaking way I'm gonna do that are you kidding me? I don't know what a server is it's a program you can buy okay, so, mam m a m p for mac is free. So you just you downloaded, you install it and there's like a little thing that says here's kind of you get started. Okay. Uh, there's, zampa and lamp and map, man. So there's zampa manpower on windows, there's a couple of canoes for windows and basically their applications that we can install and weaken. This is your your server. This is everything. It's running. Okay, this is where the database is going to kind of get started. It's gonna have what's called php it's going to have my sequel databases gonna have everything going. We don't need to know all that and what's gonna happen. Is it's going to tell you if you look, this is the pro version, so it gives me a little more stuff to look at. I'm sorry about that, but going to see right here that I can actually just it gives you a folder and says, put on put on your web sites here. If you just take that wordpress folder and put it in that folder you go criticize. Ok, I change the folder to my sights. So that's a folder I made, all right.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Brian Wood - Class Notes - The Essentials Workbook.pdf
Brian Wood -- Exclusive Wordpress Theme and Project files.zip

bonus material with enrollment

Brian Wood - Creating A Responsive Website - Resource Links.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

fleebers
 

Learned less than I expected. I came into the class with WP knowledge having a created my own functional site. I could have learned everything he covered by reading online, in less time and for free. The instructor was all over the place and never really answered all "really good questions" "you know what I mean?" I believe more could have been covered if the instructor was a better speaker and better organized. He was really difficult to listen to. I don't feel this course was worth what I paid but as I bought in a bundle I'm hoping the other sessions will be better. I recommend catching this course on a free preview before making the purchase. I wish I had.

a Creativelive Student
 

I thought that Brian did a great job explaining how to set up a word press site. I am a novice and felt that I could handle it after watching this. I am a very linear learning and didn't feel like he was jumping around. I felt that he was explaining the process of using a very detailed and multiple optional program well and I didn't have any problems following him. I think you have to have an attention spam and be focused because it is a lot of info and can seem rather detailed. For a beginning class on Wordpress, I am very satisfied with what I just learned and feel comfortable creating websites. I am planning to take the more advanced class based on this. As far as the title, I guess I took the time to read the description of the class before I purchased it so I felt like it was money well spent and knew what I was signing up to receive. I will agree with other comments, the one female student made it difficult to watch due to her need to add something to prove her knowledge. I could have done without that, maybe they could ask the students to limit their comments or questions.

LafnSuzi
 

In the process of upgrading our church's website responsive and this definitely was the course to watch. Have had a wordpress site for years, but got a great refresher and learned much I didn't know. Thanks a ton, and can't wait to get into the other courses as well to continue my journey.

Student Work

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