Out of the blue last week I decided that is was about time to figure out how web publishing works. In retrospect, I have no idea why this became a need for me so urgently. It just occurred to me that I wanted to be able to say that I could do it and it got stuck in my head until I could actually understand how things work.
I have absolutely no experience with development or programming, but I can generally figure out how to use any software that I come across.
I started by assuming that the best way for me to do this was to use an existing domain that I already own (www.theliftfirm.com) and host a website on my good ole MacBook Pro laptop. I did some quick research and decided that I would use Drupal as my content management program of choice. I figured that I would simply install a program, connect my url somehow and “presto” I would be ready for publishing. Wow was I wrong.
I spent my first night trying to understand the requirements to run Drupal. Pretty straightforward, you just need a web server (Apache), a database (MySql) and something called PHP, which I still don’t really understand. My first thought was to download and install each of these programs, which was easy enough. Next, there was the matter of configuring the programs and creating a database using the OSX Terminal.
I spent the rest of the night trying to figure out what I didn’t understand. I came to the point that I actually understood what I was doing in Terminal and was able to get Drupal to launch, but when I was asked for the name of the database that I created I had no idea. A quick ask for help from Vark.com and I realized that I hadn’t created a database at all. The other benefit that came from asking Vark.com was that there were easier ways to get started in the form of ready to use stacks such as MAMP.
The next night I started from scratch. I dumped all of my work from the night before, got a nice clean install of MAMP and tried again. Once again, there was something that I just couldn’t get working. Exasperated, I tweeted my frustration and a follower was kind enough to reply and suggest that I try an installation of Acquia Drupal. Free to try, but there was a small fee to use it going forward. Finally I had a version of Drupal installed that I could play with.
The next day I noticed that someone else responded to my Vark.com query suggesting that it might just be easier to use WordPress for my purposes. After looking into the features and the “free” pricetag I thought I should at least check it out. My experience with doing the Drupal install allowed me to have WordPress running on my local machine within a few minutes. I checked out a few templates and was now certain that I wanted to use WordPress.
Now all I needed to do was figure out how to connect my local installation of WordPress to the URL that I already own. Turns out that is not the easiest task. I went back to my new best friend Vark.com and within 10 minutes my answer came back in the form of a question. ”Why would you want to host the server on your laptop? Most people sign up for cheap hosting when they register their domain”
So I turned to the good folks at GoDaddy.com to look at my options. It was probably more complicated for me because I had a temporary placeholder page that was connected to a free hosting account and I didn’t realize that I needed to turn off the free hosting before I bought a new hosting service. It took me all night to get to know the interface and figure out what I needed to do. I had things set up before I went to bed, except that I had to wait for my new hosting account to be setup.
For anyone interested in setting up their own WordPress blog with a custom URL I can now tell you the easiest way to get started:
- Go to www.godaddy.com and choose your URL
- Select the hosting package you want. I used the WordPress and GoDaddy Hosting Economy plan for under $5 per month.
- When I woke up the next day I was set up and ready to go. With the hosting package as chosen they had already installed WordPress and, on launch I was prompted to create a database with a user name and password and I was up and running in 5 minutes.
I wish someone had these instructions posted somewhere easy for me to find so I thought I would share my story in hopes that it makes someone else’s life easier.
N
