Geeky but essential website info

You can’t make websites without getting involved in geeky and dull stuff eventually … but I promise to make it as easy as possible and give you just the information you’ll need to set up your basic website.

Don’t be put off by the headings – read on, as you’ll need to have at least an awareness of this stuff.

Nameserver settings

I’ll try to make this as simple as I can!

If you buy a domain name (ie example.co.uk) from a company, and you host your website with them, that’s nice and easy.

The domain name is already tied in with the correct servers on which your webpages will be placed.

What happens though if you decide to change the people who are hosting your website?

You might get fed up with their adverts, or their pricing, or you might get so good at making websites that you want some new features offered by a different company.

Your domain name (ie example.co.uk) sits with one company, and is connected with their servers … but you have to move your website to a new server to use the services provided by your new hosting company.

What do you do? You need to change the domain’s settings to make sure your URL (ie example.co.uk) is pointing to the correct servers.

This is called changing your nameservers … your hosting company will always provide you with these settings.

I personally have used ukreg.com to buy my domain names in the past  … for no other reason than I started out with them, I like them, and I wanted to keep all my domain names in the same place.

However, I hosted my websites with nativespace.com … so each domain name had to be pointed towards different servers.

(March 2010 update: I now host my domain names with Heart Internet in the UK, but also use a Hostgator account for training purposes as it is so commonly used by other people.)

So, if you’re going to change who hosts your webpages, you’re going to have to change your nameservers.

The company you bought your domain name from will determine how you do this, but it’s a pretty straightforward process.

Remember, you’ll only have to do this if you change hosting companies.

Wikipedia has more on this subject

Redirects

A redirect automatically takes a visitor on your website from an old or deleted page to a new page.

It also takes them from a page you don’t want them to land on to a page you do want them to land on.

You might also want to change the name of a page within your website and delete the old page.

Maybe it’s an old price list, or a feature that’s out of date.

If someone has bookmarked the old page (ie added it to their favourites) then they will receive an error message saying the page can’t be found.

This isn’t a friendly thing to do to a loyal customer … and it’s very annoying.

If any other sites have links into the old pages in your site, those links will also be broken.

It is much better etiquette to create a redirect.

There are several different ways of accomplishing a redirect, two more technical ways are outlined here:

However, most hosting companies will allow you do this within the management tools for your website.

Custom email addresses

When you sign up to a hosting service, you’ll be able to get custom email addresses which reflect your business.

For instance, if your business is called website-academy.com you don’t want customers sending emails to a weird email address like fgt2345@wonkyemails.co.uk, it just doesn’t look good.

You need to set up a custom email address which reflects your business, such as fred@mybusiness.com.

You can set up unlimited email addresses like that with any cPanel based account (Hostgator for instance) account, and most hosting services offer a similar service.

Make sure you get one with a spam filter on it, as spammers can work out certain key email addresses very easily …
info[at]website-academy.com and admin[at]website-academy.com are classic examples!

I actually use forms on my websites because spammers eventually get hold of website email addresses and it become very time-consuming dealing with this problem.

You can also set up these accounts so that you can pick these emails up via Outlook Express … just search your hosting service help pages for pop and smtp settings to find out how.