At Blogging While Brown, it was mentioned in one of the panels that having your own domain name was crucial to establishing your brand. The biggest hurdle for most people, however, is that having a sole domain name usually means looking at a non-free host for your website. While that isn’t completely true, as Wordpress.com and Blogger.com provide tools for your domain name to point to their servers, venturing out on your own is worth it.
Just….be careful.
If you signup for any shared hosting plan, you’re essentially going out and buying a used Kia from ebaymotors without a test-drive. Forget the fact that its a Kia, non-tested, non-reviewed hosts are a nightmare if your site gains popularity.
While I won’t rip anyone who has a shared host, because I know $50 / year is within people’s budgets, consider opting for a secure shell (SSH) upgrade. Some shared hosts offer it, and trust me, it will make your site management a TON easier. If we stick to the Wordpress platform, learning even the most basic commands can allow you to easily install plugins, backup your database, upgrade your Wordpress version, change the permissions of certain folders, and edit files…all from the same screen. If your current hosting provider doesn’t offer the option, consider migrating to a virtual private server (VPS). I recommend Spry.
I wrote about this topic briefly in a previous post, but I wanted to give you some specific tasks to reiterate the point.
If you’re on a Mac, Terminal is built-in. If you’re on a Windows machine, check Putty.
Note: Commands to actually type into the terminal window are preceeded by ‘>’.
Logging In
> ssh <username>@<yoursite.com>
If you get a question asking you to authenticate, answer ‘yes’, otherwise, type your password at the next prompt. You should then be greeted by a message stating the last time you logged in an a prompt with your <username>@<yoursite.com>. The text within the following ‘[ ]‘ is the directory you are in.
Check Your Current Path
> pwd
Most shared hosts will return ‘/home/’.
View the List of Files
> ls -la
A detailed list of files, their permissions, their filesize, their owner, and their last edited date appear. Most shared hosts have a ‘www’ directory virtually pointed to a ‘public_html’ directory.
Install a Plugin in Wordpress
> cd www/wp-content/plugins
This changes your directory to the plugins directory, assuming the typical installation. If you forget a folder name, press the Tab key on your keyboard and it will auto-fill the folder name if it exists. If you press the Tab key twice, it will list the files to choose from.
> wget <url_of_plugin>.zip
This will download the zip file of the plugin to the ‘plugins’ directory. Easiest way is to navigate to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins, search for your plugin, right-click the ‘Download’ link, copy the link location, and paste the link after your ‘wget’.
> unzip <plugin_filename>.zip
Unzip the plugin in the ‘plugins’ folder. A folder with the name of the plugin with it’s contents is created.
> rm <plugin_filename>.zip
Remove the .zip file of the plugin in the ‘plugins’ directory. Be sure to include the ‘.zip’ extension so you remove the zip file and not the folder.
Now just navigate to your plugins menu in the Wordpress admin menu and activate! Pretty simple, eh? If you ever need help, some blog consulting, or are looking to purchase some hosting from a Black business, contact me over at Bright Plum.
Bonus Tip: How to upgrade your version of Wordpress in 3 steps via SSH (including backing up your database)
August 14th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Am I the only one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about?
* Thinking to myself ….. I need to give Fredric a call *
August 14th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
@AroundHarlem,
Whats up fam! My apologies if my post was a little obtuse. Basically what I’m saying is that if you are on a wordpress.com or blogspot.com site, your content and site are hosted by those companies.
If you move to your own domain and get your own hosting plan, the ones companies usually advertise are cheap plans. You are actually sharing your space with other websites (space, network, access) and your options are limited. This is called shared hosting.
Because you are sharing the space, providers have to be conscious of how much traffic and space your site takes up because you could adversely affect your neighbors. Basically, if your site blows up, they will shut you down because your hosting plan isn’t designed to handle it.
That is where the ‘opt for a virtual private server’ line came in. A virtual private server gives you a little more leeway and space. A provider gives you a ‘virtual’ domain that does not have the restrictions of a shared host.
If you HAVE to go shared hosting, opt for a SSH access option. It is a secure way to access your server (typically linux or unix) and do cool stuff….as described above.
Make a little more sense?
August 14th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
this was so helpful. tyou. i enjoyed your presentation at bwb.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Hi Fredric,
Thanks for your response. I understand what you’re saying now.
I’m probably on a shared server (cheap GoDaddy.com) and since I hope to blow up soon, I think I may need to take your advice.
Talk to you soon.
April
September 5th, 2008 at 5:58 am
i can give you a very cheap hosting for your blog, if the traffic isn’t too big, email me
September 7th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I see that you manually add/remove cells, and sets its row spans in the click handlers.
that is not a good way to use gwt, as you did not abstract yourself from html, but is just writing “html” in java.
what you could do is instead define two more widgets - one widget for the collapsed state view, and another for the open state view. how you implement these widgets is up to you, but i would just have another table in there.
then, in each cell of the flex-table you would add in the correct widget when the click happens.
that way, you dont get bogged down in the click handler with table manipulation code.