Feedback on Activity 2

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

October 15, 2008 [1306 views]

Firstly a big well done to all of you who completed this activity; you are now among a very small number of undergraduates who own and operate their own servers. We really do think you will find this very useful in your ongoing studies. Do feel free to experiment with any of the facilities provided for this module and others.

Secondly I have gone through your feedback and wanted to provide answers to some of the questions you have raised.

If I paid more than £40 will that be a problem?

Only for your bank balance. It is up to you how much you paid.

Does it matter how many sub-domains we get?

Subdomains like file.jonathanbriggs.com or shop.jonathanbriggs.com are useful when you want to organise several services on the same domain. Having the opportunity to add further domains is usually more useful.

Are we going to be shown how to build a professional website?

I will take you though a case study of how professional sites are designed and you will have access to some tools that can help. This is not a web design course however and if you want to learn to do more then you will need to do so in your own time. I can recommend books and sites to look at if you want.

Do you mind me linking to your site?

Of course not. I will add a link to all your sites too when they are a bit more advanced. That will help Google find your site and start indexing it.

Why make us do activities that cost money?

I don’t think you are paying attention. The aim of this module is to equip you with useful tools and skills that you can use in your whole career and in the rest of the course. As I have explained running your own site should prove invaluable and will impress future employers etc. You always had the option to choose one of the free hosting companies included in the list.

How do I start about creating the web site now that I have got the domain and host sorted? Also, is their anything specific we need to base our blog on, or can it be about anything?

This week’s activity introduces WordPress which is an excellent tool to start creating a website. If you follow the tutorials to which I have pointed you will find lots of tips on changing the design and enhancing the functionality to run all sorts of sites. Many professional web design agencies will use WordPress when they want to do something quickly. You can blog/write about anything you like. The priority is to make the site yours and use it as much as possible to show off your growing skills.

How will this help us in this module?

This module is about tools and about you having your own presence online. Many of the future activities will use the tools you now have access to and you also have the opportunity to do lots of stuff on your own.

Would it be possible to change my domain name if i wanted to later on without having to buy a new hosting account.

Absolutely (assuming that the hosting company allows multiple domains). You can also run multiple domains at the same time (for friends, companies, etc).

Regarding servers, what would I actually require to make a server because I only have a Mac in my room. Is that more than enough or would I require another machine to act as the server?

Your Mac is already a server and only needs to be turned on (in System Preferences:Sharing). I do not recommend however that you use your main machines as a server. That is why I have suggested buying a remote host. Your personal Mac server will allow you to test out lots of things though if you want to.

Gah. did I do the right thing??

Yes! And it is a big step. Some of you who are familiar with servers and websites etc will have forgotten just how strange all of this is to most people. I want to help everyone achieve a minimum level of confidence with this amazing technology.

Why can't I look at my website within Kingston University whilst using the KU DNS Servers?! If I use external third party DNS servers it works fine.

LOL, This will make no sense to most people but I suspect it is due to how KU’s DNS is configured. Perhaps the “time to live” has been set too long and therefore the DNS has not yet been updated. See whether this problem solves itself after 48 hours.

How long can we have our hosting companies for?

They are yours and so you can keep them forever. You will need to keep paying for your service and domain names however.

If the hosting company doesn't offer a feature e.g. MySQL can you add/install that feature? Or do you have to move hosting companies?

This depends on what you have bought. Usually you can upgrade to add facilities like MySQL rather than having to move. I recommended Fantasico because it provides a useful set of basic tools (and makes installation straightforward). Installing your own database such as MySQL is often possible but doing from scratch can be quite longwinded.

What if i want to change my domain name in the future?

It is not a problem but you will have to buy the new domain and “point” it at your server space.

Will we use CSS as standard to develop websites that comply with W3C standards?

I intend to do a session/activity on CSS. This question reveals the wide range of experience within this group (as we expected). Don’t worry if you don’t understand all of the questions here.

Will you judge our websites? Does it matter if our website is not good? When do we have to put information on the website by?

I am not going to mark the quality of your websites just whether you have managed to complete the exercises. Of course other people will judge your sites by its design and its content. We will be developing your blog (in WordPress) over the next couple of weeks.

Can we have advertisements on our domain and if we can how do we do this?

If you want to. I recommend that you explore Google Adsense. They will require you to have some great content on your site before they will place adverts.

Some people say it is too early to register web and join web business without proper knowledge?

I believe that the only way to learn this stuff is to get started. We are going to make use of widely available tools that cushion some of the complexity. As you grow in confidence and are introduced to further tools and techniques you’ll be able to do things at a deeper level.

The cpanel application does not seem to be compatible under Windows Vista, how can i fix this issue?

I suggest you try using Firefox instead of IE; it is usually more compatible with a wide range of sites and tools.

Are we going to continue with this next year?

That will depend on who runs the second year modules. You will be able to use it to create web prototypes and document your projects.

How do i upload and change and add things to my website??

This week’s activity should have started to answer this question.

Why do the hosting companies charge different prices for the same extensions?

Its like any other business; priced to make money.

How can i change my website so i can use a data base to get all the data and images for each site.

WordPress is built upon a MySQL database. You could build everything yourself using a language such as PHP or Ruby.

How safe is it having many different people access your website everyday?

From what point of view? You decide what is published and what is not. If you give visitors opportunities to comment they will. It’s very safe and interesting.

I have observed the constant reminders of the course works from you via SMS, does that come from your web hosting provider? If so why didn't you suggest we consider it when searching for a web hosting as it is a great feature that indeed cost a lot if one was to use conventional SMS (Mobile)?

I use a specialist service called AQL (www.aql.com) and it does cost me some money but I buy 1000’s of messages at a time so it is much cheaper than normal mobile.

Is there any idiot-friendly guide that can help me create and upload my own page?

The tutorials for WordPress are really good. If you want to do something else then let me know and I’ll try and find some other tutorials.

Could tell me more about copyright?

A big topic. Everything written, drawn, composed or crafted is protected by copyright unless that copyright is explicitly sold or given away. If you create something you own the copyright even if you haven’t declared it. I have chosen to license my site so that other people can use the material. Some music and images are distributed in the same way. You cannot copyright an idea, only the expression of an idea.

Don’t you think it is unreasonable to ask students to spend money? What about poor students?

I was very careful to set out my justification for this unusual decision. I really believe that you will see the benefits. As I have also said I gave everyone a number of choices that were free of cost.

How long would it take for us to learn to build sites without all these tools?

Professional web programmers will often still start projects using these and other tools but they learn to fill in the gaps. This is not a web design course but if you are motivated you could learn to become a good web programmer in a few months and a great web programmer in a couple of years.

What do you think?

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