Noobs Guide to Quality Web Sites, The



  The difference between a free site and an advanced web site

  - The Main Differences

  - Advantages of both

  - Disadvantages of both

  What you can do with your new web site

  - Suggestions and Ideas

  - The Bare Minimum

  - Advanced Options

  The How To’s:

  - Step 1: Pick Your Hosting

  - What to Look For

  - What You Need

  - Avoid These

  - Step 2: Pick Your App

  - OSCommerce

  - WordPress

  - Step 3: Setup (With Pictures and Videos)

  - OSCommerce

  - WordPress

  Introduction to Search Engines

  Introduction

  The Difference Between a Free Site and an Advanced Web Site

  At the end of the day as long as you have a web site you are achieving your goal, right?

  The Major Differences

  I’m not completely against free sites such as WIX. I do admit that there are some really good sites that are based on both the Flash and HTML 5 versions of WIX. For an example you should check out WhoIsExile, since it is one of my favorites. You can really see everything there is to offer from WIX on that page. Exile really pushed them to the max.

  Perhaps the biggest difference between a WIX page and a Custom Site is the customization and the ease of use. Both are incredibly easy to use, even for almost any beginner. Both are customizable too.

  Let’s take a look at WhoIsExile.com real fast and I will explain.

  will see the red and black background image. That image was custom made, that’s a good feature to have. In reality most, if not all, online site builders will give you the option to use custom background images. You Look beyond that on the left and the right sides, the black boarder. To some, this might not be a big deal. To me, it is just one of the things that bothers me, I think you should be able to repeat an image in order to make it more fluid with the page. You can only pick solid colors for this part of the page. Again, not a big deal, just something to point out.

  I guess I’m just being picky.

  Probably the most important differences, the ease of use with WIX compared to another type of site such as Wordpress.

  WIX was designed for the most basic of web sites to be made by someone with little to no experience in building a web site. That is a very good thing for the most part. The down fall to that is, to get what you really want out of it, you will have to do a lot of customizing, which is the part that gets tough, especially when you have just spent hours perfecting your web site. Each time you make any major changes, you almost always have to start over to get everything to fit and blend together. In fact, at the time this is being written the WhoIsExile page has been redesigned three times so far. A fourth is also on its way shortly.

  With Wordpress , for example, you can build your site and change the entire looks of the site within seconds without losing any of your information at all. To customize wordpress you can simply go to a web site such as Template Monster to buy a readymade theme or search your site or Google for free wordpress themes. I will get more in depth on this a little later on in the How To’s section of the book.

  In my opinion the back end of WIX compared to Wordpress is a little more complicated to get used to. It is nothing that a little bit of time couldn’t fix and it could just be the fact that I’m used to Wordpress as a Content Management System compared to WIX. You will just want to try WIX out if you are really that interested in what it has to offer I guess.

  The Pro’s of both WIX and Wordpress / OSCommerce

  Now before we get started, I’m going to introduce one more option for you to think about ONLY for e-commerce web sites. e-Commerce is online stores or sites such as eBay, Best Buy, Amazon or even Buds Firearms (an example of a very basic oscommerce install).

  All three have the ability to sell products from them. WIX has menus in the Control Panel. OS Commerce is dedicated strictly to nothing at all but e-Commerce and Wordpress is sort of a mix of both.

  OS Commerce can hold hundreds or thousands of products online and keep them neat and organized like neither one, WIX or Wordpress can. This is ideal for bigger stores or web sites that plan on having a lot of products.

  Wordpress has the ability to become a full blown e-commerce solution along with a blog and basic promotional web site all in one.

  WIX has the availability to sell a few products as well.

  OS Commerce as I mentioned is strictly for an online store so we will stop talking about it for right now.

  Wordpress and WIX both have blog capabilities. If you are unfamiliar what exactly a blog is look at almost any web site that gets updated with news. The main page of Yahoo.com is basically a dressed up blog. There are of course many more basic sites to choose from but if you look at the news section, in the middle, it is acting as the blog section of the site.

  Wordpress can update itself in many ways such as Auto Blogging, Email Posting and twitter feeds.

  Auto Blogging is just what it sounds like. Your web site will post on your behalf from any RSS feed you choose. This is great for getting content in the early stages of your site so that it won’t look empty if someone comes to visit before you have too much content up.

  Email Posting just means that you can email your web site any blog post that you want to put up… and viola, you have just made a fully fledged blog post from your cell phone or email account.

  Twitter updates just mean that your Wordpress web site and your Twitter account are forever linked together (until you decide to unlink them) and they will update each other with posts and information.

  WIX offers free hosting and paid options if you need extras. That is probably the biggest positive for WIX which makes it a great option for someone just looking for the most basic of sites with a few extra options.

  WIX and Wordpress are both good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Wordpress is much better by far but they both do offer some very good functions. The only reason I say Wordpress is better for Search Engines is the fact that your Wordpress web site will actually TELL Google (and other sites) to come take a look at the new updates and keywords. To the best of my knowledge, no other CMS will do that right now. The rest just wait for their turn out of the billions of web sites in the world.

  In this regard, if you are planning on any type of SEO campaign or plan on the search engines even “finding” your site you will have to do more leg work. To some that is worth the extra time and effort if they have something particular they like about a WIX page. To others it isn’t. Personally I like the more automated approach so I can spend more time on other projects or creating content.

  I will touch on the search engines a little later on in the book. As a matter of fact, I will be dedicating a full chapter to the topic. Also keep an eye out for a new eBook from me as well.

  1-E Who Is Exile web site from WIX as an example.

  Disadvantages of WIX, Wordpress and OS Commerce

  We all know that everything in the world has advantages and disadvantages for one thing or another. The web site systems are the same way. First I will go through OS Commerce so that we don’t have to deal with that any more for a little while. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love OS Commerce as a shopping cart for bigger stores, I think this book is geared towards more standard sites. I will be writing another Noobs Guide for OSC soon too.

  The biggest problem with OS Commerce… Are you ready? The suspense will kill you I know! It is VERY difficult to make layouts for. Yo
u almost HAVE to buy one because the free ones aren’t all that great. Unlike both WIX and Wordpress, you will never get a professional looking site without paying for a theme unless you know CSS, HTML and even some PHP… on top of graphic design / Photoshop. That doesn’t always rule OSC out as an option. Like I mentioned before, Template Monster has great templates at very fair prices, just keep that in mind.

  Next with OSC, it’s also related to the layout or theme of the site again. To change it, you have to run the installer again to set up the theme. With Wordpress you can actually change the theme ‘on the fly’ with the greatest of ease.

  Last but not really least. In order to have a blog on an OS Commerce install, you will also have to install Wordpress (or a Wordpress alternative).

  Okay, finally done with OS Commerce for a little while.

  Now, we go back to WIX. WIX is a very good alternative to expensive designer fees. It is a little over whelming for the beginner though. There are a lot of options (which is a good thing) but I’m not a big fan of the layout. I think there is too much to confuse a rookie to the whole ‘I have a website’ deal.

  I also think it is a little tougher to update than Wordpress and it lacks some of the features I myself find important, such as Auto-Blogging plug-ins and Post by eMail.

  To build the site is one thing, to change the colors and layout for the third or fourth time is no fun and can be downright frustrating.

  Wordpress isn’t so perfect either. I know it may have sounded like I’ve been pushing WP. Just keep in mind that this is as biased an opinion as I can give. Wordpress really is just an amazing piece of software for many reasons. Here are it’s downfalls.

  Most importantly, you cannot make a theme for Wordpress from within wordpress as easy as you can with WIX. It is possible to edit a template if you have coding experience, not realistically expect make one from scratch.

  To add extra functionality to the site you have to add free plug-ins. This is standard practice for any open source application. The problem I have with the Wordpress plugins, there are so many that do exactly the same thing it could make it confusing for someone who isn’t exactly sure what they are looking for.

  What Can I Do With My New Site?

  Well, a simple one word answer is anything. Don’t worry though, I will get a little more in depth than that. We will start with a few suggestions to help get your creative juices flowing. Once that is done, we will move on to what each site can do ‘Out of the box’ so to speak.

  Myself, I ALWAYS link my Facebook account to my web site. Weather or not it has anything to do with Them2Dudes Photography or not it always get linked. Why you ask? It is simple, if it is on Facebook people can see it without me having to spend countless hours typing away for some traffic from Google… which I still do anyway.

  Twitter is always an option too. Believe it or not, I have seen most of my clients have better success with Twitter than any one of them has seen with Facebook.

  Most web sites have custom HTML or Java Script codes that you can embed into your pages. These can be found under an Embed or Share tab or button, just like on a Youtube video.

  This Embed Code they give you is how you can get the special features of that site on your own. For example LowDirty.com, this is Wordpress by the way, has the Sound Cloud player on the main page. In order to do that I had to take an embed code from Sound Cloud and paste it into the page.

  The same goes for WhoIsExile.com with the Reverb Player. This works the same way in both WIX and Wordpress for the most part.

  I think the auto-blogging capabilities of Wordpress are a very good feature to use. This can be done strictly to make money from posts or to just fill in where needed to keep fresh content on your web site.

  It is always good to use social networking to spread the word on just about anything, right? So why not use it to spread your web site around. You can set up a Facebook page for your web site with a Facebook App and you can have your web site automatically update your Facebook page and even let your visitors log in to your site with their Facebook accounts.

  A podcast is a great addition to your web site and an interesting way to get some attention, have some fun, promote a product (or your web site) and best of all, with a little bit of dedication and a following you can actually make some money doing it. Check NoobsGuides for an eBook on Podcasting as well.

  Start a paid blog with Premium Content such as pictures or videos that no-one else has. Even just a personal photo gallery for your blog is possible with plenty of options as far as the way to show your pictures.

  As you can see the possibilities are pretty much limitless as far as the ideas go.

  The Bare Minimum

  To be honest, this section will be pretty short. There really isn’t too much to say about this section of the eBook. Like I said this is the very basic features you can expect from just about anybody.

  When it comes to Wordpress or WIX they both have the same basic functions. You can set up a web site to promote yourself, your business or a product.

  The means of doing that are pretty much the same regardless of which piece of software that you go with. The only exception in most cases it the way you go about doing that.

  Almost any type of Web Site Content Management System will let you manage posts and pages. I say almost simple because there are multiple scripts for nothing at all except for eCommerce.

  All of the Content Management Systems should also have SEO settings and options. Just like anything else, some are better than others and some are much better than the rest.

  All should let you embed or upload videos right from the first time you log in after the installation.

  Every one of them should also have ways to customize the looks and arrangements of the site.

  They should all also allow the integration of third party plug-ins… which sadly, they don’t.

  For example, WIX is not open source so you cannot expect to find anything from any third party companies unless the WIX Team actually codes it themselves.

  Advanced Options

  I will be forgetting about WIX here… not much you can do above and beyond what we already mentioned. This section is all about Wordpress. As a matter of fact, I kind of cheated and took this section directly from https://wordpress.org/about/features/, the official site for Wordpress. These features are all standard features that come with the initial install.

  Full standards compliance — We have gone to great lengths to make sure every bit of WordPress generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important not only for interoperability with today’s browser but also for forward compatibility with the tools of the next generation. Your web site is a beautiful thing, and you should demand nothing less.

  No rebuilding — Changes you make to your templates or entries are reflected immediately on your site, with no need for regenerating static pages.

  WordPress Pages — Pages allow you to manage non-blog content easily, so for example you could have a static "About" page that you manage through WordPress. For an idea of how powerful this is, the entire WordPress.org site could be run off WordPress alone. (We don't for technical mirroring reasons.)

  WordPress Links -- Links allow you to create, maintain, and update any number of blogrolls through your administration interface. This is much faster than calling an external blogroll manager.

  WordPress Themes — WordPress comes with a full theme system which makes designing everything from the simplest blog to the most complicated webzine a piece of cake, and you can even have multiple themes with totally different looks that you switch with a single click. Have a new design every day.

  Cross-blog communication tools— WordPress fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback standards, and we are committed to supporting future standards as they develop.

  Comments — Visitors to your site can leave comments on individual entries, and through Trackback or Pingback can comment on their own site. You ca
n enable or disable comments on a per-post basis.

  Spam protection — Out of the box WordPress comes with very robust tools such as an integrated blacklist and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate comment spam on your blog, and there is also a rich array of plugins that can take this functionality a step further.

  Full user registration — WordPress has a built-in user registration system that (if you choose) can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on your blog. You can optionally close comments for non-registered users. There are also plugins that hide posts from lower level users.

  Password Protected Posts — You can give passwords to individual posts to hide them from the public. You can also have private posts which are viewable only by their author.

  Easy installation and upgrades — Installing WordPress and upgrading from previous versions and other software is a piece of cake. Try it and you'll wonder why all web software isn't this easy.

  Easy Importing — We currently have importers for Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, and b2. Work on importers for Nucleus and pMachine are under way.

  XML-RPC interface — WordPress currently supports an extended version of the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and finally the MovableType API. You can even use clients designed for other platforms like Zempt.

  Workflow — You can have types of users that can only post drafts, not publish to the front page.

  Typographical niceties — WordPress uses the Texturize engine to intelligently convert plain ASCII into typographically correct XHTML entities. This includes quotes, apostrophes, ellipses, em and en dashes, multiplication symbols, and ampersands. For information about the proper use of such entities see Peter Sheerin's article The Trouble With Em ’n En.

  Intelligent text formatting — If you've dealt with systems that convert new lines to line breaks before you know why they have a bad name: if you have any sort of HTML they butcher it by putting tags after every new line indiscriminately, breaking your formatting and validation. Our function for this intelligently avoids places where you already have breaks and block-level HTML tags, so you can leave it on without worrying about it breaking your code.

  Multiple authors — WordPress’ highly advanced user system allows up to 10 levels of users, with different levels having different (and configurable) privileges with regard to publishing, editing, options, and other users.

  Bookmarklets — Cross-browser bookmarklets make it easy to publish to your blog or add links to your blogroll with a minimum of effort.

  Ping away — WordPress supports pinging Ping-O-Matic, which means maximum exposure for your blog to search engines.

  Quoted from: https://wordpress.org/about/features/ on 6/20/12

  With that big list of features what else could you ask for right? This is where things start to get fun. If you want to have a classifieds site, guess what. You can using free Wordpress plug-ins.

  If you want to build an auto-blog that just does nothing but post, post and then post some more while you are away… You can, with free Wordpress plug-ins.

  Say you want a special type of photo gallery. Well, guess what, there’s a plug-in for just about anything you can imagine. Even some for MORE search engine optimization options. As ‘Google Ready’ Wordpress already is, it can always be better. That’s where plug-ins such as All-In-One SEO and Ultimate SEO come in.

  As a photographer, my personal favorite plug-in for Wordpress is NextGen Photo Gallery. It has a lot of fun features and even plug-ins for the plug-in to add a seemingly unlimited source of features for your photos.

  You can not only link your web site to your Facebook page. You can integrate it the two together. There are plug-ins that will let users log into your web site using their Facebook account. The same plug-in will automatically update the Facebook page or account, any one that you own, any time your web site has an update.

  By now I would imagine that you starting to see the benefit to some of the more advanced features an application such as wordpress can actually provide.

  You know pretty much how far beyond the standard functions you can go with Wordpress applications like it. Yes, there are a few, I only focus on Wordpress because it is the best bet for SEO.

  You know the limitations you have with WIX, and others like it. Again, there are more. WIX is just the cream of the crop when it comes to the freebies.

  You have a basic concept of both what you want your web site to do for you and what you want to do for your web site.

  You should have some sort of idea what you want your site to be about and possibly even what Domain Name or URL you want to use.

  How To’s

  Picking Your Hosting

  You obviously have a lot of options when it comes to picking a web host. My favorites are iPage, Host Gator and Just Host. As a matter of fact, the install I am going to demonstrate will be using iPage.

  Just a warning to those of you in the ‘Adult Entertainment’ or Firearms industries, neither iPage or Just Host will allow that content on their servers. Host Gator on the other hand will allow “Anything that is not illegal” on their site. This is quoted from a customer support agent. Check with them first but I know they are one of the few who don’t mind.

  The main thing you will want to look at is up time. Many hosting companies have 99.99% up time. This is simply the amount of time the server is up and running. You will most likely never find a server that claims to have 100% up time simply because they do have to do system maintenance on the hardware. If you do find someone offering a 100% up time, I would be very cautious because that either means one of two things. First, they are lying. Second, they might never do maintenance. Either way, it’s no good.

  Second you will want to look at the price. If you can’t afford it, you don’t need it! As simple as it sounds, if you can’t afford to pay your bill then you won’t have the web site up and running because you will be shut down. The only thing I VERY STRONGLY suggest when it comes to this, buy a year at a time. It will save you between 40 to 60 percent on your hosting fees.

  What do you get with it? A lot of companies offer free domain names, the URL or .com that will be pointing to your web site. This is obviously a plus since you will be having to buy one anyway. Some others, iPage for example, will go as far as to give you $50 in Facebook ad credits, Google Awords credits and more. Again, all of this is second to the first two points I mentioned in this chapter. These credits are a definite perk for anyone serious about advertising their site.

  Reputation is a very big key to finding the right hosting company! If you have friends with sites or even just heard some things around the web in forums or chat rooms about a certain company that you don’t like. You will want to look at them a little closer and take the time to talk to a customer support representative BEFORE you pay them. I have been burned by cheap hosting companies from ebay before. This isn’t always the case, just be cautious and do your homework.

  Something people like to forget about these days is the amount of bandwidth and storage that you actually get with your package. A good number of companies actually offer completely unlimited plans so it’s not much of a concern. Some offer unlimited plans that only give unlimited bandwidth and transfer but leave out that you can only host one site per plan, that you are only allowed a certain number of email address’ or that you can only have a single script installed at a time because they limit you to only one database per plan. This can be extremely irritating when you have to upgrade your plan just to have an eCommerce section to your site or because you might want to have 2 web sites installed on a single hosting plan. In most cases this isn’t an issue, just keep in mind if you plan on doing any more web sites for another project, you might want to look into this.

  The last big thing to look for is the customer support. The three companies I have mentioned have 24 hour customer support via their chat client. I have always had great luck with both Host Gator and iPage. I currently use
iPage. Every time I have had to contact them with a question or concern they were prompt and polite. I have always had good things to say about both of those companies. I have had customers and friends tell me that Just Host is the same way but at the time I’m writing this, I have never had to contact their support team myself.

  Again, myself, I use iPage for all of my web sites at the moment. I will definitely adding more sites as I go along with multiple projects. www.MikeMcGlugritch.com/NoobsGuides/ will soon be a standalone site and it will most definitely be hosted at iPage.

  Picking a host does not have to be a big task. It can really be as simple as finding a random company that offers what you are looking for. Just keep in mind that if the company goes down, so does your web site. I can’t stress enough how important it is to picking a good provider. I would love to see everyone that reads this go through iPage to get their service especially since I am going to be giving the step by step tutorial using their control panel very shortly.

  Pick Your App

  This will be another very short section of the book. I have already explained the big difference between OS Commerce and Wordpress. Basically, for a quick recap, OS Commerce will only let you run an online store where Wordpress will let you build a fully functional web site right along with your store.

  The biggest perk to using OS Commerce is organization and mass imports. Both are very important to a big online store. Wordpress is perfectly fine for someone with just say thirty products. Anything over that I would suggest OS Commerce.

  First you will need to decide do you even want to sell a product or service on your web site? If no, then it is Wordpress from this point on.

  Second, you will need to ask yourself, do I want a web site with my online store? If yes, that doesn’t automatically rule out OS Commerce. Remember when I mentioned installing more than one script in the last chapter, Pick Your Hosting? That is exactly what I was talking about. You can run Wordpress and OS Commerce at the same time on the same domain name. You could have www.demo.com/ and www.demo.com/shop/.

  Last you will need to have an idea how many products you will actually be putting on your online store. If it is over 100 products you will definitely want to go with OS Commerce as your shopping cart solution. Again, this does not mean you have to go without your blog or photo album. You just need to add a little bit extra into the mix and run both scripts on the server.

  If you need help with anything at all at this point feel free to contact me at www.mikemcglugritch.com. You can access my Facebook or even email me directly from the web site. I offer my services very cheap, just $20 per script install and I take payments through paypal.

  It is time to move on to the actual install of the Wordpress application, don’t be nervous, you can’t break anything.