Step 0 – Plain Talk for Newbie Webmasters …
Including the Functional Bits and Pieces?

Hi there!

Some Background

First, some background: this blog is the result of some major modifications in the original Jimmy Craig Affiliate Page at http://JimmyCraigAffiliatePage.com. This project was originally thought of as being one section of the website, which was called “Freebies” and then “Freebies for Newbie Webmasters”. What you have here, starting today, is a completely new website, fashioned as a blog (not only for SEO reasons), with one specific goal. Our goal is to provide to the beginner – the “Newbie Webmaster” – with as much information as is necessary for crafting his or her new website as we can.

Everybody likes freebies, right? The ones we will show you below are special – they are a compilation of tools and resources that we use to produce this website (and many others). Many of the goodies are free. The rest are at low prices, since there are some things in life that are just not free (sorry!).

This Website Is Meant For Someone Who Seriously Wants To Put Up Their First Very Own Website.

“Change is the only constant.” (I don’t know who else said this, or when, but Jimmy Craig said it on 13 Sept 2008!). As we noted above, we are changing the setup of the website from our original concept. What used to be know as “The Freebies !!” or “Freebies for Newbie Webmasters” now comes in a brand new form – the information necessary for the person who wants to build their own website from the ground up (or maybe not) for the first time, and that’s what you’re reading now. These people are new to website design and construction, so in the industry they’re called “Newbies.” There are sources of information and services and software for newbies when they are starting their own website, and we will discuss what these are and where the Newbie can find them. The second part of “The FREEBIES !!” is still available in the Jimmy Craig Affiliate Page and contains other valuable free resources, and will be applicable for and available to all webmasters. [NOTE!! We haven't worked on JCAP for a looooooooonnng time, so please don't be too critical. We were experimenting and learning all at the same time, just like you will be doing soon! ]

An Aside About Affiliate Links And Other Internet Advertising

Where we mention a specifically named program or website, it is because we use it on this site (and/or others) and we have found it to be a valuable product for our own use. An access link is provided here and there for your convenience, but not always. For a few of them, I will get some pennies if you click on the link and spend some pennies. For the others, they are provided to you free, as is, take it or leave it! If there is no link in the text, just use your favorite search engine with the term you are looking for to find what you need. If you really run up against a wall, please don’t hesitate to contact us, either as a comment on the blog or as email to me, jimmy located at craigspage dot info (did you catch the “code” there?).

In The Beginning…

We made up a little sketch to show how the information flows for a website on the Internet. This may help you out with understanding the sequence of what has to happen.

The Flow of Information from Webmaster to Surfer

We will try to start at the beginning, but of course, the very beginning depends on you – the concept of what kind of website you would like to put up on the Internet, and how it should look. We will discuss web design concepts at a later stage, so don’t worry if you don’t have any ideas! Many people think that it’s a good idea to start webmastering with a non-commercial site, but we will leave that up to you. The tools we are providing here should be equally useful whether the site is private, personal, non-commercial, or commercial. The only proviso is that some of the tools and resources we present here are free for private use, but not for commercial, so if you are doing a commercial site, you may need to shell out some coins.

What are the necessary pieces and steps so that a website gets from you, the webmaster (woa! how about that!) to the person surfing on the world wide web? Here’s a short overview – not technical, just (I hope) understandable in plain vanilla English.

Webmaster – this is the person or group (you!) who actually writes the code on a computer that will show up on the web as a website or webpage. She or he uses a coding language – the most common is html (hyper text markup language) – to describe what the viewer (surfer) should see when he gets to the right place. For example, this paragraph looks like this in code (click to view): html-snippet-1

There has to be some place where the html code can “live.” This is usually called a “website” although the term is also used to describe the code that makes up the website or webpage. Another way to describe it is as a place on the Internet where you can always find the code that shows what you want to show. This place is at your web hosting company or agency, and is defined by a name called a domain name. A domain name usually has three parts – the “www” (for the world wide web), the name of the domain – like “webmaster-resources-info”, and the denominator such as “com” in our case, or “net”, or “org”, or “info” or one of many others. When you put them together, using “dots” to separate the different parts, you get (as for this website) http://www.webmaster-resources-info.com. In many cases (but not all), the “www” can be omitted – so you can find this website at http://webmaster-resources-info.com as well as with the “www” up front. “HTTP” stands for “hypertext transfer protocol”, which identifies what kind of data transfer is desired. It is the only denominator for websites. There are other kinds of transfer protocols that you will want or need to use, but we will leave that for later.

You, the webmaster, will transfer the html code to the hosting company using a transfer protocol called “ftp” for “file transfer protocol”. This is used because it’s main strength is in what its name says – moving data over the Internet. With the html code safely resident at the hosting company, it can now be published across the world wide web. This activity (publishing) is done by the hosting company, and is critical to getting your message out in the Internet to all the ISP’s. Even though the system is electronic, it can take two or three days to publish a website across the entirety of the web.
In our example, the signal is now available to your surfer’s ISP (Internet service provider), which means that s/he (the surfer) can go look at and admire your handiwork! Ain’t it all GRAND?? S/He also can upload any comments (if you provided a spot on your website for him/her to do that) and these will make their way back to you via the route you specified.
Now that you understand how it all works, it should be a little easier for us to discuss how to do it right the first time!????

This will be continued in more detail in the next post:? Step 1 – A Domain Name

Come back soon for the next installment!

Jimmy Craig
for
Jimmy Craig Websites

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Step 0 – Plain Talk for Newbie Webmasters

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