Moving Your WordPress Blog

Moving a blog can make it unreachable for 24 – 72 hours, unless the new domain name has fully propagated around the Internet. It is just the way it is and WordPress doesn’t have anything to do with such limitation. Moving is best done when you have the time or have planned ahead.

Moving Towards a New Domain Name

The first thing to do is create a database back-up. The entire WordPress installation needs to be downloaded with no exceptions. This is not the time to tidy up your install or to upgrade/change anything. That would have to wait after the blog has been moved and is shown to be working. Your computer should now have these items: one or more database backups plus all your wpfiles, folders and images directories. The backups should be copied again to somewhere safe on your machine so that the next stage can be done on a copy.

Alterations are needed to be made. The details of your new mysql connection have to be changed by opening the file “wp-config.php” on your WordPress install. The file: SCR 1.0.002 Freeware Edition (13KB) should be downloaded to search and replace your website URL with your Xampp url. This is because your blog address inside the database has to be changed. Database files can be very large, thus opening them can be excruciatingly slow. It could even crash your machine. By replacing the old address with your new address, the URLs within your site will still work.

Moving hosts will mean changes in your passwords. You can double check your new passwords for your mysql connection as well as other passwords that you have in use. After which, it is now time to upload all your files to your new web space and restore your database. From the website cpanel, select the database you are using. You should still need to look inside the “wp – options” table to check that the values in “site – url” and “home” are correct. Clear your cache and cookies before checking your new site.

It is possible that you will get a blank page when looking at your blog right after moving. In this case, the themes should be checked. A faulty theme file causes a blank page. You can try changing themes or uploading a new theme then changing to it. Should this step not help, you should check whether all the WordPress files are present and are of the correct size. You can use your ftp client to download a new set of WordPress files, if needed.

There may be instances where you would need to move WordPress around within your server. WordPress is flexible enough to handle this situation. Moving WordPress from one server to another is also possible.

Moving Within

WordPress files can be moved from one location on your server to another. Start by creating the new location using any of these methods: create the new directory when you will be moving your WordPress core files to a new directory, or move the WordPress to your root directory by making sure all index, php, .htaccess and other files that might be copied over are backed-up and/or moved. This will then make the root directory ready for the new WordPress files. It is crucial that you set the URL locations before you move the file.

When done, test your site to confirm that it works right. Make sure that you let people know the new address when the change involves a new address to your blog. Consider adding some redirection instructions in your .htaccess file to serve as a guide to visitors towards the new location.

Handling Redirects after Moving a WordPress Blog

Concerns should not be limited to the moving of the actual WordPress program files but also on finding a way to redirect visitors that may be following outdated links to an old content. It is possible that redirects can mess up RSS feeds and search engine results thus an ideal redirect option that preserves both past and current search results is the key. After moving your WordPress blog, look into how 301 redirects can be properly handled.

A suggested way goes like this: open your .htaccess file in the directory that houses your newly moved WordPress file and edit in either your host’s file manager interface or by downloading to your local machine. Insert a line at the top that reads: redirect301/blog/http://www.yoursite.com/. You have to make sure to insert the opening and trailing / at the end of the destination path. Save your .htaccess file. Reupload it if you’re editing on your local machine rather than on the server. Load your old WordPress URL to make this work.

Moving Several Posts from One Blog to Another

When you decide to move over all your WordPress related posts from another blog, the task is basically to extract a few posts and their comments and to insert them into the database of the new blog. This can be accomplished by following these steps: click on the wp-posts table name in the left panel when you are in the proper database. It should be noticed that other tables might have a different prefix. Click browse on the top in the next panel. Select the checkbox at the beginning of the rows that you want to extract or export. Select “Export” at the bottom of the rows where it says “with selected”. Deselect structure on the next panel, leave selected Data, check Save As file, then Go. You will then get a prefix – posts.sqlfile.

Open the file in your chosen text editor such as Notepad. Change the wp-part everywhere to target_ -, depending on the prefix of the tables where you want to move the post using Search/Research. You are ready to go if you move the post to a new, empty database. However, if the target blog has posts in the database, there is some more work to do. You have to check in the database what the ID number of your last post is in the target blog. You should also go back to the .sqlfile and take a look at the first line below Dumping data for table…

Moving a WordPress Blog to Your Own WordPress Installation

WordPress is a platform you install on your own/hosted server and maintain the installation yourself. However, attempting to make the move should only be done if you’re comfortable with ftp, basic work in the UNIX shell, basic SQL and a little bit of general hacking. Expertise is not really required but possessing the basic skills and the willingness to give it a go are.

The first thing to do is to install WordPress and get a hosting service. Choose one that does an automatic install of WordPress to do away with fiddling. Of course, you would need http://mysql.php, some form of ftp access and a shell account. The challenge lies on setting up your blog on a new place while finding the theme and the plugins you want. The themes on http://WordPress.com normally have links to places you can download them from.

Web Hosting Accounts

You have just built or had built that perfect web site for your business. It was completed just the other day and it looks great when you demonstrate it on your laptop computer. But your web site cannot help to sell your product or service parked on your laptop and at some point it will need to be installed on the World Wide Web. This is where you are going to need to buy a hosting account to park your domain and web pages for presentation.

But there are so many different choices when it comes to web hosting. There are dedicated, shared, and reseller accounts. There are web hosting services that service only PHP pages and those that service Microsoft-type web pages written in either ASP or ASP.NET. There are those that provide MySQL databases and those that allow one to have SQL Server or Microsoft Access databases. So many choices and it can be very intimidating for the new web user who has traveled beyond the realm of just email and browsing.

To put it in simple terms, a web hosting account is a server space where you put your pages for serving to the World Wide Web. Usually, what happens is your web site is built on your local server (running on your laptop for instance). You then purchase a domain name, and then purchase the web hosting space and park your domain name with the web hosting company. The domain name is the www.”something”.com name that everyone will know your web site by. You could for example purchase the name www.yourcompany.com from a domain name seller like Register.com and then purchase web space at GoDaddy.com and park your domain name there. Then, when the general global population types in www.yourcompany.com, domain name servers and forwarders will find your pages located on GoDaddy.com because you parked www.yourcompany.com there.

But how do you go about choosing the web hosting that you need? There is a standard answer among information technology geeks and it goes like this: “It depends…” What does that mean? It means it depends on what you want to do. If your web pages were written in PHP with a MySQL database then you will need a web hoster that supports those types of web sites. If your web pages were written in ASP.NET then you will need a web hoster that supports ASP.NET. Also, be aware that there are two ASP.NET versions: 1.1 and 2.0 and the pages are not interchangeable. A good web hoster will give you the option of both. For example, www.omnis.com allows you to switch from the web hosting control panel whether your pages are written in ASP.NET 1.1 or 2.0.

Your decision on web hosting needs to consider whether you want shared or dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting basically means you get your own server and you do not share the bandwidth of your connection or system resources with anyone else. There is also another twist to dedicated hosting and that is managed versus unmanaged dedicated hosting. Managed hosting means the hosting company will act as a web master and handle any issues arising with your service. Unmanaged is just the opposite and you are basically on your own in managing the server. One thing you had better be prepared for is if you are prepared to do all of the functions of a webmaster on your server.

There is also a revenue-generating type of web hosting and it is a reseller account. This is where you purchase a web space and resell it to your own customers (or even your friends for free) dividing up the space. You act as the web hosting company and bill your customers just as if you owned the servers. There are even some reseller account hosting companies that offer all management services to include billing for a small fee to you the customer. In fact, in some cases they do everything with the exception of marketing your hosting service. To the end user it looks like it all came from you. They have no idea you are the middle guy unless you tell them.

Some issues you need to consider is can you handle billing and collecting fees from customers and if you can handle the technical support issues. If you value your time off, make sure that you have the technical support area covered well. Also, make sure your reseller hosting company provides you with a powerful yet easy-to-use control panel so that you can set up the accounts for your customers. If you manage your reseller account well it can be a good source of residual income.

And finally, there is the shared hosting account where you purchase a “slice of the pie” so to speak when it comes to overall hosting space. You have your area shared with many other users who have their small areas as well. For most websites this is more than sufficient. Their big advantage is low cost because you are sharing. However keep in mind that you are sharing disk space, system resources, and bandwidth with who knows how many other users. If you need a high performance site with lots of space then this might not be the option for you. Of course the domain name you purchased points to your space in the shared realm and no one will be writing their files from their sites into your folder in the shared area.

It pays to educate yourself on all aspects of web hosting accounts as this will be critical to the effective presentation of your web site.

Web Terms Explained – Part 2

When looking for the right web host you need to think about what service you need. Are you an experienced webmaster or a beginner? Those that are experienced will be able to understand all the different features on offer from the different webhost companies. Beginners need to ensure that have a webhost that offer customer service where they can phone someone and speak to them regarding any queries.

Most webhosting companies that have phone support are aware that most people that call are new to web development so they are trained to deal with complete novices. They will be able to tell the experienced from the beginner in the way they ask questions and will be armed with the right wording to explain what you need to know.

If you’re a beginner but want to know what all the features mean to different webhosting packages then I shall try to explain them all to you in simple terms.

Disk space or Web Space refers to how much actual hard disk space you are allowed to occupy on your hosting companies web servers. Generally you have more than enough allocated to you than you will actually need.

Bandwidth refers to how much data transferring your web hosting account allows to run through you website. So if you have a home page with is 25 KB and someone visits your page, this will count at 25 KB of data being transferred which means you will have used up 25 KB of your ‘bandwidth’. Now if 10 people view you webpage then you will have used up 250 KB of your ‘bandwidth’. 1 to 5 GB bandwidth is enough for new websites. If your sites starts to get hundreds of thousands of ‘hits’ to your site then you are getting lots of traffic and might need to ask for more bandwidth.

An FTP account stands for file transfer protocol. You need an ftp account to log into and upload files. This feature is standard for all paid web hosting accounts as you are buying this space so need an FTP account to access it. You will need an FTP program like FTP surfer, or CuteFTP which are free to download. Once you have signed up with a web hosting company you will be given a username and password which you will need to put into your FTP program to be able to access and transfer your files.

POP3 Email accounts allows you to create and setup emails accounts with the address being… whateveryouwant@yourdomain.com. Some email accounts allow you to choose what alias you want, alias being a nickname that you can apply to an email account. You could have one called sales@yourdomain.com or info@yourdomain.com or you could use names like Carolyn@yourdomain.com. The amount of email boxes you receive will depend on the hosting provider and what they offer.

E-mail Forwarders are where you can have a copy of any email you receive sent to another email account of your chose.

An Auto responder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. This is good if you are going on holiday and don’t want to ignore any e-mail sent while your away. You can set the auto responder up very easily to send a message to everyone who emails you saying you’re on holiday and will be back on a curtain date. It is also good for marketing if you want every person that contacts you to receive some specific information.

If your hosting account comes with Control panel this will be software installed for you the webmaster to handle common tasks associated with webhosting. In this section you can change passwords, create email accounts, alter file permissions, monitor your bandwidth, add auto responders, email forwarders’ and check you statistics. If you have a database you will be able to access it via the control panel

A database is a collection of related information stored in a computer in a systematic way. A database typically has a “backend” which is controlled by administrators via passwords. The “frontend” displays the content to the final user. Some hosting packages come with one or more databases and SQL to query the data.

MySQL stands for ‘structured query language’ which is language used to talk to data stored in a database. If you have a database full of stock and you want query the database to find out how many specific items you have, you would use SQL. For example, if your database stored information about shoes, and you wanted to know how many size 8 red shoes you have in stock, SQL would be the best way to query the data. It can be used with other languages such as PHP to generate dynamic web pages which depend heavily on storing deleting and updating data.

Crontabs or also known as cron jobs are programs that runs on UNIX to run scheduled tasks. These tasks could be one time events or recurring tasks. This is good if you want to run a script to update a backup of your website.

.htaccess is a simple ASCII file similar to those created in Notepad which is files that allow you to override certain server configurations. Its main known use is related to implementing custom error pages or password protected directories.

If you are offered web stats on your hosting account then you will be able to access different statistics relating to your website. Depending on what type of web statistics program is installed will depend on what stats you get. The type of information you will be able to see is: The number of unique visitors to your website each day, daily and monthly traffic, your bandwidth used, what type of browsers and operating systems your visitors use, the search engines people used to find you, the top keywords used, and much much more..

On part three of this article I will go into the many different programming languages available to you and their uses.

Make Profit from Buying and Selling Domain Names

The Internet domain market has become more and more lucrative in the past few years. Almost all companies as well as many individual people these days have websites, and most would prefer their websites to be immediately recognizable. Domain names tell people what websites are about, and this can be a big plus when someone is doing a search and looking for something specific. Although almost anyone can have a free website through his or her Internet provider, the addresses of these websites will usually contain the name of the provider first, and then whatever name the user chooses for the website. For example, if your Internet provider is called ABC Internet, and you build a website using the web space that your provider gives you, you may want to name your website “yourshop”. Though you would prefer the website to simply be called yourshop.com.

Businesses, and many people, prefer their website names to be succinct and to the point. This is where domain name buyers and sellers come in. No two people can use the exact same domain name – domain names are registered to owners – therefore, every time someone wants to give a website a certain name, he or she must first do a search to see if that domain name is already taken. If the domain name is taken, then he or she can check to see if it is for sale, and possibly buy it from whoever owns it.

It becomes clear, then, that buying and selling domain names can be quite lucrative if done properly. The more registered domain names you own and are willing to sell, the more money you can make from people who want to use them. If you are interested in buying and selling domains, however, you must first do a little research. If you own several domain names, but they aren’t ones that most people would be interested in using, then you are sitting on inventory that isn’t going to move – and this inventory costs you money. Domain name registrations need to be renewed periodically, and this always involves a fee. To actually make money selling domain names, you need to own names that are popular. If you own a domain name called “JustSomeStuff.com”, there probably isn’t going to be a big market for it. If, however, you own a domain named called “Plumbing.com”, you may find that more people are interested in using this name.

The most popular method that people use to make money from selling domain names is to become a domain name reseller through a domain name registrar. Using this method, you buy and register available domain names from a licensed registrar at wholesale prices, and then you can turn around and sell these domain names for a profit. Licensed registrars usually welcome this type of business transaction, as it drums up more business for them, since the resellers provide most of the advertising. Many large domain name sellers are actually resellers for even larger domain name registrars. This type of business relationship is common.

As a domain name buyer and reseller, you will need to find ways to advertise your business. If your domain name buying and reselling business is small, you can usually just post ads in websites and forums where people advertise domain names for sale. There are many of these types of websites and message boards on the Internet, and you will be able to find of several of them by using an Internet search engine. If you plan on having a large domain name buying and reselling business, then your best bet is to have your own website where people can search through or inquire about the domain names that you have available for sale. Your website should include reliable contact information so that potential buyers can ask any questions that they might have. Spending a little money for advertising can go a long way in ensuring that your domain name buying and selling business will be a success.

Looking for a Good Starting Point? Try cPanel Reseller Hosting

There are many kinds of reseller accounts. There are Unix-based reseller accounts, Windows-based ones, domain hosting ones… there are various classifications. One of the classifications is by the kind of program that manages all the web features available in the package. Is it a cPanel reseller hosting account? Or a Plesk reseller one, perhaps?

If you’re new to web space reselling, or to the act of buying web space, you should seriously consider cashing in on cPanel reseller hosting. For one thing, cPanel licensing is proprietary and done on a per-server basis. This makes the cPanel extremely economical for resellers who need to work on multiple domains.

But even if the end users – read: people who buy reseller web space – are not familiar with the Linux operating system, cPanel accounts enjoy the privilege of being fundamental and easy to learn how to use. For one thing, the cPanel interface is graphics-oriented, and this ensures that even a new webmaster who considers him or herself to be absolutely bereft of “tech savvy” will find it easy to start learning his or her way around.

If you’ll log into a cPanel account, the first thing you’ll notice is how the graphical layout of the cPanel is completely clean and functional. It is in fact quite like using Windows Explorer on “icons” mode, and if you’re familiar enough with Windows Explorer, you are bound to find cPanel’s graphical interface to be a familiar environment. You may not be familiar with the usage just yet, but the icons will certainly be a great help to you in figuring out what to do next.

cPanel is a program that integrates the different features that are available on your web account. Through cPanel you will be able to set up ftp addresses, manage email accounts and domains, and other functions related to your web space. Even as a reseller, you may need to use cPanel in order to manage the accounts that you aim to redistribute. cPanel is an extremely flexible device that can handle even large information loads.

So if you’re looking for a good launchpad for your reseller business, or your webmastering career, look into the accessibility of cPanel reseller hosting accounts. Even if you’re not a “noob” in the line of webmastering or web space resale, you’d still do well to give cPanel a shot. You don’t need to be a complete newbie to appreciate the ease of use that such a web panel program offers.

Web Hosting Tips for Searching a Web Host

create WINDOWS website