As always, for security purposes, it’s highly recommended that you keep your WordPress installation up to date:

• If you’re on our VaultPress + Monthly Maintenance package, your WordPress installation has already been updated by us. No need to worry about a thing… carry on as you were
• If you’re on our VaultPress only package, you can update your WordPress installation yourself using the automatic update option in your dashboard. VaultPress is already keeping real-time backups of your site, so no need to perform a separate manual backup before updating.
• If you don’t have Vaultpress installed, please please do a manual backup of your WordPress files and database before updating WordPress via the automatic update option in the dashboard. While the auto-update usually works just fine, every so often (about 10% of the time) something will go wrong, usually as a result of a plugin incompatibility, and a backup is vital in these situations. Contact us if you need help with this process.

You can update using the automatic update feature on your WordPress dashboard. If you choose to do this, please remember to backup your database and WordPress files first. If you need any help with backing up your site and updating WordPress, contact us.

You can update your version of WordPress directly from your dashboard using the automatic update feature, but please remember to backup your site before you do! (If you’re not sure about making manual backups, you should consider signing up for our VaultPress backup service.)

If you need any help with backups and updating, please contact us.

It represents a major update from previous versions of the software, so that means it’s time to upgrade your installation if you haven’t yet done so. You can do this quite easily from your WordPress dashboard, but please, please, oh pretty please remember to backup your site before you get all giddy on the excitement of a one-click update

For the most part, upgrades to WordPress 3.0 have been progressing smoothly, but some people have experienced problems. If you end up being one of the unlucky few to have bugs come a’crawling through your upgrade party, WordPress has been keeping a list of all the common issues and solutions with WordPress 3.0.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. As its name suggests, it is, quite simply a way to transfer files.

You’re probably quite familiar with the idea of transferring files and do this all the time: copying your document files from one folder on your computer to another, or copying your mp3s onto your music player, for example.

Well, FTP is very similar, except instead of transferring files between two folders on the same computer or to a device connected to your computer, you’re transferring the files to a completely different computer via the Internet.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps of using one particular FTP program (FileZilla) to transfer files from your computer to your website host’s server (i.e. the computer owned by your hosting company where the files for your website are stored).

What is FileZilla?

FileZilla is what’s called an FTP client. It’s a software program that must be installed on your computer, and which allows you to transfer your files quickly and easily over a secure connection.

FileZilla is not only easy to use, it is also free to use. Happy dance all round!

Step 1: Download the FileZilla software

Go to the FileZilla website and click on the button to download the FileZilla Client.

Once your download is complete, double-click on the file and follow the instructions to install the software to your computer.

Step 2: Connect to the computer where your website files are stored

Open your newly installed FileZilla program.

In order to access your website files on your host’s server, you’ll need three things: the name of the place where your files are stored (the FTP address), a username and a password. Luckily, these three pieces of information will have been sent to you in a welcome email by your web host when you signed up with them.

Here are some examples of welcome emails from hosts (with all the interesting information blurred, of course!). You’ll be looking for something similar in the email you received from your hosting company.

Once you’ve located this information, enter it into the three fields towards the top of the FileZilla screen, as shown below, and click the Quickconnect button to the right of these fields.

When you do this, you’ll notice a whole lot of action happen in the area just below where you entered your login information. Don’t be alarmed – this is good! It means that you have successfully connected to your web host’s server.

Step 3: Transferring files

Once you’ve connected successfully to your web host, your website files should now appear in the right-hand pane in FileZilla. The left-hand pane displays the files on your own computer. Each pane is further divided into two: the top half shows the directory listing, and the bottom half shows the files and folders within each directory.

The process of transferring files now resembles what you do when you transfer files between folders on the same computer – in other words, you locate the file on your computer that you want to copy by navigating through the folders in the left-hand pane in FileZilla, and then you drag it across to the right-hand pane and drop it into the folder in which you want it to be.

For the most part, you’ll be transferring files to the public_html folder on your host’s server. The exact location within this folder depends on the file you’re transferring.

As you transfer files, you’ll notice the transfer progress detailed at the bottom of the FileZilla screen, in addition to more scrolling information happening at the top of the screen.

Step 4: Disconnecting

When you’re done transferring files, disconnect from the server by clicking the button at the top with the red X on it.

So why should you backup your WordPress site?

Because. You’ll. Regret. It. If. You. Don’t.

Yeah, unfortunately, making regular backups of your site is not something that necessarily provides much joy in the present moment (apart from a feeling of pride in how organised you are!). It’s more something that’s done to avoid future pain.

What it boils down to is that if your site crashes for any reason, you will feel Really Bad if you haven’t made a backup. Conversely, you will feel Really Good if you have. Personally, I prefer the latter.

How often do you need to backup your WordPress site?

That depends on how active your site is. If you’re running a WordPress blog and updating it frequently, then backup often. And yes, that can mean making a backup every day! On the other hand, if you have a traditional looking brochure-type website built on a WordPress platform (i.e. your site consists of, say, five pages of content that remain unchanged for long periods of time), then you don’t need to backup your site as regularly. Make a backup only when you make significant changes to either your site content or design.

It’s worth pointing out here that, regardless of how often your site content or design changes, you should also make a backup before upgrading WordPress to the latest version or installing plugins.

The nitty-gritty: How to make a backup of your WordPress site

If you’ve browsed through the details of our small business web design packages, you’ll notice that they all include two items: database creation and configuration and WordPress installation and configuration.

At that point, your brain may have zoned out. Geekspeak can do that to mere mortals .

Stick with me though, this is important. We specify those two items not simply to dazzle your mind with our brilliant technical skillz, but because you need both of those for your site to work properly.

The WordPress stuff consists of the core WordPress installation files, the administration panel, your site’s theme, any images or videos that are included on your site, and any plugins that you add to increase your site’s functionality. The database, on the other hand, contains all the content of your site’s pages or blog posts, links and WordPress settings (such as your admin password).

Since you need both, you have to backup both of these to ensure that you don’t lose anything in the event of your site going down.

Making a backup: The easy-peasy way (suitable for technophobes)

Contact us

Making a backup: The easy-ish way (suitable for entry-level geeks)

Option 1: Backup your site from cpanel

If your host offers cpanel access to your site, you will probably be able to make backups from here. Hostgator, for example, offers both a full site backup as well as the option to just backup your database (handy if your site theme and images haven’t changed, but your written content has).

Log into your cpanel (usually found at www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel – you will have received details regarding logging into your cpanel when you signed up for hosting). Scroll down the list of options until you find the section called Files and click on the option for Backup Wizard. You can also use the option titled Backups if you don’t need a “wizard” to walk you through the steps.

Click on Backup.

Then click on the corresponding back up that you’d like to do: either a full site backup or a partial back up of your database or home directory or email settings.

Option 2: Install the Backup WordPress Plugin

The Backup WordPress plugin offers an easy and convenient way to backup your WordPress site from your WordPress dashboard. Unlike other popular backup plugins (as detailed below), this plugin makes a backup of both your WordPress folder and database.

Log in to your WordPress dashboard, click on Plugins and then Add New. Type “backupwordpress” (without quotes) into the search box and click on the search button. The following results should appear.

Click on Install for the BackUpWordPress plugin, and then on Install Now on the pop up screen (shown below). You may get a warning that the plugin is not compatible with your current version of WordPress – I’ve installed this plugin on sites using the latest version of WordPress (as of writing) and it works just fine, but if you feel uncomfortable with this, then rather use one of the other methods for backing up your site. If you do choose to install this plugin, the irony here is that you should back up your site before doing so (as you would before installing any plugin), just in case something goes wrong!

Once the plugin has installed, click on Activate Plugin to use it.

Click on the BackUpWordPress settings link now available in your left hand navbar (at the bottom), and then on Start by configuring the options.

For most people, the plugin’s “Easy mode” is probably just fine, but have a look at the advanced options if you are comfortable doing so. The backup path should be filled in for you (save it and the folder will be created for you automatically). Also enter your email address to which you can have your backups sent.

If you’d prefer not to receive backups by email (since they can sometimes be quite large), you can instead use the option to download them once they’re done.

Option 3: Use FTP and the WP-DB-Backup plugin

Use an FTP client (FileZilla is fantastic) to copy your WordPress folder from your host’s server to your computer.

The exact files you copy across will depend on how much you want to backup. For example, if you want to do a full backup of your whole WordPress installation, then copy across your entire public_html folder. If that feels like overkill to you, and you just want the most important bits (such as your theme files and image uploads) backed up, then just copy those folders across. In the event of your site crashing, you can always reinstall WordPress from scratch and then restore those specific folders.

If you decide to go the whole hog and copy your entire public_html folder, be warned that this can take a while as it gets copied across unzipped. If you want to zip the folder prior to downloading it to your desktop, you’ll have to do this via the file manager in your cpanel. Then either download the zipped folder to your desktop via the file manager or go back to your ftp programme and copy the zipped folder from there.

The file manager is found under the Files section of your cpanel home page.

Once in the file manager, select the public_html folder and click Compress.

To download the compressed file from within the file manager, select the zipped folder and click on Download.

To back up your database, install the WP-DB-Backup plugin. The steps to do this are similar to those that I used above to install the BackUpWordPress plugin, except your search term will be different!

Making a backup: The hard way (suitable for those who speak Geek fluently)

To backup your WordPress folder:

The process remains the same as above – use an FTP client to transfer the files to your computer.

To backup your database:

Log in to phpMyAdmin. The link for this is found under Databases on your cpanel home page.

Select your WordPress database from the list in the menu on the left hand side.

Click on the Export tab.

Ensure that all the WordPress tables are selected in the box on the left hand side.

Under Structure, the boxes for Add AUTO_INCREMENT and Enclose table and field names with backquotes are likely to already be checked – leave them like this, or check these boxes if these options are not automatically selected. In addition, check the box for Add drop table.

Tick Save as file. If your database is large, it is recommended that you also select one of the compression options, such as .zip. Click Go to download your database.

Never fear, your site is not doomed to a lifetime of blandness. Let’s take a look at how to install a new WordPress theme that has a little more style and flair.

A couple of caveats before we begin:

1. This tutorial refers to installing a theme on a self-hosted WordPress blog (www.wordpress.org), not the free version at www.wordpress.com.
2. This guide covers installing a WordPress theme out of the box, as it were. In other words, it doesn’t cover making personalised customisations to a theme. All themes can be customised – some offer basic customisations (e.g. changing the colour scheme, or using a custom header image) as part of the theme options, while others require knowledge of CSS and HTML (and sometimes PHP depending on how much customisation you require) to make any changes to the look and feel. Teaching CSS, HTML and PHP is beyond the scope of this blog. If you want to learn these languages, I’d suggest starting with the tutorials at W3Schools.

Okay, on to the tutorial!

You have two options when it comes to installing a new WordPress theme:

Option 1: Install a new theme from your WordPress dashboard

Log in to WordPress by going to www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin. Enter the username and password that you chose when you installed WordPress on your site.

In the sidebar on the left hand side of the page, click on Appearance and then on Add New Themes.

The default setting for this page is the Search option. Either enter a search term in the box available and click Search or use WordPress’ Feature Filter to select those features you want in a theme and click Find Theme below the list of options. You can select multiple features, but just be aware that the more features you select, the fewer results will be returned as you’re narrowing the field of themes that meet all those criteria.

When the search results are returned, you can preview each theme by clicking the Preview link below each theme’s screenshot. When you’re done looking at the larger version of the theme, simply click the X in the top left corner of the pop-up to close it and return to the search results.

Once you’ve found the theme that you’d like to install, click the Install link underneath the theme’s screenshot (to the left of the Preview link). When the install screen pops up, click the Install Now button.

On the next screen, click Activate if you’re ready to start using your new theme immediately.

Option 2: Install a theme you’ve downloaded from the Internet

Instead of searching for a theme via your WordPress dashboard, you may want to browse through all the themes (over a thousand!) on the WordPress website itself, or search Google for free or premium (i.e paid for) WordPress themes that you can download.

When you’ve found the theme you like, download it using the download link provided on the website from which you’re getting the theme. The theme should come as a .zip file (meaning that all the individual files making up the theme have been compressed into one smaller file to make transferring it easier). Do not unzip the file and extract the component files – WordPress will do this for you. Just save the file to your computer as is.

Once you’ve downloaded the theme, log in to your WordPress dashboard. Go to Appearance and then Add New Themes, as in Option 1 above, but this time click on the Upload option in the menu at the top of the page.

Click on the Browse button, find the theme .zip file you downloaded earlier, click on it and click on Open. Then click on .

As with Option 1 above, on the next screen you can click on Activate if you’re ready to start using your new theme immediately.

Changing your WordPress theme

If you change your mind about the look and feel of your website and consequently want to swap your theme for another that you’ve already installed using one of the two options above, you can do so by going to Appearance, then Themes.

This will show you all the themes that you’ve installed and which are available for you to use on your site. Using the links below each theme’s screenshot, you can preview each theme, activate it if you want to use it on your site, or delete it if you decide that that particular theme is just not for you any more.

In today’s post, I’ll take you through installing WordPress on your site. Although WordPress started out life as blogging software, you can now use it as a content management system for a traditional looking website (with or without a blog attached!). The great thing about WordPress is that it’s very flexible. Even more great – it’s free!

1. After registering your domain name and signing up for a web hosting account, you’ll receive an email from Hostgator to confirm your order and give you all the technical details for your site. It will look something like this (although, of course, you’ll have actual information in place of the smudges!):

   

   As the email states, if you followed the process in my previous post and purchased your domain from Hostgator at the same time as your hosting, you’ll be able to use the links in the email to access your domain immediately. If you purchased your domain elsewhere, you’ll need to let your domain registrar know what your Hostgator nameservers are (they’re contained in the welcome email from Hostgator) – you’ll probably be able to do this yourself by logging into your account with your domain registrar and entering the information in the appropriate place.

   To access your site’s control panel (cpanel), click on the link in the email that says “Until your DNS has been changed and resolves to our nameservers, you can access your cpanel at…”.

2. When asked for your username and password, enter those that you chose when you signed up with Hostgator.

   

3. Scroll down towards the bottom of your Hostgator control panel, to the section called Software/Services.

   
   

   Click on the very happy looking Fantastico De Luxe. Despite its corny sounding name, Fantastico De Luxe is a wonderful way to install a range of software with one click. In this case, we’re going to be using it to install WordPress on your site.

4. Click on the WordPress link in the menu on the left hand side of the page. This will result in the following screen – click on New installation.

   

5. Choose the name of the domain on which you want to install WordPress. If this is your first site, there will be only one choice here in the drop-down menu.

   

6. Leave the option Install in directory blank. This is because you will be installing WordPress as a content management system, i.e. to manage the content of your whole site (pages and a blog, if you decide to have one). You would choose to install WordPress in a directory if, for example, you already had a site designed in HTML and CSS, and wanted to add a blog to it – in this case, WordPress would be used purely as blogging software on one part of your site only and not as a content management system.
7. Choose a username and password to use to access your WordPress administration area. If you use WordPress as a content management system, you do not have to go via your Hostgator cpanel to edit your site. Instead, you’ll do this via your WordPress dashboard, which you’ll be able to access at www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin.
8. Leave Admin nickname blank.
9. Enter the email address that you want to use to receive WordPress notifications, e.g. when people comment on your blog.
10. Enter a name and description (tagline) for your site. Don’t worry if you’re not yet 100% sure of this – you will be able to change these settings in your WordPress admin area at any time.
11. Lastly, click the Install WordPress button. The following screens will ask you to confirm and finish the installation, and give you the option to email the details of the installation to yourself.

Voila! You have installed WordPress!

You can view your site by either going to your domain name (i.e. www.yoursitename.com) or by using the link in the Hostgator welcome email if your nameservers haven’t yet resolved (if you go to your domain name and there’s nothing there yet, then the nameservers haven’t resolved and you’ll need to use the link Hostgator gave you). It can take nameservers anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours to resolve, so you may need a bit of patience here

When you view your site, you’ll notice that it doesn’t look so pretty yet. Next time, we’ll take a look at how to install a WordPress theme and start adding content to your site.

There you are, doing your thang. And it’s time to take that next step – putting your business out there onto the Internet so that you can reach more of your Right People.

Where do you start?

Welcome to the “So you want a website” Back To Basics Series – everything you need to know about setting up a website using WordPress, right from the very first step.

This series is for you if:

• You have the time to set up your own website
• You want a fairly basic site and don’t necessarily need much customisation or any bells and whistles
• Your budget is limited and you’d rather try this yourself than pay a web developer to set up your site for you
• You are confident enough in your technical capabilities to work through the steps yourself (and please don’t worry… by “technical capabilities”, I’m not suggesting that you need to know how to do any complex coding – as long as you feel comfortable using a computer and the Internet, you should be able to do this yourself!)

If, however, you’d prefer to spend your time doing That Thing You Do rather than sorting out your website, you want extra customisation to brand your website, or you would prefer not to fiddle with your site set-up in case something goes wrong, then one of our small business website packages (yes, they’re called Alfred, Bob and Charlie!) may be just what you’re looking for. Alternatively, contact us for a customised quote.

Domain names & hosting: An introduction

First things first: your website needs a name and it needs space on the Internet.

Your site name – the domain name – is your site’s unique identifier on the Internet. It’s the web equivalent of your physical home address, if you like.

In order for your site to be visible to others on the Internet, it needs to be hosted somewhere. In other words, all the files (the text and images) associated with your website need to be stored somewhere so that they can be accessed whenever someone visits your site. If your domain name is the web equivalent of your physical home address, hosting is the equivalent of your house that is built at that address and where you keep all your possessions.

Registering your domain name and setting up a hosting account

The rest of this post describes a quick, easy and cheap way to set up both your domain name and hosting account.

Before we get stuck into the specific steps, though, you need to know a few things:

1. The process I’m going to take you through registers your domain and creates your hosting account with one company – Hostgator. You don’t have to do both parts of the process with one company. Many people register their domains with one company and host their sites with another. If you use two different companies, then there is an extra step to the process, in which you essentially “connect” the two together by telling your domain registrar which nameservers to use. It can be done, and is in fact a very simple step – but, if this confuses you, stick to the process I’m outlining and you won’t have to worry about it. If you’re setting up your first site (i.e. you don’t already have a hosting account for other sites), then this process is the quickest and easiest for you to follow.
2. Why Hostgator? Quite simply, because they’re very good at what they do. We use them for Phenomenoodle, as well as for the other sites that we own, and we’ve found them to be extremely reliable, easy to use, and to be very responsive and friendly in their customer service. In addition, their prices are low and provide great value for money. While we highly recommend Hostgator, you still retain every ounce of your free will! You can choose to use a different company if you want. The process will be roughly similar to the one I’m going to describe, but obviously things will differ between companies.
3. The links to Hostgator in this post are affiliate links. In other words, if you click through to Hostgator using these links and end up buying your domain and hosting from them, we get paid a referral fee by them (it doesn’t cost you anything). We don’t recommend Hostgator because we get paid by them for referrals. We’re part of their affiliate program because we’re confident that they won’t disappoint either us or the people we refer to them. Of course the money is welcome – it helps to pay the bills and allows us to provide information to you via this blog free of charge. A girl (and her family) has to eat! That said, your free will reigns supreme – if you’d rather not use the affiliate links, you can go to the Hostgator site directly. Our free will might (if it’s feeling stroppy) label you a big ol’ meanie for doing so, but nevertheless we’ll still vigorously defend your right to do what you choose regardless of what we or anyone else thinks

Okay, enough with all the information. Let’s get to the steps themselves!

1. Go to the Hostgator website.
2. Click on the Web Hosting link at the top of the page.

   

3. You’ll now be presented with the three hosting options available. It’s unlikely that you’ll need the extras offered under the Business package (even if you’re setting up a website for your small business!), in which case, you’ll be choosing between the Hatchling and Baby packages.Choose the Baby package if you think it’s likely that you’ll want to set up more than one website (for example, if you have two small businesses, you can host websites for both under the same hosting account). If you only have one business and intend for it to stay that way, then the Hatchling package is perfectly sufficient for your requirements.

   Note that the prices shown reflect what you’ll pay per month if you buy three years of hosting up front. If you place your mouse pointer over the price, it will display a box with the price options for two years, one year and monthly payments.Click on the Order Now button for the package of your choice.

   

4. On this next screen, you enter the name of your domain. If you are registering a new domain at the same time, leave the radio button for Register New Domain selected, and enter the name you wish to use for your website, plus select your chosen extension (e.g. .com or .org) from the drop down menu. When you enter the domain name, don’t include the www, just enter the name itself. Once you’ve done this, click on the Nextbutton.

   

5. If your next screen looks like this, then your chosen domain name isn’t available.

   

   Enter a new domain name into the field and click on Lookup Domain to try again. If you see the much more friendly green writing (as in the screenshot below), then you’re good to go!

   

   If you want complete control of all the extensions available with your domain name (some companies like to do this and redirect the other extensions to the main .com one – it can reinforce a branding message and ensure that customers don’t go to the wrong site by mistake), then you can register all of these at the same time. Otherwise, just select the extension of your choice and click on Continue.

6. On the next screen, you’re asked to select some options related to your package. You’re firstly asked to select your primary domain (the one you’ll use to log in to your Hostgator control panel, from where you can administer your other domains as well) – if you’re only registering one domain (i.e. you didn’t register your domain with all possible extensions), then there’ll only be one possible option here.

   Your next option relates to your hosting billing cycle – do you want to pay annually or monthly, or even pay for two or three years in advance? Note that this refers to your hosting only – domains are always paid for in yearly increments and the renewal fee is payable annually on the anniversary on when you first purchased the domain.

   Where you’re asked to enter a coupon code, enter the word HOSTGATOR as shown in the screenshot. This will give you a discount of $9.94 on your hosting fees. Good times!

   

   Click on Calculate Totals to continue. You’ll be presented with a summary of your order. Check that everything is correct and click on Continue.

   

7. The last step in the process is to provide your details, choose a username and password, and choose how you wish to pay for your order. Enter your name, physical address, email address into the fields as requested at the top of the page.

   

   Choose a username and password for yourself. Make a note of these – you will need them to login to your Hostgator control panel. Take note of the various restrictions on the username and password as specified under each field, especially those in red!

   

   When it comes to payment options, either enter your credit or debit card details or choose to pay by PayPal.

   

   Lastly, read the Terms And Conditions and select Yes to confirm that you have done this. Then click Verify My Order to submit your order and register your domain. Assuming that all your information is correct, your order is now complete!

Congratulations – You’ve just registered a domain and organised hosting for it! Welcome to the World Wide Web!

Next time, we’ll cover installing the WordPress software on your site, so that you can start adding content to it.