eAction

God bless friends who suggest good ideas for articles just when I most need them. This morning I was busy getting out my new daily devotional blog and ezine, and then remembered that some relatives were waiting for my Kith & Kin email, with reference to some new family photos, so I got that off, and in the process, plum forgot it was Thursday morning and my eAction blog/ezine was also due to go out. I usually try to have that done by 10 AM.

Mid-afternoon, while answering emails, I suddenly remembered! Oh-no! Moments later I was reading in an email from a writer friend that I should write a piece describing how to get a web site on my hosting service. She was sure there were others like her, who really didn’t grasp how to go about that. Well, why not?

Incidentally, in case you were looking for the Linux Learning Curve blog last week, - I was way too busy with funerals, house guests, baking, etc. and decided I could skip that issue. So far I have not had a single person tell me that they’ve read that blog, but I continue to do it in the alternative Thursdays to this eAction blog, because I feel I need to record my learning curve, and I’m posting them because some day someone else like me will be hunting all over the net for the very things I learned.

If you are poor as a church mouse - like me - you’ll be pleased to learn that you can have a professional, first rate web site, with all the trimmings (just like your Thanksgiving turkey), for about the best price around the globe. In fact, you can go several ways. I will give you an overview of your options here, and then in future issues describe some of them in more depth.

In all cases it is assumed that you will need to go register a domain, however, they are dirt cheap at GoDaddy.com, like under $10/year. In fact, some less popular ones like .us or .ws are less than $5/year.

Choosing the domain name you want to register is very important, but I won’t go into that here.

Secondly, you will need to rent space for it. This is called hosting. Think of it like paying rent for a store unit in a shopping mall.

If you come to me I can set you up with three different hosting packages, but a new startup site doesn’t take much space, so my Basic at $12/year would do just fine. That’s 100 MB of space to park your site, and it will take you a while to fill it. (Mainly text means you could get a shelf full of books on it; if you use lots of photos or graphics, then maybe just a couple).

Your big choices come in how you will create or build your web site. I suggest that I can help you in four different ways.

You Choose:
1. I can design a main template for your web pages. This assumes you know enough html coding so that you can put in your content, and link your pages together, and create your own little dynasty in cyberspace.

2. I can design a template and prepare a handful of skeleton pages, with instructions for maintaining your site yourself with minimal html skills. You use the template as a cookie cutter, or mold. You simply add your new content (words and pictures), add suitable meta tags, and name the page. Gradually you would learn some html coding, as you get more familiar with what you have. After a while you would be proudly referring to yourself as your own web designer. Basically, you just pay me … for the main template, and …. for each skeleton page.

3. I set up a Blog-based site for you, using WordPress (which is free). No need to learn any html coding skills to run this yourself. My fee would only be for setting it up. (or if you twist my arm…)

4.You purchase a SiteBuildIt! site, and I give you some set up assistance. (This would not be hosted by me; it’s included in the annual fee at SiteSell). Html skills are optional. Larger cost, but much more powerful! It comes with exciting modules built in like, automatic search engine submissions and re-submissions, blogging and ezine modules, a store module, and excellent support!

5. Other Free Content Management Systems (CMS) - There is a tremendous rise in Content Management Systems on the internet. Dozens have appeared already, and many of them are developed by the Open Source people. This means that if you are willing to learn how to install a system on your domain, and to learn to operate the dashboard buttons (Administrator’s area), you are set with a good site too.

You really don’t have to worry about designing the “look” because you can go through hundreds of templates that are offered on the web for free, and pick several. Then narrow down your choices after you try them out.

I’ve just discovered that the WordPress system which I use for my blogs can be used for all the static pages too, and can function easily as a whole site Content Management System. That only takes a few days of intensive exploring and setting up, and you are good to go!

At present I’m leaning to use another free CMS called Mambo. It has a steeper learning curve, but comes highly recommended and I understand that others who have figured it out, are charging up to $2000 a site when built with Mambo! That does come with all kinds of wonderful features; blogging, news management, RSS, membership site control, and modules can be added for e-commerce (read shopping cart), etc. Since Mambo is part of the free Fantastico programs that come with my hosting services, like WordPress, it doesn’t take but a few minutes to install the system, and then you can go in and start entering the articles and information and links, or whatever you want to do. I would just caution you to allow some time for learning how to use that deluxe pilot’s cockpit and dashboard.

6. I suppose there is a sixth way - teach yourself everything by trial and error the way I did. It’s a lot cheaper, but it takes about six or seven years, and you have to keep learning because things change on the net every few months.

My goal would be to help you set up your site, and to turn it over to you, the owner to maintain by following simple steps - that can - if you pay attention, lead you to designing more pages on your own.

On my site, Azaleas Web Design I’ve created a few sample templates to show what I would or could do if you wanted me to make one for you. Naturally, you are not stuck choosing one of those templates. We can adapt, but the simpler your design, the faster your site can be up and running.

My secret lies in designing templates for each site or “area” so that when I want to create a new web page for say, an article, I just pull up a template in my web design editor insert the article at a certain point in the long page of HTML gobbedly-gook add two br enclosed in angle brackets <> after each paragraph, put < b > before words I want to make bold, and < /b > after them. I insert the title in a certain marked spot, and I change the meta tags at the top to match the contents of this new page. Then I name it with the file name I want it to have on the web, and save it.

I open the index page, (and/or the includes files), also always saved on my computer, and add a link to the new page. For that matter, on all other pages too, so that visitors will be able to discover this new one. The “includes” file, if linked to from all the other pages, allows us to instantly add a new link to ALL the other pages. Clever stuff!

Lastly, I upload all these new and updated pages to my site, which takes a trice. The heavy pictures or graphics can take a few more trices, or minutes. Voila. Done.

Before I make a serious move like signing up for new hosting, I do an online search and check out the options of various services. Not only do I read their pages, but also the comments on forums about the hosting service I’m looking into. In my own case, I have only begun this summer to offer hosting, so I have no big testimonials to point you too, but if you want to ask my first three clients, I can forward your requests to them, and let them correspond with you directly and tell you about the quality of my work.

If you find anyone else giving you better services, or people you trust more, I suggest you go with them. In the end trustworthiness, and being able to work things through with your host is VERY important.

If you want to go up a notch to the hosting service I get my reseller package from, I recommend you check out HostGator will take you there. When I did my research they and Site5 impressed me most, and HostGator had the tie-breaking lower rates.

My quotation calendar has been showing some real gems these days. Let me share a few to brighten your day.

“People need joy. Quite as much as clothing. Some of them need it far more!” (Margaret Collier Graham).

“If God, like a father; denies us what we want now, it is in order to give us some far better thing later on. The will of God, we can rest assured, is invariably a better thing.” (Elizabeth Elliott)

“There is no tranquilizer in the world more effective than a few kind words.” (Pearl Bailey)

“Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive - it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everything.” (Lucy Montgomery).

Amen, Lucy! I feel that way about the Internet too! I feel like a race car going around the mountain at too high speeds sometimes, but it sure is exhilarating!

I must be in a poetic mood today. I’m trying to think of just the right picture language for how I feel about my learning curve in running my online business ventures.

Sometimes I think back to when I was a kid and our visiting Uncle Isbrand, who had come from B.C. took us young fry fishing at the river. We scampered all about, exploring while he cast one line after another attached to a sturdy willow stick and planted the rear end of it in the sand (I guess since we kids weren’t patient enough to sit there and hold them), and then he prepared and cast and planted the next one. At some point I came back to the sandy part of the beach and found he had a row of four or five such lines in the river.

Well, as I’ve come “online” to run my business efforts, I’ve learned one method or another, tried them out, no big bites right away, so I sort of planted them on my web site, and started another. As fast as I learned about them, and once I thought I understood the principle of the thing, I tried yet another income line.

The question arises, what to do if all the lines start jerking with busy fish that have bit my bait? This is the stage that seems to be coming upon me now. I see that as I learn to do better marketing and promotional work, more of these lines will start coming alive with action.

Fortunately, for the most part, it only entails more correspondence, or just depositing cheques in some instances. It’s in the areas where I have offered services, such as web design, that I’m stretching my schedule to the max.

The best case scenario will be if the quieter affiliate commissions keep coming in to the point where I can afford some virtual assistants to help with the service streams.

Do you notice how my allegory is shifting from fishing to streams of income? This is why I’m wondering if I need to look for a different image to illustrate my point.

What about a turtle that buries it’s eggs in various pits in the sand, and forgets them there? She’s hoping that if she lays enough eggs, in the end, sufficient numbers will survive and make it to the ocean so that their species will not die out. Maybe some people do operate their online business like that. They start a multitude of “business opportunities” but if they don’t bring in cash right away, they wander off, and start another one. (Of course, this wouldn’t be you or me, right?

Maybe we should see them more like babies we have - which we prepare for in advance, then nurture tenderly, and as they grow up we let others step in to help teach and care for them too. Most caring parents allow the first child to get to be about age two before they have the next. They follow through, and understand that the child will go through phases of development.

Hmmm? So what do I do now about my logo image of having a bouquet of enterprises, each smaller business named after a flower? Can I convert that child-rearing image to a gardening one?

See how one needs time to sort out picture language like this? You really need to put your feet up and mull these things over for a few hours. Thanks for joining me as I got started. I see I need to go off to spend more thought on this.

Let me know if you come up with some interesting analogies or parables.

When plotting your limited block of time to give to your business, remember to allow for stages or phases. You’ll need that crucial brainstorming stage first. Then;
the ground work decisions and planning
gathering resources and information
the real development of the business (or site)
produce the product or content and the sales techniques and words (i.e. ads & sales text or promo lingo)
add in extra income streams that fit well, or additional services

About here you need to divide your time to both promote and maintain your business/site.
Don’t forget to add in a block of time to follow up customers or clients for repeat business.
And don’t forget to make time for all the new friends you’re going to have as a result!

If you don’t already have my email address, use the contact form

Whew! What a long weekend I had trying to install my newest Suse, the 10.1 from http://en.OpenSuse.org! I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but Saturday through yesterday were quite an experience for me.

I’ve already written up a sketch of what happened for my inspirational RoseBouquet blog yesterday. (find it at http://blogs.ruthes-secretroses.com), so I thought here I might try to sort out some of the more technical questions that came up in the hopes of helping someone else going through these issues.

Preparation:
From my experiences last year I was sure I knew how to do the partitioning stage. Some hard lessons learned then stood me in good stead this time. But I also knew that I needed to make a very thorough backup of all my own files. I had just got some new blank DVDs, and I was proud to be able to get all my files onto the one disc. (One thing I should have checked was the file format. This time it saved it all as binary files which were useless to me when restoring them).

Something else I did was read up on the installation process in some e-books I had received. But that looked old hat to me. I had found some special instructions online for what to do to make sure the Zenworks updater would really work. I had printed those out, and a few other tips.

Just because I often over-prepare (you should see how I pack for a car trip!) I had also downloaded and burned a mini-iso CD and a full set of 6 CDs for the same Suse 10.1 I had on the DVD I had ordered. I was truly ready to do this install three different ways, should one fail.

I had may faithful clipboard and some paper ready so I could make a journal/outline for my niece who wanted me to send her a copy of my discs. Ready, set, go.

Start Installation:
I put the DVD in to the drive, and rebooted, using the Delete key to pause and enter CMOS and change the boot media to the CD drive before the hard drive, then saved and exited out of there.

But my computer did not find the Suse 10.1 DVD bootable!

No? Nope. So I switched to plan B. I put in the first CD of the Suse 10.1 set and started over. That went quite well and after I had carefully done my Partitions the way I had planned them, (that’s another saga), it went ahead, and did the Basic Installation.

Second Stage Installation:
Here’s where things got tricky. I WISH those smart developers would insert instructions for the exact moment when to switch to CD2. By past experience I’ve learned, and it happened again, that at the end of CD1 it announces it is going to reboot. If you leave in CD1, you will end up going through all those steps over again. If you put in CD2 too fast, CMOS will complain that you have a non-system disk in place and to remove it. From many tries over last year, and again this time, I have learned that as soon as YaST (the installer program) announces it is going to reboot, I take out that CD1 and place CD2 in the tray, but I keep it open until the reboot process is past the point of the black screen with the white text - but before the full reboot is done, I quickly close the drive bay, and the system seems to tell after a couple of minutes to go directly back to the YaST screen and let the installation continue with CD2.

However! In this case, YaST kept insisting that I should put CD2 in and I could not persuade it that it was there already. No way would it recognize that CD2 was in the drive! I tried the DVD and for a few minutes it looked like it would use it, but no.

(Big Sigh!) I tried the DVD again on it’s own. No boot.

I tried the mini-ISO CD, which looked like it was working fine until I was stumped when it asked for the IP address of the ftp site I wanted to use. Eventually I gave up and re-installed my Suse 9.3 I spent Saturday night online looking for helps, and found some ftp sites, and their IP addresses, which I wrote on the envelope of the mini-ISO.

Online FTP Installation:
Sunday morning I decided to try again with the online ftp install. Only one of the IP addresses worked, but it got started, and off I went to church. When I got back it was waiting for me to do the next step. I was able to continue, so I was in high spirits. But later in the afternoon I discovered that it had been stalled for 3 and half hours, and wasn’t going anywhere. My ftp connection had broken. I couldn’t find any way to reconnect.

In hindsight, I think if I had backed up enough steps, I could have put the ftp/IP info in again, and who knows, maybe it would have picked up where it left off. I didn’t think of that option then.

I tried my Suse 9.3 again, feeling quite discouraged, only to discover that I had no KDE Desktop! Just a very basic x-terminal - and with my limited abilities at commandline work, it was a deadend. After trying this and that, I ended up installing Suse 9.3 all over again - another 3 hour job that took me to after 11 pm.

Creative Work-Arounds:
Monday morning I woke with new ideas. I recalled that the mini-ISO had shown an option of another CD/DVD as a source disc besides the ftp and http addresses. So I’d start with the mini-ISO and instead of giving an ftp IP address, I’d indicate I had another source CD, and I’d put in the DVD I bought. I’d also be bold enough to wipe both hard drives clean, before I did the partitioning. (The warnings YaST gives to not do that unless you know what you’re doing are quite scary).

My plan worked quite well, and I cheered up. However, this Suse 10.1 wouldn’t connect to my high speed internet connection when it got to the Update stage. The info I’d found online indicated that if you didn’t do it there, you would have trouble connecting later, and would have to take special steps to overcome that. But this system was not so intuitive here at this point as the Suse 9.3 is; that one never has trouble going online. I decided to skip that Update, and take those recommended steps later, once inside the operating system.

Managing Your Suse Castle:
I’ve sometimes compared installing a new Linux system on the computer to suddenly finding yourself the owner of a castle and you wander around looking at all the grand stuff you’ve got, but if you don’t know how to manage it, and where the master key ring is, you can get a bit lost in there.

Well, I spent the afternoon exploring and fine-tuning my settings in my new SUSE 10.1. I struggled to get connected to my high speed internet, and even called Sasktel, but the techie I got was clueless, and simply told me they don’t support Linux. (I know that, but sometimes I’ve been lucky and got a techie who uses Linux at home, and has some useful suggestions). Mainly I wanted to know what to put down for my Sasktel IP address. He didn’t know. By the evening every click slowed down so that it took 2-3, even 5 minutes for a program or window to open. Exasperating!

Finally I figured I’d reboot, and then all would be well. My settings for networking would take hold. No-way. I couldn’t get back in!

So, for the 12th time, (by my journal notes) I did an install - this time my Suse 9.3 again. YaST, the intuitive installer program, suggested an install on the 12 GB unused from the 10.1 install. I decided to go with that for now. Who knows, maybe I could find some info to solve my problems and end up with both Suse 9.3 and 10.1 on the computer. I know the 12 GB isn’t big enough for all the work I do, so this has to be temporary.

About 12:20 am. I was done, and rejoiced to see a familiar KDE desktop, but knew I had a lot of fine tuning to do on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I discovered that my fine, complete, all-on-one-DVD backup was messed up. All the files were saved as binary files. None of them would open up without a warning, and then displaying only long lines of dots. That means I’ve lost all of last week’s files and emails because I had to go to loading my backups on CDs from 8/26/06.

Do you wonder at the fact that I got upset? I am normally a woman of positive outlook, and a dogged perserverance, but the tension of the long weekend overwhelmed me - I’ve had to cry, with tears, out to God for grace!

Prepare and TRY Again!
I would still like to install 10.1 but I’m going to put it off a few weeks, so I can be fully prepared for all the issues I’ve encountered, and I’ve written the man from whom I bought the DVD to send me another that actually boots. If not, I’d like a refund please, so I can order one from another site.

I certainly don’t want to discourage you from trying to install a Linux operating system, but many little things can go wrong, and a lack of knowledge can mess things up too. Take it easy, remember that you can always go hunt down the information you need, and then try again, and it is in learning from these mistakes that we become wise, and extra helpful to others.

It’s Worth it!
My past year in Suse 9.3 has proved that it is worth it all. I have stopped worrying about viruses and such like, and I focus on my work projects, and am more productive than ever before. I much prefer my Kate, Firefox, Quanta Plus, Gimp, and Konqueror - the programs I use the most. OpenOffice.org allows me to create books and documents and export them with a click as PDFs. (I no longer have $250 software on my wish list).

I do look forward to the Suse 10.1, especially now that I’ve had a peek around in there. It is even more secure, and whereas Suse 9.3 has about 700 programs, Suse 10.1 has over 1000! So taking time to gather information on how to get a good internet connection, and so forth, and waiting a few weeks, - oh yes, it will be worth it!

P.S. Meantime, since my Suse 9.3 is now thoroughly updated, I seem to have features right now that I wasn’t aware were possible. I have gained from that rough long weekend in more ways than one.