Posts Tagged ‘website’
Question Asked: How Do I Move My WordPress Blog To A New Domain?
I get this question a lot, in my day to day life, and see it on message boards all the time. Though it’s super easy to do, for those that know how, it may be complicated for those that don’t.
I’ll outline all the steps you need to take, in order, and you’ll be moving blogs before you know it.
- Purchase your new domain name, and set it up with your host.
- Download all your files from your old domain name.
- Upload those files to your new domain name. (We’re going to assume you’re using the same web host, and same MySQL database.)
- That’s it, as far as moving files. Now, there’s just a few changes you need to make to your database. You’ll need to login to phpMyAdmin to do these next few steps. If you don’t know how to do this, consult your web host.
- Once in phpMyAdmin, navigate to the database for your WordPress blog, and click the “SQL” tab across the top of the right frame.
- The first query you want to run, is this:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value,(This simply updates the two variables in your blog’s database, to tell your database what your blog’s URL is.)
'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com') WHERE
option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl'; - The second query you want to run is this:
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://www.old-domain.com','http://www.new-domain.com');(This simply updates your post’s individual URLs from your old domain, to your new domain.) - The last query you need to run is this:
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com');(This query updates all your posts that have links to your old domain in them, to the new domain.)
A few things you should note about these queries:
- Ensure you replace www.old-domain.com and www.new-domain.com with your old and new domain names.
- These queries assume that you haven’t changed the default table prefix from wp_ to anything else. If your WordPress tables are prefixed with something else, be sure to change it in your queries.
That’s all you need to do. If you encounter any errors, post a comment below, and I’ll do my best to help you.
Question Asked: What Is FTP?
If you’ve been reading any of my answers to website and Internet related questions, you’ve probably figured out that I know a fair amount about those things, and thus enjoy answering them. Needless to say, I don’t have to do much research when these questions come in.
FTP is yet another acronym, which as you can see – the Internet technology folks love acronyms. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. What it basically means, in layman’s terms, is a way for you to connect to a web server with no command line knowledge to upload your files to the web.
Pretty simple really.
All you need is an FTP enabled web server (99.99999% of them are) and an FTP client on your computer. There’s a zillion FTP clients for your computer. My only advice is that if you have to pay for it, it’s no good. I use FireFTP, which is a plugin for FireFox. That way I don’t need to open another application, I can do my uploading right from FireFox, which is convenient.
Wikipedia defines FTP as:
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a network protocol used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network such as the Internet.
FTP is a file transfer protocol for exchanging and manipulating files over a TCP computer network. An FTP client may connect to an FTP server to manipulate files on that server.
More or less a more confusing way to say what I said. FTP is absolutely necessary if you have, or want to have, a website on the internet.
Question Asked: How Can I Use Gmail For My Domain Name E-mail?
You’ve got two completely different options. One is the “Easy” way, and the other is “Not so easy”.
The easy way:
- Go to your domain registrar control panel and create an email forwarding account for your domain.
- Decide what your branded email address will be (for example, john@johnsmith.com) and forward it to your Gmail address. You do this by filling up two fields in your domain registrar’s email forwarding control panel:
- In the “Add Forward” field, type in the left portion of your branded email address, in this example john.
- In the “Forward Mail To” field, type in your current Gmail address: johnsmith@gmail.com.
- Log on to Gmail.
- Click on Settings (you’ll find the link in the top right corner).
- Click on Accounts.
- Click on Add Another Email Address.
- Add your new, branded address: john@johnsmith.com
- Click on the Next Steps button.
- Click on the Send Verification button. Gmail will now send you a message with a link that you must click to verify that in fact you own your branded domain. Since in step 2 you have already forwarded your branded address to your Gmail address, the verification email will be automatically forwarded to your regular Gmail address.
- Open the verification email and click on the verification link. You’re almost done.
- Go back to the Accounts tab of the Settings menu (see 4 and 5). You should see your new branded email address already listed there.
- Click on the link that says ‘make default’ next to your branded address.
- Check the radio button next to “always reply from my default address”.
The “Not so easy” way:
- Sign up for Google Apps (link), and follow the steps they give you to configure your account, and settings.
- Sign in to your hosting account, and go to the MX record maintenance page.
- Delete all existing MX entries.
- Enter the following MX records.
- Save your changes. Your MX records are now configured to point to Google. Keep in mind that changes to MX records may take up to 48 hours to propagate throughout the Internet.
-
MX Server address Priority ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 10 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 20 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 20 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30 ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30 ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30 Note: ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM is the top priority mail server. Don’t assign the top priority to any other servers. Be sure to include trailing dot (.) at the end of any full-qualified domain names (for example, server.example.com.) if your MX records require this format.
- Save your changes. Your MX records are now configured to point to Google. Keep in mind that changes to MX records may take up to 48 hours to propagate throughout the Internet.
In either case, any message sent to you will end up in your Gmail account, and you’ll be able to respond there. In the “Easy” case, it’s a forwarded message sent from your mail server. In the “Not so easy” case, it’s actually delivered directly to Gmail.
If you’ve got the ability to utilize the “Not so Easy” way, that’s the preferred way of doing things. Keep in mind that you’re now limited to whatever size mailbox that Google has alloted you, and bound by the rules of Google’s mail service, and not your webhost’s.
Question Asked: How Do I Determine A Good CPM For Ads On My Website?
First, for those that don’t know, let’s cover what a CPM is. A CPM is the cost per thousand impressions for an advertiser (a company) to show an advertisement (usually a banner, varying in size) on a publiser’s (the person who owns the website) website.
CPMs can range from anywhere as low as a nickel, to in upwards of several hundred dollars.
The price you should ask for your CPM should be reasonable for the amount of traffic, impressions, and click throughs you can offer your advertisers.
We’d all love to be able to charge $100 CPMs for our sites, but that’s just not realistic.
A good formula to determine what you should charge is this (per ad): Pageviews per day, divided by unique visitors times 1 dollar.
So, for example, if you have 10,000 page views per day, and 6000 unique visitors, a good CPM for you would be $1.66.
As your site’s traffic increases, you’ll find that advertisers are willing to pay more to get their ad on your site. Eventually, you’ll be able to get $20 per CPM, and get some really targeted ads to your content. Serving multiple ads on your pages is a great way to make some money, especially with a popular website.
If you get to even a $5 CPM, run 3 ads on your site, and have 200,000 page views per month, you’d make $3,000 per month. (3 * 5 * 200) That’s not bad for a real job, let alone writing a popular blog!
Question Asked: How Do I Register A Domain Name?
Nowadays, registering a domain name is super easy, and pretty inexpensive. Whereas, years ago, it was a complicated process, and could cost as much as $100 direct from a registrar.
There’s a number of companies that sell domain names (they also sell web hosting, too, but that’s not what your question was about. If you need to know about web-hosting, check here.)
I’ve been a fan of DomainSite.com for a number of years, namely because their prices are good, and they don’t try to oversell you with services that you don’t need (like some other companies.)
The domain name will cost you $7.88 for one year. There’s a cheaper option, but it doesn’t come with a lot of features that you need, to utilize your domain name correctly.
Keep in mind, there’s literally tens of thousands of companies out there that sell domains. And there’s no difference between a company that sells the domain for $5, versus $50. Domain names are the same, don’t be duped into paying $34.95 to Network Solutions, just because they come up highly in search engine rankings. Their domains are no different than anyone else’s.