Hey guys, I have never created a website and do not know much of HTML but I still decided I should try and start a website (blog). I know many of you are very knowledgeable and skilled, and I know that someone can help me out here. The steps I have taken so far: 1) I registered/bought a domain from Godaddy 2) 3 mos. of web hosting (10GB bandwidth limit). I don't plan on having multimedia or large files on the site, so I hope 10 GB will suffice. I used Google to learn more about the next steps, but I can't seem to figure it out. I assume the next step is to either write your own website or download a custom-made blog to your directory. I tried and I have done the uploading, but the website still does not show up. This is where, I suppose, I have questions (if I haven't already made plenty of mistakes). Questions: 1) Am I supposed to edit any lines of these XML/HTML files that I extract from blog templates I downloaded to apply it to my website? 2) Is there a time delay for the website to show up if the files I uploaded are properly written? I downloaded XMLPAD to edit XML files (if I need to, which would also require research on my part) and also FileZilla to manage the files. Miraculously, I was able to connect FileZilla to my web hosting server (an IP address I got from my account at Godaddy.com). Let me know what steps I should take next and if there is anything I did wrong. I really do appreciate the help. Thanks in advance!
I'm in the same boat, but not for a blog, just a basic website (for my upcoming wedding). Don't really know where to begin. I built a website and learned basic HTML back in high school, but that was a little over a decade ago, so I don't remember a lick of it.
unless you're wanting specific features not already available in Tumblr, Posterous, Blogger, Wordpress, etc, you're probably better off going with one of those and pointing your domain to the ______.wordpress.com site. That's what I've done with http://migm.co/
Don't know much about GoDaddy, but I guess some might tell me that they have their own BLOG installation already, which you can use. Have you checked your control panel to see if you don't have to install anything extra? Explain what you mean by "the website still does not show up." Does the domain work? Do you get a response from your servers (I guess you do, since you can FTP to it)? Do you see anything loading on the browser when trying to visit your blog? Not being able to see the site, as you put it, could be due many factors, including a misconfiguration on the web service, bad HTML code, bad XML code, etc. We need more details. PM me the URL of your blog if you don't feel like putting it out here publicly. Hope it all works well soon for you, dood.
Hey guys, Thanks for the responses. I do appreciate it. To clarify things a bit, I downloaded already-written blog templates and I have uploaded it/them. The domain error says "If you're the site owner, one of two things happened: 1) You entered an incorrect URL into your browser's address bar, or 2) You haven't uploaded content." I'm not sure if we are allowed to post external links here, but if you Google "50 More beautiful Blogger Templates", you will find yourself looking at the same page(s) as me. I downloaded one call "Glass Blogger" and after I extract it, I notice that there is only an XML file. What other files would you need? Would I have to edit any of the files? Rename them? Now that I think of it, it couldn't possibly be this simple. I remember web design being a pain. Are these templates are only for blog-ready websites? Since I am looking to build my own domain, would this not be compatible? I would make my silly website public, but not just yet. My friend and I are seniors in college and we are both working on a project (website/blog) to try to encourage/inform high school kids in our area about college and the best way to approach/conquer it. I am majoring in Finance and I haven't a clue about web designing. I'll be sending a message to swoly and take him up on his assistance. Hope all goes well. If anyone has any advice or answers, post them here too! I will certainly be reading them. Thanks.
There are three files in the ZIP file. Two are URLS to read about the template and one is the XML. One of those URLS is in Spanish... disregard that (unless you know Spanish ) ... READ the other one. Seems you might be installing the XML file onto a BLOGGER-type blog installation on GoDaddy's web hosting. I know nothing about that, but I will assume that there is some sort of admin console for your blogs within the control panel that you need to access to say "hey, blog thingie, read the new XML I loaded instead of the default", which you may not have done. Was your site working BEFORE you loaded the XML? Was it a BLOG or was it an HTML-only site before uploading the XML? Try just dropping a regular HTML file on the top level of your web-viewable directory. Go from there. If my calculations are correct, and most of the times they are, an XML file isn't a "browser-readable" file that you can just access by uploading instead of an HTML file... maybe you're supposed to tell your blog software on GD or your GD control panel to make a change.
install wordpress on your domain, and then read/learn wordpress and you don't need any web development skills once you know wordpress.
Sounds good, guys. Thanks Swoly for your help. From the sound of it, it seems that WordPress might be the best option for me at the moment so I'll try that now. I'm still experimenting right now and it's pretty decent fun. I've added a Linux hosting from GoDaddy so I'm waiting to transfer the domain name over. After that, I'll install WordPress and I hope everything becomes easy from there. Thanks for your help!
I just started one for career-related topics (in my signature). Blogger seems to work well for me so far.
