Make a Website Free Publishing Tips and Tools

How to publish your website page (FTP)

At this point, you have done all the planning and setup for your website. Using your good business sense, you have developed your website pages accordingly.

You may choose to develop one page at a time to publish online...or you may prefer to write several pages offline first.

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Now that you have drafted a page to publish online, you should give the page a name ending in “.htm” or “.html”. Whichever you choose, keep the same convention throughout all your webpage files so you can remember.

The first page of your website is called your homepage, and must be named “index.htm” or “index.html”.

Next, you will need to publish your page using FTP. Short for file transfer protocol, FTP is simply the way you transfer your file (i.e. website page) from your computer to the Internet, where they reside your web host’s servers.

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Check with your website host – it is very likely that their website has information on how you can upload your website pages. Some website hosts require you to login on their website in order to access their FTP area, where you will publish your website pages with their online tools.

OR you can use any FTP program available online. Make a website free by using any one of these free or low cost ftp programs. Many have free trial periods such as WS-FTP, CuteFTP, and Coffeecup FTP.

All you need is your login, password, ftp location (usually your website name) and your website page.

All FTP programs are very similar and easy to use. When you open the FTP program, on the left hand side, you will navigate to your offline website page (index.html for the homepage) and click on it. Then you will click on the right arrow.

Voila! You’ll instantly see the file transported to the right side of the screen – which means you have just successfully uploaded your website page.

But before congratulations are in order, you should test out the website page first. Go to your Internet browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox) and type in your domain name. For example: www.makeyourownbusinesswebsite.com

If you were successful in publishing your website page in the previous step, then your homepage should automatically appear...ta da!

If your page does not appear, try checking your spelling to make sure you didn’t misspell your website name or filename.

You will also need to upload or ftp your pictures (graphics files ending in “.jpg”) that are on your website pages. If your pictures do not show up, you can check the html code and make sure that the picture is referenced by it’s filename only.

In my experience, html editors often point the html code to your computer file path directory – which will “break” the picture on your website page. Just delete anything like “c:my documentspictures” that is in front of your graphics file name in the html code.

Then re-publish (with ftp) the website page with the change. Refresh your Internet browser (hit F5 key on your keyboard) to test if your change worked. Continue to make your edits and ftp/upload your edited pages again. Continue to refresh your browser pages with F5 to view the new changes.

Congratulations! You’re well on your way, and know how to make a website free of hassle and expense with our recommended tools.

If you stop here, after building your business website, then you have done yourself a disservice. Many websites fail because their creators didn’t consider that all important next step...

When you are happy with your finished product, then it’s time to “announce” your new business website to the world through website promotion.

You’ve gone through the trouble to create a business website (not that it’s so hard!)...so now it’s time to sow and reap the benefits!

Tell them you’ve arrived...

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