Matt Doyle | Elated Communications
Web and WordPress Development
Tutorials and tips for managing your website. Topics include WordPress tutorials, website hosting guides, how to use FTP, and how to manage and control your web server.
See also:
If you’re a regular subscriber to Elated, you may have noticed a distinct lack of updates for the last few months. Here’s why.
In 2011 and 2012, elated.com was badly affected by Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates. The result was that traffic to our site dropped to less than one quarter of its original level. You can see the effect of these updates in the graph below:
Running a freelance web business can be a challenge, and part of that challenge is keeping yourself productive! Inefficiencies, distractions and a lack of organization can all contribute to bogging down your business, killing productivity.
However, armed with some useful strategies and working practices, you can reduce these roadblocks to productivity and make your business run more smoothly and profitably.
In this article you’ll discover 20 useful tips to help you improve productivity in your business. Enjoy!
[Read more…] about 20 Ways to Make Your Freelance Web Business More Productive
After weeks of hard work, your new website’s ready to launch! It’s uploaded, you’ve set up the domain, and you’re ready to take the wrapping off and reveal it to the general public.
Before you hit the proverbial switch, however, it’s important to check that your site is functioning correctly — especially if you’re launching it with an expensive marketing campaign.
Here’s a list of some important things to look for when giving your site its pre-launch testing.
[Read more…] about Hold That Website! 12 Things to Check Before Launch
WinSCP is a popular free FTP program for Windows. An FTP program lets you transfer files between your computer and your Web server.
In this introductory tutorial, you’ll learn how to use WinSCP to upload your website’s files to your server.
This tutorial assumes you’ve already downloaded and installed WinSCP. It also assumes you’re using WinSCP with the “Commander” interface, rather than the “Explorer” interface. (To change interfaces in WinSCP, choose Options > Preferences, then click the Interface option and select either Commander or Explorer.)
[Read more…] about WinSCP Tutorial – How to Upload Your Site with WinSCP
When you first register your domain name, you purchase the registration through a domain name registrar. Often the registrar is affiliated with your hosting company or ISP, or it may even be the same company.
Many people stick with the same registrar for the lifetime of their domain(s). However, sometimes you want or need to transfer your domain registration to a different registrar. For example:
There are hundreds of registrars in operation today. If you haven’t yet selected a new registrar, find out how to choose one in the “Registering a domain name” section of How to Set Up Your Own Domain Name.
If you’ve chosen a new registrar and you’re ready to transfer your domain, this step-by-step tutorial walks you through the process. Read on!
[Read more…] about How to Transfer a Domain Name Between Registrars
mod_rewrite is a marvellous feature of the Apache Web server. It’s very flexible and can do all sorts of useful things.
mod_rewrite can be quite tricky for beginners to pick up due to its somewhat complicated syntax and processing mechanism. However, once you understand a few basic concepts then you can use mod_rewrite to do some pretty clever things with your site.
In this tutorial you’ll find out what mod_rewrite is, and the kind of things you can use it for. You’ll learn how to create a few basic mod_rewrite rules, and you’ll explore some useful real-world examples that you can use on your own website.
[Read more…] about mod_rewrite Tutorial for Absolute Beginners
Site maps have been around for almost as long as the Web itself. They’re a great way to improve your website’s navigation and usability.
Although site maps aren’t used that often by visitors — around 7% of the time, according to Jakob Nielsen — a site map can really save a visitor if they can’t find what they’re looking for using your site’s regular navigation menu.
In this article you’ll explore the concept of site maps, look at some examples, and learn how to design and create a site map for your own website.
A regular email newsletter is a good way to keep in touch with your site visitors and encourage them to return to your site. If you run an online business then it’s also perfect for telling existing and potential customers about your products or services.
With an email newsletter, visitors add their email addresses to your mailing list (usually via a form on your website), then you regularly send an email message to all the subscribers on the list.
There are many ways that you can set up and run a newsletter mailing list. In this article you’ll explore 3 broad approaches:
In Move a Website to a New Server – The Easy Way, I looked at a simple way to move your website and email from one hosting company to another. This approach is fine for sites that don’t have too much user-generated content. However, if you run a busy site with lots of blog comments, forum posts, or customer orders then things can start to get messy with this approach.
Why? Well, when you move your domain to the new hosting company’s nameservers — a process known as redelegation — it usually takes a couple of days for the change to propagate around the internet. During this time, some visitors will be seeing your site on your old server, while others will be looking at your new server. This means that you’ll end up with new content being added to both the old site and the new site at the same time, which can be a major headache!
Fortunately, there’s a way round this problem. It’s a bit more fiddly than the “easy” approach, but it does result in a seamless transition. The great thing about this approach is that there will only be a few minutes where both the old and new servers are being accessed at the same time, as opposed to several days.
[Read more…] about Move a Website to a New Server – The Seamless Way
If you run a website for any length of time, chances are you’ll want to move your site and email to a new web server at least once. For example:
Let’s assume you’ve chosen a new Web hosting company and you’re ready to transfer your website. Broadly speaking, there are 2 ways that you can move your site across:
In this step-by-step article I’ll try to give a general overview of the moving process, and look at some of the pitfalls to avoid along the way. I strongly recommend reading this whole article before you start the moving process.
[Read more…] about Move a Website to a New Server – The Easy Way