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Help Me Start A Website

  
 
Matthew Fluxington
17:57 / 03.02.03
I've decided to move my blog to my own URL. The problem is --- I'm sorta clueless on how to actually do this. I want to find the cheapest webspace I can get, and intergrate my pre-existing blogger archives into the site. I'm considering using Movable Type, but I'm not clear on how that works.

So, I'm looking for advice. Advice for dummies, as it were.

Also, I'm hoping for someone to volunteer to make it all look pretty, since I am pretty terrible with web design. I want it to look very plain, with little to no images, all white with nice black type. Anyone up to it?
 
 
videodrome
19:06 / 03.02.03
pair.com seems to have pretty cheap hosting. I use Aletia, which is now owned by Jaguar, and I've been happy with them. Dunno if they're the most competitive pricewise, but I've had troubles. Other people have, but I think that'll be the case wherever you go - someone will always be bitching about a hosting company.

The move from Blogger to Moveable Type is really very easy. MT might seem a bit daunting at first, but with a simple FTP program (like WS FTP) and the thorough MT manual, you should be fine. Took me about an hour. They provide instructions telling how to export from Blogger, and it's very easy to follow.

As for the design, I'm no help - mine are neither very capable nor do I have time. But someone will...
 
 
grant
20:43 / 03.02.03
I've wondered the same thing myself.

So - pair.com. Good for the space, then?

What about the name?
 
 
w1rebaby
21:34 / 03.02.03
I use easily.co.uk - you can order from them with a credit card even if it's in UKP. They have a deal which is very good for blogs and personal sites (i.e. low traffic) - you get a "virtual server" and a certain amount of traffic and space, which you can top up if you ever need to. The prices are extremely reasonable, considering you get full CGI, PHP, MySQL etc etc. I recommend them.

Movable Type is so much better than Blogger, it's just not funny. Really. I use it as a content management system and I'm starting up a new current affairs blog on the same server with it. If you have your own space there really is no reason to ever use blogger. But you will need CGI access, so that rules out most ISP webspace and a (very) few cheap hosting packages.

(For anyone who doesn't know, CGI access is the ability to run programs on the server which generate output. If you access a page ending in .cgi, what you are actually doing is running a program which generates a page, rather than just loading a page. Things with .php, .asp and so on work in a similar way, with different technologies. In fact, the extension is not significant - you could be accessing what you think is a .gif image, but it's actually a program that's feeding you a .gif but also logging your IP address, setting a cookie, whatever.)
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
23:04 / 03.02.03
I wouldn't recommend Pair. They're a bit pricey, though the uptime is good. I'm moving in a couple of weeks - probably to Blogomania as they're pretty much configured for any CMS system you'd care to run.

Designs are simple. Whatcher want? I can probably do it when I'm moving mine, if you like. You could always just buy a domain name and point it at your blog for the time being...
 
 
Persephone
00:26 / 04.02.03
First you can check that the domain name you want is available by doing a Whois Search on Internic... looks like flux.com and newflux.com are already both taken, but fluxblog.com is still out there. But I think that most or some webhosting services will also handle the domain name registration for you, which is convenient.

For webhosting we use iPowerWeb for my personal site and freeservers for the theater site, but I have to say that Husb's the one who set everything up. He's a Consumer Reports kind of guy, though... wait, I'll ask him. He says that both were very highly rated in some online report.

May I ask a question? Movable Type. So you get an application called Moveable Type. Then you... install this application on your webhosting service's server? Do you just upload it? So then it's in your directory on their server? So say there are 200 people on their server using Movable Type, then they have 200 copies of Moveable Type installed on their server?
 
 
w1rebaby
00:31 / 04.02.03
You upload it onto your server, give it the right permissions and then you can access the controls just like any other web-based application (like Blogger etc). For instance, mine is here - of course, you need a password etc to access it. From there you can conduct all the admin you want, enter new posts and so on.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
00:42 / 04.02.03
P: it's not actually that large a program, either, so space isn't that great a concern. And IIRC, it's a freebie, so it's not got the licensing issues of other stuff. And y'know, it's tinkerable, kinda.

Now, watch my newly-exoskeletoned blog crap out. Soon!
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
01:40 / 04.02.03
Ah, just to make something clear, the biggest reason I want to move my blog is because I want to rename it. I really hate the name Fluxblog, it was a name of convenience, and the newflux thing was because I couldn't use flux and fluxblog.blogspot looked stupid.

I already checked - no one has the name that I want.

The name?


(SPOILERS!)

agreewithme.org
 
 
videodrome
01:42 / 04.02.03
MT is less a program than a set of page-generating and managing scripts. It amounts to about 500K. Having other people on the same server using MT doesn't matter, or do one another any good, from the perspective of effiency.

And it is very tinkerable, much more so than Blogger or even Blogger Pro. The development community seems to have taken more of a shine to MT than to other systems, so there's quite a fair number of scripts and bits of code floating around already, and a large support base.
 
 
Persephone
02:10 / 27.02.03
Am I actually supposed to be able to do this?? Install Movable Type, I mean. Someone make me feel a lot better & tell me that everyone except for actual programmers has someone else install this system for them...

Here's how far we've gotten:

Requirements
1. Account on a webserver that allows you to run custom CGI scripts.
2. Perl installed on your server, version 5.004_04 or greater.
3. An FTP program.
4. A web browser with Javascript enabled.

Downloading
5. Download full version of Movable Type.
6. Unstuff.

Finding Perl
7. "To determine the location of Perl on your webserver, take a look at the support pages for your hosting service." Okay, well, iPowerWeb says, "The perl path is the very first line in every .cgi or .pl file. Usually it looks something like this #!/usr/bin/perl. As simple as that. Make sure that the path is correct, otherwise you'll get an error." So is #!/usr/bin/perl the correct path or not?

Setting up directories
8. For the application: iPowerWeb says that I have to put scripts in the cgi-bin directory that is already set up, so fine. And that means I have to set up another directory called mt-static for my static files. Fine.

9. For the database: Uh, what database?? Does Movable Type include MySQL? Or was I supposed to have installed that beforehand? I mean, iPW has MySQL available too... am I supposed to use that in some way? Anyway, it says here that for MySQL, I don't have to create any external directories. Fine.

10. For the weblog: Here MT's installation guide says "You need to set up a directory where your weblog will be stored. This is the location that visitors to your web site will come to to read your weblog. You can also choose to store your weblog archives in a separate directory than your main weblog, if you wish." So what does that mean? All I know is that I have a page called www.queergranny.com/notions.shtml that I want my weblog to appear on... what other directory am I supposed to have?? Would anybody be willing to tell me how they have this set up?

Configuring mt.cfg
11. Movable Type URL: Since I'm installing this into my cgi-bin directory it should be this, right?

CGIPath http://www.queergranny.com/cgi-bin/

Or not?

12. Database options (for MySQL): Is this right?

ObjectDriver DBI::mysql
Database database name, which I don't know yet
DBUser database user, which I don't know yet

Then the installation guide says, "If your SQL database server is on a different host, you can use DBHost to specify the hostname" ...but if iPW is providing MySQL, then the SQL database server is *not* on a different host?

But then here's the real problem: Note: if you are using MySQL or PostgreSQL, the database that you specify must already exist--Movable Type cannot create it automatically! So, that's this whole thing fucked... isn't it? I mean, I have to go back and create this database... don't I? And considering that I've had exactly two (2) MySQL classes, that's going to be over my head. Or not??

Sorry for this long message. The short question is... honestly, should I be using Blogger instead?
 
 
videodrome
05:46 / 27.02.03
I can't help with all of this now, but maybe I can shed a little bit of light without confusing the issue further.

7.
Yes, that's usually the path, but your host (iPowerweb?) may have it set differently. The online documentation or a message to their tech support should resolve this. The answer the web help gives (that you quoted) is lame, poorly worded, and rhetorical. But it's probably also the path to Perl. For now, sorted.

9.
iPowerweb should (ahem) have a control panel interface that will allow you to easily create a mySql database - you shouldn't need to have any real knowledge of this. Go here and read the stuff about the control panel - about halfway down there's mention of the mySQL controls.

10.
Since that's the addy you want the blog to have, the directory you'll specify will probably be 'http://www.queergranny.com/public_html/'. Most hosts use that format, and anything in that directory will show up on the web as simply 'http://www.queergranny.com/'. Capice?

Then, once MT is running and you're setting up your blog, be sure to tell it that you want that page file to be called 'notions.shtml' rather than 'index.html' or summat.

11.
I'll have to look at my files and the documentation to answer this - later.

12.
Your mySQL is on your host, so no worries there. The dbname and username will all be clear once you've done the bit above to set up the db.

re: the db freakout
As above, no you don't have to worry about this. Try it now armed with new info and you should be closer.
 
 
videodrome
05:50 / 27.02.03
Oh, one other thing. When you do run mt.cfg, more than likely it's going to tell you there's a few library files you don't have.

DO not be alarmed by this.

Follow the MT instructions, and they'll tell you where to get the files you need (almost all of them from the MT server) and where to put them.

The other thing is that as you go, you have to pay attention to the file permissions that MT requires. Otherwise, nothing will work. Again, setting the permissions is easy and if nothing else can be done through the iPowerweb control panel. It can also be done through the FTP program used to upload all this nonsense to your server.

Also, have a poke through the MT forums, as there's guaranteed to have been someone else with any problems you might face. I had a little trouble setting up my first one and the forum helped a lot.
 
 
Persephone
11:46 / 27.02.03
I kiss you, videodrome. Capice. Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more...
 
 
netbanshee
12:20 / 27.02.03
if you want to email me some ideas, graphics, etc. for the site...I'll look into doing a little bit of design for you.
 
 
Persephone
11:29 / 28.02.03
Breech: 2
Me & Husb: 0
 
 
Persephone
11:32 / 28.02.03
We got through mt-check this time. But then we got stuck at mt-load, we keep getting a 500 Internal Server Error. So that means either the path to Perl is wrong, or we have not uploaded things properly in ASCII format... see the thing is, the Fetch program we're using doesn't give ASCII as a format option --or Binary, for that matter. We alternately were trying Automatic and Text for ASCII, and AppleSingle for Binary.

Off to the the MT Forums again...
 
 
videodrome
14:12 / 28.02.03
As an alternative upload option, find a program called Trasmit. It's a better Mac FTP app than fetch, and it might make things easier.

Could the mt.load error be related to the file permissions? Seems like I that problem my first time through. Feel free to PM if you need more assistance...
 
  
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