Website Advice

People are always asking for my advice when it comes to fansites. I don’t claim to be an expert or anything, but here are a few tips.

Domain Names

The first thing I would suggest is to get a domain name. You own it, it’s yours & no one can take it from you (unless you forget to renew LOL) You can register a domain for less than $10 a year.I would suggest going with Namecheap.com I have used them for years with absolutely no problems at all. Click here for the latest Namecheap coupon codes.

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Hosting

I’d also suggest you pay for hosting. I know there are plenty of places to get free hosting, but but I can’t tell you the number of people I know that have lost their entire sites due to one of those places either shutting down or just deleting their websites with no advance warning. It happens all the time. You’re a lot safer just paying for your own hosting. It isn’t even expensive these days. I would suggest Certified Hosting. You can host your site there for about $5 a month.

Click here for the latest promo codes from Certified Hosting.

FTP

I would suggest you download  WS_FTP LE for your FTP program. FTP is useful, so that you don’t have to upload files one by one through your control panel. WS_FTP is very easy to set up, all you really need is your username & password from your host. For example this is what mine looks like:

Content Management

To manage your site I would suggest WordPress. In fact, I would insist on it. I wouldn’t run a site if it didn’t run on WordPress. If you have Cpanel, you can install it in under a minute, and even if you don’t, it’s very easy to install. With WordPress, as opposed to Cutenews, for example, it runs your whole site, not just your updates. Posts/updates, pages, layout etc are all handled from one control panel. I’ve taught people how to update their sites in WordPress when they haven’t done much other than email and post on Facebook.

The look of a site running on WordPress is determined by the theme.  There are plenty of free themes out there or you can order a custom wordpress theme from my friend Cristy at Daxter Studios.

For galleries, I recommend 4Images. This can also be installed from Cpanel too if you have it.  If you don’t use too many images & don’t want a gallery, you can upload & display images through WordPress.

I’ll be doing more in-depth tutorials on what to do once you install WordPress & 4Images later.