Your own website – anyone can do it

Why would you want to?

To communicate with your family and friends.

To have a blog – upload your thoughts, photos, general information, whatever you like, so that people can read it and comment.

To advertise yourself and get business.

Vanity.

To show off your  skills: writing, photographic, wit, illustrative…

Still hot to trot?

Right. Let me share my own experiences and then it’s up to you.

The people I use are 1and1 –  because someone told me about them and they cost very very little for entry level websites.  There are plenty of others, and they may be as good, less good or better. You just have to pick the ones that works for you.

1and1’s instructions are extremely easy to follow. You don’t need to learn HTML or any other programming stuff, and there are drop down menus and simple guidelines to help you. Anyone can do it – honestly!

Don’t be put off by this long list – I have done it step by step and you will be able to follow it in a flash.

1. go to 1and1.co.uk and click on domains in the list on the left hand side.
2. in the red box that appears, check the availability of the domain you want. As a guide, .com domains cost £5.99 a year, .co.uk domains cost the princely sum of £2.99. This is more or less the going rate, but check other place via Google to make sure.
3. click the box on the top that says PACKAGE SELECTION and decide which one is for you. For me, 8 pages at £1.99 a month for the 1&1 Beginner package seems the best, but obviously, suit your own needs and then click Sign Up at the bottom.
4. Along the top click Service to begin setting up the website once you have paid and signed etc.
5. On the left menu, click 1&1 Control Panel, which will show you what you get and how you work on it.
6. Then go to 1and1admin.co.uk – NOT com, which is in the States. you will be asked for your account number or domain name, and a password, all of which you will have got when you signed up.
7. Click login.
8. A package overview table will appear.  Click on Beginner (if that is what you have signed up for) and an administration screen will come up. Click on the fourth grey box, marked Website Applications.
9. Click Website Builder.
10. Click Open on the far right hand side of the box with the name of your domain at the top of the page.

Off you go! Read all the instructions at every stage until you have been working a while, and start editing your website.  Add content, pages, choose a design template, add text and slogans, and get working. Preview before committing yourself, and then Publish when you’re happy.

Bob’s your uncle.  Well done!

Advanced internet searching – how to get exactly the pages you want

Here are some short cuts to sensible internet searching. If you follow these instructions you will be able to cut down  time spent on sifting through masses of irrelevant web pages and get straight to the nitty gritty..

You need to type in exactly what I have in bold, although the boldness is only to show you, and is not needed when you do it.

Let’s start with the words dog breed.

“Dog breed” will get you only pages with the words dog breed, not web pages with dog and/or breed.

If the page has two words in it but not necessarily together, type them in and put AND (caps) between them eg dog AND breed (no inverted commas) will get you pages with dog, breed and dog breed.

Dog OR breed will get you pages with dog, breed or dog breed.

If you want all sorts of dog, but not Alsatian, type dog NOT alsatian.

For pages with two words separated by up to 25 words, type in dog NEAR breed.

If you have a more complicated search – eg, all dog breeds except alsatian or poodle, type in dog OR breed NOT (alsatian OR poodle).

Does that make sense?  It’s useful once you get the hang of it.  Remember – a computer can’t think. It only does what you tell it. The problem is, not knowing what you have told it!

Uncrackable (ish) Computer Passwords

Choose a good one.  Make it as safe as possible – I remember a thriller which had the beautiful spy work out the hero’s password in four minutes because it was a variation on his date of birth…

So don’t use that, or your username, names of family, friends and pets. As random as possible is best.

• Use numbers and letters
• Stick a couple of symbols in as well.
• Capitals and lower case are an added extra if the password is case-sensitive.
• Make the word as long as you can
• Best if you make up a word or change letter order so people can’t find it in the dictionary.
• Change it every few months
• Use a different password for each account you have – I know, I know, but if you are serious about secrecy, this will help.
• Acronyms are good – I live In London = ILiL, and a % would be even more arcane.

More about email – follow the Rules and make your life easier

A Rule is something that organises your email messages in a way you set up. You can choose what you want the program to do – for instance move incoming messages to a particular mail box. You can decide that you will move all messages from specified addresses/people/organisation straight to the Trash. You can specify exceptions – any you like: for instance you may hate X or Y at a particular address, but allow those from Z to get into your inbox.

You can flag up message as they arrive, be notified of their arrival, reply automatically with a message you have set up (Eg I am away from my computer every Monday).

In Mail:

1. If your Rule is to involve moving messages to a folder in your in box, set up first.
2. Then go to Preferences
3. Go to the far right hand icon – marked, not surprisingly, Rules
4. Click Add Rule
5. Give it a name in the Description box
6. Decide what you want it to do, and follow intructions
7. Test it before you close it.

Hope this helps. I find Rules extremely helpful.

How to setup a free email account on the web

18.3 million households (70%) in the UK had internet access in 2009 and when you sign up with an internet service provider (ISP) you are often provided with, or given the option of having, a free internet account .

A few of the most popular email providers are Microsoft (hotmail, now know as live), Google (Gmail), Yahoo! (Yahoo! Mail) and AOL.

The most widely used is probably Hotmail as it is necessary for instant messaging services favoured by teens, but one of the more professional and versatile is Gmail.

To quickly and easily set up a Gmail account:

with any program on PC or Mac.

1. Go to mail.google.com and click create an account under where it asks you to log in, in the column on the right hand side.
2. Fill in your details, choose a user name, enter a memorable password for your account and you’re done!
3. Enter a verification  code to make sure you are actually human – this needs accurate typing (and make sure you write it down).

That’s it.  Next time I will explain how to set up an email account with an ISP you pay for.

With thanks to James Heath!

Synchronising

My wonderful iPhone is not good at Bluetooth synching with my computer.

It is OK in the car but that’s about it. Other telephones have been better but it’s pretty hit and miss, I think.

So I am going to try this.

Windows Live have a free synchronising program, at present only for PCs, but apparently a Mac version is on its way.  This will make it easier to carry and update contacts and diaries on phone and computer. Mac has MobileMe, I know, but it costs. This does not.  www.mesh.com is the link, and I would be very interested to learn of any experiences and feedback. Would you mind letting me have some? Thanks

This is really good news…

and they aren’t paying me either!
I have been recommended http://www.geeksquad.co.uk by a friend and today spent over an hour talking to them. I was so impressed by my initial consultation that I have signed up for the princely sum of £6.99 a month (minimum contract three months, payable by Direct Debit).
This is not because I have no friends and need to chat, but because I wanted to have my Mac cleaned up to work better (they also do PCs, of course.)
Paul was patient, calm and knowledgeable.
He logged into my computer remotely, and did what he had to do. I now have a new piece of recommended software called OnyX which busied itself cleaning parts of my system that other programs have not reached. He helped me with all sorts of advice about iDVD, we discussed attracting traffic to my blog, he told me about other useful programs I might like to know about.
Geeksquad are open 24 hours a day,e very day. If you have a PC they give you free storage and free virus protection. And their policy – like mine – is never to use jargon.
It’s a bit cyberspace, connecting. In the end you are told Agent XXX has connected, which is rather pleasantly X-file-ish.

You have no choice about these…

Basic computer housekeeping is not a choice. Nearly everyone has a computer and so nearly everyone should make sure it works.
No longer should anyone say ‘whoops. I didn’t know I had to…’

You have to. That’s it.

You have to:
1 update your software – check the developers’ websites and see what’s new. This makes it work better.
2 check your checks against viruses and spyware. Again – better performance. There are people out there whose idea of a really good time is to spike strangers’ computers. You don’t have to be the Bank of England. Best not to be right now, come to think of it.
3 clean up your hard disk regularly (at least once a week, more frequently if you have time). Every computer has tools to do this – go to Find and ask. Mac has Disk Utility, PCs have them tucked away in Program Files/Accessories/System Tools.
4 I have just learnt there is something called a registry which is where all the information a computer needs is stored. It’s buzzing which means it’s easily corrupted. Again, can slow down performance and jam up generally. Not great for the hardware either. FInd Registry Cleaning Software – there’s Tucows.com for starters, and there is always Google to do the searching for you. Or you could ask a human being. That’s that person behind a desk or the voice on the telephone.
SH

A plea

The reason I started this blog is the reason I am writing this post. I want to learn about the internet and how to use it to its best advantage. One of the good things about it is blogging, it seems to me. But I am not clear about how to get people to my blog. I have signed on to Twitter – another new area that is puzzling but I am getting there – and I am trying to learn about RSS feeds and this and that, and although I am getting better, it is a slow process. I am following people much cleverer than me on Twitter, and they are very clued up, but the problem remains. I don’t want to be told just that I should tweet my plug, use pug ins, widgets, RSS feeds, subscribe to Digg.it and Flick.r and other such neatly names tools. I need to be told what they are and how to use them properly. I am, my dear Watson, finding it not at all elementary, and continue my research on your and my behalf dear reader. I shall put here what I discover and encourage you to contribute, like Printer’s Devil here, whose comments are just the ticket. More of the same sort of thing please

Useful Word shortcuts I have come across

There are many more so you know of any, add a comment… I have assumed the familiar ones are just that,familiar to you. e g ctrl C for copy, ctrl V for paste… If not let me know and I can help.
Obviously you need to highlight the text you want to change before you do any of these.

Reduce font: control (cntrl)+shift+
Small caps: ctrl+shift+k
Copy formatting and styles: cntrl+shift+C
Put the cursor where you want to apply the formatting and style, then press ctrl+shift+V to paste everything (colours, fonts, paragraph style, headings, the lot).
Shift+F5 takes you to the last change you made.
To move paragraphs around: Ctrl+shift+Up or Down arrow
Change case: shift+F3 (keep clicking till you get what you want)
Deleting word to right of cursor: Ctrl+delete
To the left of the cursor: ctrl+delete+backspace.
Multiple edits in a paragraph: ctrl+-> (right), ctrl+-< (left).
Change case: shift +F3
ctrl+1: single spacing
Ctrl+2: double spacing
Ctrl+5: 1.5 line spacing
Ctrl: aligns paragraph right
Ctrl+L: aligns paragraph left
Ctrl+E: centres paragraph.