Domain of One's Own
Resources:
The University of Mary Washington's Domain of One’s Own initiative is intended to provide UMW students faculty, and staff their own domain and web space. It will allow them to experiment with the software that makes up the web, and to gather their artifacts that make up their digital identity in a central place that they own and control.
Domain of One’s Own - http://umwdomains.com/
Ingredients:
Your Domain
- Easy:https://www.hover.com/
- Cheap:https://www.namecheap.com/
- Also, most hosting sites will offer you a domain with hosting
Web Hosting
If you go with HTML5:
FTP
- Filezilla:https://filezilla-project.org/
- Cyberduck:http://cyberduck.io/
Text Editor
- Notepad++:http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
- Text Wrangler:http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/
Templates - HTML5 Up:http://html5up.net/
Considerations:
“Responsive” - How it looks on other devices (mobile)
Light weight
Leads us into “instaposts” . . .
There are many ways to start with building your home on the web. The first task is to think about a domain, which is just your address on the web. You will also need to think about who will "host" the files and documents of your website. Domain registrars (the place where you sign up for your domain name) such as Hover allow you to search for your desired name and allow you to register it (1 year for most domains will cost you $15). Most hosting sites will offer you a domain with hosting, but use caution. You may lose your domain if the web host company goes away (believe me, they do go away). There are hundreds of web hosts that provide inexpensive services (about $8/month). One company we hear good things about is A Small Orange. Reclaim Hosting is oriented toward educational institutions to help them provide inexpensive web hosting for students. While other web hosts such as WordPress.com provide customers with pre-configured solutions for creating websites, but less access to the inner workings of a website, and therefore less control.
Webmaking 101 - https://p2pu.org/en/schools/school-of-webcraft/sets/webmaking-101/If you want to take a deep dive into the world of the web, then you want to build your website in the languages of the web - chief among them - HTML. You also want to explore CSS and Javascript to provide form and function. If your ready for this world you'll need an FTP client such as Filezilla or Cyberduck to move your files to your web hosting space. You'll also need a Text Editor such as Notepad++ or Text Wrangler to write the HTML, CSS, and Javascript code. To help you get started, a nice set of HTML5 templates will make your site look great. HTML5 Up provides some well-designed and free to use templates for non-commercial uses. Another advantage to these templates is that they are "responsive", a term that means they will look good whether they are viewed on a desktop computer or a mobile device.
January 19th, 2014
