What this session is about

On this page you should (hopefully) find out...

• What is a server and why do you need one?
• How to copy stuff from your computer to the internet
• The problem of anybody being able to read what you write

What is a server and why do you need one?

As you read this, somewhere in a big room is a computer sitting in what looks like a very expensive wardrobe. This computer is called a "server" and "serves" web pages such as this one to people that ask for them.

I know what a server is, what now?

The reason you cannot use your computer to host a website yet you can use a server is umm, well, there are more reasons than just the one. If someone geeky later tells you that I haven't correctly told you what a server is then they're right but I have half told you and the rest of the stuff is boring and geeky.

1. Your computer is (probably) not connected to the internet 24/7
   If you use a laptop it's almost certainly not connected to the internet all the time, if you have a desktop computer it might not always be left on. If your computer is off it's not connected to the internet and if it's not connected to the internet, it can't serve pages. A server is almost constantly on and connected to the internet.
   
   
2. Your internet connection is rubbish (when compared to a server's)
   Unless you are very lucky you will have an internet connection rated in mbps (megabits per second). A server in one of these rooms has an internet connection at least 10 times faster than you, more likely 100 times faster. This means it can get the page to a user much much faster than you.
   
   
3. Niggly details
   There are lots of them and they all get very techie and boring so we'll leave them alone for now, the above two are a good reason why you need a server anyway.

Getting a server

So, you have this totally awesome personal website or maybe you have a website you made for your company, how do you get a server for it? There are many hosting providers, in fact, looking at that link there are plenty of people that want to compare hosting providers for you. This is good, lots of supply drives down the price. I personally use Siteground and I've been very happy with them, if you decide to use them then please use that link as it'll give me 3 months free hosting with them, think of it as your way of saying thanks for writing this :)

After you get a hosting provider they will give you FTP details and suchlike that I will explain about in the next section of this page. First however I want to suggest that you don't pay for web-hosting at all. If any of my friends asked me for web-space so they could have a personal site I would be more than happy to arrange it for them and give them a part of my server for free (or buy them a beer). If you have friends that have websites, consider asking them for web-space. Obviously, if you're a company you will probably want to get your own server.

Domain Name

When you sign up for hosting you will need to use a domain name. This one is "woarl.com", try to pick something related to what it is for (this is for hosting a game called "World of Arl") yet short and easy to remember. Some companies throw the domain name in for free and some don't. If you are given free web-space by a friend then you won't need to sort out a domain name as it'll be related to your friend's domain name.

How to copy stuff from your computer to the server

When you register with your hosting provider (the people that sell you this server thing) you will be given "FTP Details" among other things. If you're not given them, they should be somewhere on your customer control panel or somewhere of that ilk. FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol", you don't need to know that but it might come up in a pub quiz and it's good to be prepared. FTP is what you use to get files (such as web pages) from your computer to this server thing. You will require two things to do this.

1. An internet connection (I'm going to assume you have one, you are reading a website after all...)
2. An FTP client/application

Getting an FTP Client

So, lets find you an FTP client.

Mac Users	Windows Users
		SmartFTP http://www.smartftp.com/download/

Mac users, I personally use Transmit but then my Dad bought it and I use his copy now he doesn't. I have however consistently heard good things about Cyberduck and it worked nicely for me when I gave it a 5 minute test run. The only thing I would say is that I wasn't so keen on the interface layout as I was for transmit but that's just me.

Getting it up there

Firstly you need to login, here is a picture of the transmit window allowing me to login.



If for some reason your connection is refused, try looking in the FTP Client's preferences and changing something called "use passive mode" (probably under "preferences" or "advanced"). Once logging in you should (hopefully) see something resembling the following.



Yes, I've altered all the file names because I found that most of those folders were of sites that I am either working on, using as storage or plain don't want the whole world to know about but we'll come onto that one later. If your window looks different to that, don't worry, this is just an example of what it looks like on mine.

Now you have your window open, just drag files to where you want them and your client will upload or download them as needed. One word of warning, if you are uploading files it will cripple your ability to download anything, you also upload at about a quarter of the speed you normally download.

If you are presented by a couple of folders and you have no idea what they do, check the readme on your hosting service provider. The CGI-BIN folder is something you can just ignore.

So I put it there, now what?

To view your files you need to know the name of your server. Mine is "woarl.com" so after dragging them to the public folder I can access the file at "http://woarl.com/filename.html".

The internet is amazing, how could it possibly have problems?

You might have heard that the internet is full of horrible people that want to steal your identity or credit card number or something along those lines. You may have heard that the internet is a great place where everybody is nice to each other.

Thankfully or sadly, neither are true. The internet is not a horrible place but it is by no means safe for anything and everything. However, with the application of common sense you will not create problems for yourself.

Everybody can see what you write

If anybody can see your website, anybody can see anything you write on it. Would you write on a wall your mobile phone number? I'd assume not. In the same way, writing your mobile phone number on a website means that anybody can see it. This means, think twice before putting your personal information onto a website and generally ask permission before putting someone else's information onto a website.

I can take anything I see

If you scroll up the page a little to the screenshot of my FTP login window and then right click the image, you can save the image to your computer. You can do this with almost any image on any website. You can even then use those images yourself, this is illegal but that doesn't make it impossible.

It's even possible to do it with sites such as YouTube though it's harder to download a video than an image (normally). The lesson thus is this. Anything you put online can be copied by another person. It goes just beyond visual things such as images but also includes more abstract things such as source code. If you right click and select "view source" you can see the source for this page and copy my design (though that'd be a waste of time because in the CSS Section I'll be explaining how it works anyway).

There are other issues on the internet though they are either not related to hosting a site, beyond your control or so small they can be as good as ignored.