Let's get into specifics in this video you'll learn how WordPress websites fit with domain name registration
and hosting on a server and get all the other pieces together on your computer outside of Wordpress
that you'll use to run your Web site Business.
You'll gather all the tools you need for this course including setting up your students sandbox at W.P.
of course dot com giving you access to premium tools you can use in your business.
By the end of this video you'll have everything you need to run a WordPress website business starting
from the ground up.
Let's start with hosting.
Since a Web site needs to have files and database that are accessible to the public through their Internet
access it needs a physical place to be.
This is called a hosting account.
There are lots of different levels and types of hosting and we'll go over these in detail in the next
section.
For now just know that a hosting company provides a server connected to the Internet in such a way that
allows many web site visitors at a time to load the Web site fast when a web site visitor wants to visit
a Web site.
They either click or type an address or a URL to get there you are.
L stands for universal resource locator and it's just a quick way to say web address or domain name.
An example of a URL is Google dot com.
One of the requirements of having a public Web site is ownership of a domain name which has a specific
URL that you or your clients can register using a company called a domain name registrar.
Some examples of a registrar are GoDaddy dot com.
Network Solutions dot com and many others.
You rent or register a domain name for a specific period of time and then point the domain name to your
server or hosting account so that your web site can have its own Jarrell or web address.
When we are developing a web site locally or before our client has a domain name yet we can use a temporary
domain and when the website is finished we can change the website slightly to take it live under the
real domain name.
During this course you can use real domain names that you register yourself or just use testing yourself
to create the Web sites will make during the learning process.
If you do use a real domain name you'll have to have a paid or trial hosting account to which you can
point your domain name and will learn how to set up hosting servers and development environments in
the next section.
In the last section you learned about how WordPress works with a file structure and a database to output
a Web site.
You also saw how themes and plugins can be added to design a look and feel as well as provide specific
functionality for your web sites.
In this course you'll have an opportunity to use a whole bunch of premium themes and plug ins to create
advanced functionality in your website projects your students sandbox at W.P. of course dot com contains
your development sandbox and all the premium tools will be learning in this course.
Let's compile all the other tools you need for building websites for clients.
First go get a text or code editor.
You can use the simple text editor that comes with your computer notepad on Windows or text it on the
Mac.
But as I said in the last section you'd be better served by getting a code editor that formats the code
for the documents you'll be editing in a more readable way for Windows.
You can try notepad plus plus or atom that IO but don't rely on word pad that comes with Windows or
any word processor like Microsoft Word.
These don't do the same thing and can insert formatting characters that aren't part of the code you
need on the Mac.
There's text Wrangler and Adam works as well.
I love the look and feel of ADOM and it's available at Adamkus.
I know all these options are free.
Here's what the Wordpress config file looks like in ADOM and here's what it looks like in Notepad plus
plus for Windows but here's what it looks like in Notepad itself not formatted and not as good looking
or easy to edit as it looks like an atom.
Download one of these code editors now and install one on your computer.
You are L's to all these code editors are in the resource document in the next section.
FCP stands for file transfer protocol install one of these programs on your computer so that you can
communicate with a live server like site ground or flywheel and manage your files on the server.
I prefer files Zilah which from the link on that resource page after this video shows you a list of
downloadable files.
I recommended one for either windows or your Mac are right here.
You can install those as if they were any other program.
Another great free FCP program is called.
FCP client light and it's an extension for the chrome browser.
If you open Chrome you can open up the extensions tab by going to your settings over on the right hand
side and then under more tools.
Click extensions.
It opens the extension tab where you can search for extensions and see the ones that you have installed.
If you search for s FGP it will probably come up with this free one and you can click install.
I already have it installed and you can see it in my chrome apps tab.
You can get here by typing chrome colon slash slash apps or they hide the apps tab button inside the
bookmarks toolbar so if you don't have the bookmarks showing in Chrome you can get them again.
Over here on the side under bookmarks and then click Show bookmarks bar.
When you have that bookmarks bar showing the far far left shows the app's button.
Then when you click as FTB client light it opens a window as if it were a standalone program and you
can set up FTB that way.
This is a great free program and an alternative to files Zyla in the last section.
I introduce you to a whole bunch of options for compressing and resizing images.
Let's take a look at two of them and try optimizing an image for the web yourself.
If you have Adobe Photoshop follow along in the next section and if not open up Pichler dot com and
optimize your image using the steps for pixel or dot com using the Pichler editor in the next section.
First let's get a large image that's too big in terms of both file size and image size and place it
in a folder on your computer.
There's one you can download and use at W.P. of course dot com slash big image dot J peg.
If you don't have one of your own ready you can just use this right click the image and say save image
as find a place on your computer where you want to save it and there you go this image is straight out
of my camera for 3.6 megabytes in size and more than 3400 pixels wide for any image on a Web site.
The file size should be largest less than 300 K or kilobytes and less than 2000 pixels wide even for
full screen images.
I like to make my web images 6500 pixels wide.
And I try to get them as small as possible under 200 K in file size if possible image editing programs
can do this with most photos without losing any image quality.
These smaller compressed images will load faster for web site visitors making for a better web site
viewing experience.
Watch as I open this image in Photoshop and if you have the program follow along and do this to your
own image.
Once I have the image opened in Photoshop I'll click image image size and under the width I'll put 6900
and just hit OK.
Now it's showing it to me at 25 percent.
If I look at it at 100 percent you can see it's plenty large for a full screen background image.
Now I'll click file save for web and devices.
This will optimize the image and show me an optimized version if I like.
I can go up here and click JPEG you'll show me the image at full size so I can browse around to the
part that's in focus and I can look under jpeg at my settings.
If I hit medium I can see that that will be an 84 K image and the quality is very good.
Nice and small if I want to get a little bit higher quality.
I might go up to high and that's 2:21.
In fact I think it looks really good.
Under medium right here and then I'll click save when I save this file on my computer.
I'll have a small optimized image for my web site.
Pichler editor at peculier dot com is very much like Photoshop but opens within a browser window instead
of being a standalone program.
If you navigate to pixel or dot com you can launch the web app under Pichler editor you can use the
welcome pop up to click open an image from your computer and you'll see your image pop up much like
it does in Photoshop.
That's fun my image here.
Big image
click image and then image size right here.
I can put 6500 pixels as I did before and leave the constrained proportions box checked.
That means that it won't distort or stretch the image at all.
It'll keep it in the same proportions.
Now that that's a smaller image in pixel or I can click File Save and in the dialog box it'll give me
a quality slider.
I can see that this will be 211 kilobytes if I pull it down just a little bit.
I get 158.
Great.
Let's go ahead and save that in this web folder.
And we can go and see what it looks like after it's finished working.
And here it is.
Big image.
Let's take a look.
Unlike Photoshop it doesn't give you a live optimized version that you can look at but you can experiment
with quality and file size balance to get yourself a nice image optimized for a web site.
If you use Microsoft Office with Excel spreadsheets you can use existing templates for quotations and
invoices.
Open a new document in Excel and look around under the available templates old file new and you can
see I can open just a blank splodge spreadsheet or some other templates here under business searching
office dot com since I'm online where you can use the search bar and you can see that there's a whole
bunch of templates that you can choose from.
If I search for invoice I can find the one that I usually use invoice that calculates total.
And then you can download it and it'll save it as a template in Excel.
I also use one for price quotations and proposals if you search for quotation I use one called price
quotation without tax.
Very similar to the invoice so I can keep my branding the same but it's a quotation you can experiment
to find what works for you.
But either of these can use a logo and can be customized for your business.
Once I've created an invoice for a client I just click File Save As and save the document as a PTF
then it can't be edited and the class can open it up and pay using the methods I specify.
You can also do this using the free Google Drive documents navigate the drive at Google dot com and
log in with a free Google account or sign up if you don't have one.
If you go back to their welcome page after signing in.
Click the menu grid at the top right and then click drive click new with the top left and open up a
new Google sheet.
You can do a google search for invoice for Google sheets and there are lots of templates that you can
use for quotations and invoicing you can save a master copy in Google Drive and use the make a copy
function when you need to make a new invoice.
Once you have a new one finished you can click file download as and choose PTF to download a finished
invoice to send to your clients via email.
I receive a lot of payments from clients via check but at times you'll want to be able to take a credit
card payment if you're just starting out.
It can feel like a big step to accept credit cards through a merchant account at your bank.
And if you research it it's pretty expensive and complicated with applications and credit checks to
do Pay-Pal and Strype are two great payment processors that have made accepting credit card payments
available to everyone without a hassle or any upfront fees.
You can set up PayPal to take both one time and recurring payments very quickly and easily.
They charge the seller.
That's you.
A small fee for processing the credit card and they take that percentage out of the payment after it's
made.
They don't charge the buyer at all.
The fee isn't any more expensive than a traditional payment processing system like a merchant account
at a bank.
Plus your clients can feel comfortable with the security of their information as PayPal keeps it secure
and you can't actually access their credit card information at all.
Paypal takes care of it.
You can also send invoices via email through paypal allowing your customers to just click a link in
the email to pay you directly through the Paypal website go to pay pal dot com and click sign up at
the top right.
Choose a business account and then click continue and choose paypal payments standard.
Follow the prompts to set up your account attach and verify a bank account for deposits and you'll be
set to take credit cards paypal payments standard is all you need to take recurring payments for website
maintenance or hosting for your clients as well as one time payments for web design and implementation.
In this video we went over and compiled a lot of the tools we'll need to create our complete WordPress
Web site business from hosting and domain registration information to the WP Div. course dot com student
sandbox resource and lots of free tools.
We've assembled everything you need for your website business.
Next we'll dive deeply into how to host client web sites.
Build your first WordPress installation manually on your computer in a local development environment
and get your students sandbox set up and running for coursework.
Let's get to it.