How to Upload Your Website to the Web

So you have written an entire website using HTML, CSS, JS, React or any other technique you prefer. What now?

The first step was to build the website and now it’s time to upload it to the web. Although building a traditional website was free, creating one unfortunately won’t be. Now the name of the website, for example, “facebook.com” or “greenpeace.org” is called a domain. The website is basically a bunch of files, and in order to publish it on the internet, you need to put it inside a remote computer which grants public access. This place that contains the files is called a server. To rent a server and upload your files in it for a certain period of time is called hosting. In order to publish your website, you need to purchase a domain and a hosting service and while there are options that suggest free domain and/or hosting, try to stick with the popular options since those are mostly scams.

A domain is a one time purchase, whereas hosting is a service rented per month for a smaller price for as long as you wish to have your website up.

The domain you choose has to be one that is not in use. If it is, though, you can still buy that domain from the original owner via the domain selling companies but keep in mind that that will be very expensive. In order to check this you can either simply type the domain you want on your browser and see if a website appears. Most hosting services such as godaddy or hostgator will allow you to buy either both the domain and the hosting or each seperately from the single same platform.

Some greater companies, like coca cola for example, will buy all domains that use the brand name such as cocacola.com, cocacola.org and cocacola.net and direct them all to the same website but if you are working on a smaller project there’s just no need for that. Once you proceed to buy a domain name, the domain company will automatically show you some options that you can buy with or instead of your original desired domain. The domain company will also suggest additional services such as protecting your website from hackers or backing up your files and depending on your needs & budget, you can either add these to or remove these from your plan.

After you’ve bought the domain and the server, then there are third party softwares that you can use to upload the files to the server such as Filezilla and Cyberduck. Now using these is not a must, but they make things far easier when you want to update some changes you’ve made on your website in the future. Although there are also server services of software services like Filezilla, what we need is a file transfer protocol (FTP) client, which will allow us to transfer files using a protocol to an online server. So I suggest that you download the software required and then go ahead and install it.

Now that we are all set, and assuming that you have a completed website to publish, there are a few last things I suggest you do before publishing;

1. Proofread your website content. Once your website is up there, people will see it. You don’t want to publish something full of errors. Trust me.
2. Make sure that your website has the necessary meta tags inside the head tag. These tags will help your website appear on the search engines when the right keywords are typed. It’s important if you want your website to be visible among many other websites with similar content on search engines.
3. Make sure that your website works on all kinds of browsers: firefox, chrome, opera etc. The appearance will slightly differ based on the browser type and so should your design according to it. You can check this by simply right clicking on your index file and opening it with varying types of browsers.
4. You need to validate your website before uploading. You can use an online markup validation service such as w3’s validator in order to upload your files and have the software detect any errors within your markup (HTML). Then, you can pay attention to the errors and fix those that need fixing.
5. Create a copy of your website and save it, to keep it offline. You can use your computer, a flash drive or even an external hard disk drive to do that. You need to have a version of your website on your hands in case something happens to your online domain.

After you’re done purchasing and checked your website one last time, it’s time to actually publish it. Make sure that you’ve received a receipt of your purchase in your email and do not delete it, for you might need it in the future.

Now log in to your account on your hosting & domain provider company’s website for that we will need some information from there to mode further. You should access your server and delete the existing files within that server before uploading your own. To do this you have three options;

1. Enter your domain on your browser. There, you will be greeted with a menu. Through that menu click on Cpanel, a panel that makes it easier for you to manage your server.
2. Enter your hosting provider company’s website, log in and find the hosting menu. From there find “Files & Folders” section, open “File Manager” (This step might differ slightly based on the hosting company of your choice).
3. Go to Filezilla on your desktop, click on File, Site Manager, New Site. Type your domain for the name section and fill up the information required. To find the information required on this step; simply enter your hosting provider company’s website, log in and find the hosting menu. From there find “Files & Folders” section, open “FTP Accounts”. Then click “Connect” and now you’re ready to move on.

In order to actually delete the files, go under the “public_html” folder. Now delete everything under that folder. Then, open the website folder you’ve built on your computer. Select everything and drag them inside the public_html. The system will upload it all one by one.

The benefit of using Filezilla here is that, if you want to view the content and/or change it for one of the websites you’ve built, you can simply go to the Filezilla panel and enter the username & password to access.

Have fun!