I would like to share my experience in this. I too had similar doubts running in my mind when I bought this domain name. I initially setup a wordpress blog on the root directory, I never wanted a subdomain or a subdirectory. The reason was that, I didn’t want to treat them as separate entities, instead I want them to be controlled within a single control panel.

Now if you see my website, it’s a website to start with, and has a blog ‘attached to it’. In fact everything is under the single installation of wordpress, wherein I can edit my home page / about / contact or edit my navigation by editing the wordpress theme. In short, it’s a content management system built on wordpress!

In my past I was involved in developing a shopping portal built around WordPress’s CMS capabilities, from then I became a big fan of WordPress, such a nice software which you can tweak to any desired effect! Yes, that’s exactly I wanted to highlight.

So if you are convinced on the fact that you can combine your personal website and blog in this manner, let’s see how it can be achieved.

The steps involved are..

• Designing a custom theme for your website / blog.
• Install wordpress, install your custom theme.
• Create ‘Pages’ in wordpress to represent the content for the main site.
• Change the home page content and change it to look like a static page, than the default blog archive.
• Make your /blog page to look like the blog archive.
• Tweak your wordpress theme to accommodate the desired effects of a website.

My website didn’t get completed there, it is also made compatible for mobile devices. Just type in http://www.ramkumarkr.com/ on your mobile browser, and you can see a mobile compatible version of this site on mobile.

So, that’s in short, I do not wish to make this blog post lengthy, if you are interested to know more about this concept, do get in touch with me!

A webpage consists of the HTML code and other page elements such as cascading style sheets (CSS), javaScript files (.js) and images.

Following are few tips for you to optimize the load time of a website.

Reduce the number of HTTP requests – as I told you, a page output is usually a combination of the HTML code, combined with other files such as css, js and images. As far as possible try to reduce the number of dependent files on a page. For example, you may use a single css file instead of including styles from 2 or 3 style sheets. Combine js files and if possible consolidate into one. Images – those are the main culprits most of the time, try to use images with lesser kB’s and reduce the number of images in a page. For example for background coloring, you may use CSS rather than an image.

Yahoo has a best document for web page load time improvement – Read it here.

This domain was registered in 2007 and I set up this blog, but I had not put much time in making things count on this blog. I hope at least its a start now !

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You obviously make a website or blog for others to see it, hence you would be anxious to know how many visitors your website or blog is receiving.

Web Analytics

You may go through an introduction to web analytics to get some fundamental idea behind web visitor tracking.

We usually track website visitors using third party web analytics solutions – for example in this blog, I have used StatCounter and Google Analytics. Both uses JavaScript based data capture technique. You may go reading in detail about them at how web analytics data collection happens, but for you, implementing this is very simple – Just copy-paste the JavaScript code snippet provided by these vendors into each page of your website. You are done, you can see reports on respective vendor websites.

Leaving a website without being tracked is the biggest crime you can do after launching your website ! Firstly you will not have any clue whether are there any vistors or what they do on your website.

Google Analytics and StatCounter are just two of such providers, in fact these two provide the service for FREE! So there is no reason for you for not trying them !

So, now will you tell me how many visitors your website/blog got ?

Mail accounts added to your hosting account uses portion of your web hosting disk space, hence often pose a headache to you and you may even get alerts from your webhost informing about the high disk space usage alerts.

Google has provided a very good solution to this problem – Google Apps.

Google currently provide two variants of this service – standard and premium. Standard version of Google apps is free while premium version is priced but obviously with some value additions to the product.

For using Google apps for email, you need to point your domain name’s MX entry to Google’s servers. By default your MX entry will be pointed to your existing host’s nameservers which need to be changed. Once this process is done, you can send receive mails from your email ids managed from the Google Apps.

You can have email ids like you@yourdomain.com , bust still use features of GMail along with other features of Google such as Calendar, Docs, notebook etc.

So are you the one with a 5MB mail account at your domain name? Isn’t it the time to change it to a 6GB mail account?

WordPress has plugin support. You can attach functionalities to your blog without even touching the core code files ! Yes, thats through plugins. Check out wordpress plugin directory to see what are the functionality additions available.

I am currently using following plugins in this blog.

• Askimet: A must for a blog like this. It prevents comment spam. You need an API key to activate this plugin, which is available at wordpress.com.
• Google-analytics-for-wordpress: You can add Google analytics code by directly editing your theme files. This poses a risk of no data being captured when you change the theme and forget to add code to the new theme. Solution is to use this plugin, which adds analytics code on your pages automatically – Yes, no code editing and pasting analytics code is required each time you change theme.
• Lightbox-2-wordpress-plugin: Lightbox.js is a JavaScript framework to display images and web pages within overlays. You can see lightbox in action on the post – public/private key authentication with PuTTY on fedora 10. View those snapshots by clicking on them, it opens in a layer on the same window rather than opening as a new page !
• official-statcounter-plugin-for-wordpress: This is another plugin similar to the Google analytics plugin mentioned above, only differene being, it embeds statcounter tracking codes on pages automatically. Statcounter is the first web analytics tool I have used and still using. It is cool !
• wordpress-mobile-edition: This website has a mobile friendly version too ! This feature is achieved by using this plugin as well as a different theme compatible for mobile browsers.
• wp-contact-form: I am using this on my contact page. You need not code a contact form and the server sided script to handle the form yourself. This plugin can do the job.
• FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin: This is to use feedburner as my default feed manager than the one built in in wordpress. This plugin automatically redirects visitors to the built-in feed url to the feedburner feed url.
• youtubebrackets: This is one of the plugins I have used a lot in my other blogs. This helps us embed youtube videos on wordpress posts.

I am sure this will not be an exclusive list as days pass. I might be adding some more cool plugins on this blog. I will update this post as and when a new plugin is added.

As you know this blog runs on wordpress, wordpress has plugin option through which you can add useful features in a short time. I have used a plugin to add the mobile friendly feature to it.

This blog shows up in a mobile friendly way when seen using a mobile phone browser, you cannot make this until you check it using a mobile phone.

People who browse using mobile phones are on the rise, hence it is important for a webmaster to treat these visitors properly.

Do you have a website? If so, is it mobile friendly?

This post is mainly aimed at someone who would like to know how to set up his/her own blog or website.

Prerequisites for an own website or blog

1. Domain Name: A domain name similar to uniquely name your blog/website.
2. A web hosting account to host the web pages
3. Some knowledge about web page editing and designing (optional, can be improved over time)

I have compiled a post about domain names and on how to obtain a domain name. Thats where you need to start with.

Once you have bought a domain name, you need to get a hosting account to put your web pages in.

Running a website is somewhat different from a blog running on a hosted blogging software such as wordpress. Such blogs can be set up on a hosting account withing few minutes. Though you can make a blog at zero expense, I suggest a self hosted like this one.

In simple terms, when you buy a domain name, point it to your hosting servers where you have an account (shared hosting) / or the server ran by you, the web pages reside on them, your website will be live..
Very simple and short to say eh? But not so short to execute

One you have bought a domain name or planning to buy one, the next step usually will be finalizing a webhost to host your webpages. If you would like to know why you need a web host, you may go through one of my prvious posts at http://www.webreviewer.info/how-to-buy-and-own-a-domain-name/ .

Things to know prior to a web hosting contract

There are few things you need to know about the website you are planning to build/host, prior to selecting a webhost. These things will help you choose an economic hosting plan and also save your time in resolving issues which may come across in lack of proper planning.

• Disk Space: First thing you should know is how much disk space your site may occupy. A 10 page static website (containing only few static HTML pages, css and images) will need under 10MB of space whereas a blog, a video site or a large scale site may take up more space depending on the software script package used.
• Bandwidth: This is an estimation of the network bandwidth which may be consumed by the website, similar to your internet connection bandwidth which you may be familiar if you have an internet connection which is not under the ‘unlimited’ bandwidth plan. If you have a number of visitors visiting your website everyday (or may be once you launch the site), you may need a higher bandwidth plan. The rule of thumb is to start with something lower which you feel sufficient and to upgrade as and when needed. This need proper bandwidth monitoring as well as a good webhost who offer easy bandwidth upgradation options.
• Server technology: Its a very key point to know prior to choosing your website. On a broader scale, there are hosting computers running majorly on windows platform and Linux. Its not that these are the only two but commercial webhosts rely majorly on these platforms. Choosing between a Windows or Linux host depends on what the server technology your website will be using. For example, running a wordpress blog, Linux host with Apache, PHP and MySQL support is ideal as it provides much flexibility while working with your wordpress setup. The same setup cannot be used to run a website which is intended to run on ASP.Net. Most of the windows host also do support PHP and MySQL, means you can run a wordpress blog on them too, but with some limitations which the Apache webserver provide such as search engine friendly URLs using the mod_rewrite module. Once not sure, its always good to have a conversation with the hosts’ sales team to understand what they provide and what works for you
• Database support: If you are planning to host a data driven website, its important to know the database support provided by a host. Windows host usually provide MS SQL DB support and MySQL as an optional addition in some cases. Linux hosts provide support to MySQL DB and SQLite in few of them. If you need support for Oracle or something hifi, its not that easy to find a host too! Few webhosts restrict the number of databases you can use and the in the size limit of these DBs. You need to do a thorough research if these are critical for your website
• Addon Domains:If you are planning to host multiple domain names in single webhosting account, this point is important for you. Webhosts vary in the number of addon domain name support they provide in each account. For example, Godaddy’s starter web hosting plan allows you to host only single website per account, if you want another one, the only way is to change your webhosting plan. You can avoid such headaches when you research and plan on this area.
• Email Addresses:Your webhosting account in most cases allow you to add certain number of email accounts. Your mailbox will be hosted by the same web host. Since this also count towards disk usage, there are usually limitations in the maximum number of email account you can create on your account. If yours is a company who has x number of employees who need email accounts, you need to prior hand whether you can create that many in your webhosting account. But thanks to Google Apps standard edition, you can now host your emails at GMail for free and avoid this step here, but you need to know how to configure this one. (let me know if you need assistance in this, because I have used Google Apps )

Above these points, you may still need some custom configurations for your website. The solution is to talk to the technical support of the webhost and see what they can do for your need.

.com is still considered as the much desired domain extension, is one of the generic top level domain name (TLD). You can read about the top level domain names on an article published by ICANN at Top-Level Domains (gTLDs).

When you are planning to buy a domain name, you need to have some idea about the extensions and the meanings. The above said link will help you fairly in that respect.

Follow these when your website is for the global audience.

My advices are, when you have decided on a name, try the .com extension first. If its available, do not hesitate to register. If .com isn’t available then you can consider other alternatives.

.org is generally for a non profit organization, if yours is not one in that category, do not try .org.

.net is the next alternative to .com which you can consider.

If you plan to start a website for the local audience, try a country code top level domain. Say .in is a country level top level domain for India, where as .uk is the ccTLD of UK.

There are restrictions on registering few ccTLDs like .kr which is for Korea, you need to be a national from Korea to register these domain extensions.

All the domain name extensions do not have same registration fee, it starts from few cents for .info and goes a few hundred USD for ccTLD !

SEO and TLD
In short if you have a .in TLD, your website may appear better in search results in Indian context and a .co.uk will appear better in search queries in UK as the context.