year 2 – network aesthetics week 1 – 27th september

week 1

what we will be doing today is

1. understanding what the second year of the course means and reestablishing ground rules
2. introducing the network aesthetics module
3. understanding hosting and domain names and subdomains
4. set up a wordpress blog
5. xhtml and css recap
6. ftp recap
7. consider collaborative sites

open post to read more…..

we will be doing a one week recap to jog your memory about the webskills we covered last year – if you need further support with this I recommend this book – buy it NOW if you have any problems with the basics of html/css

head first with css and xhtml

on amazon today you can buy it for £16.00 – you can also buy a pdf version as an alternative here (and there are plenty of 50% off coupons for o’reilly available online – eg here)

to be complete for next weeks session:

you MUST have usable webhosting (see minimum requirements below)
set up index page as a holding page for links to all areas – future proof your site

hosting suggestions

1. I heartily recommend servage.net – around £70 per 14 months – kcdigitalarts and all the end of year show sites are hosted here, massive space and bandwidth, and unlimited domain hosting and more but crucially they provide excellent really fast support and have proved very reliable in the last 5 years I have used them – includes 1 free domain
   it’s when things go wrong (and they will) that you appreciate why it’s worth paying a little more
   AND get an extra 75Gb space if you sign up from this link
2. anhosting.com – I’ve had recommendations for anhosting but not had personal experience- good spec – includes 1 free domain around £50 per year
3. gold package at bigwetfish.co.uk includes one domain – lots of previous students have used them though communication is sometimes a bit slow – £29.99 a year
4. I have a cheap reseller account with a hosting company and can set you up with hosting and full cpanel / softaculous controlpanel for a token £5 per year as a subdomain of minimise.org – for example your site could be lama.minimise.org or you can buy your own domain

suggested minimum requirements
5Gb storage space
60Gb monthly bandwidth
50 sql databases
able to host 10+ domains

recommended extras
auto installer on control panel (cpanel, softaculous or similar)
has the hosting existed for more than a year