Tag Archives: Internet

Domain Registration, Internet

Nameservers – How to set them

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In my last post I described how to register a domain and set up a hosting account, preferably with two different companies. At this point you have a name and a host but you don’t have a website yet. Here’s how to direct ‘net traffic to your brand new site.

First, some basics. Every website is ‘served’ from a computer somewhere in the world. Although the actual mechanics of that are different from your computer’s setup, the basics are the same. When Windows starts a program,  there is a path to that program on your computer. If you change the path, Windows can’t find the file that starts the program. Windows is smart but it’s not that smart.

This is the same with your website. If I want to go to abc123.com and there isn’t a path laid out, I won’t get to it. A ‘404’ page will come up that tells me that such and such a site can’t be found. Here’s how to set all of this up. We will work from the host out to the nameservers. Stay with me, it’s not rocket science.

1. On your hosting account, you have access to a root directory on one of the computers that serves your account. Everything that you upload that pertains to your site goes into a sub-folder in that directory, or a sub- directory in that directory. Folder and directory mean the same thing but you might be used to folder as opposed to directory because Windows uses that term. Root is the base, your files should be put into a sub- folder/sub-directory (f/d from now on) there. On your hosting account, go to the file manager. This is what you should see (different if you use C/Panel):

Menu for Fat Cow hosting
Everything you do with your hosting account works from here.

2. Click on the File Manager icon. On the left side is root f/d. Create a new f/d as shown here:

File Manager New Directory menu
Create a new directory in the root directory.

3. Name the f/d something that relates to your site but not exactly the name of your site. Use short-forms or code, it’s not that critical as long as you and your host know what’s in it. Once you name it, it will show up on the right side of the window.

4. Now you have a f/d that will feed your site’s files out to the world. Right now, your host doesn’t know the path, right? Let’s tell them what that path is.

5. Go back to the main menu and choose Domain Central (or something similar). You’ll see something like this:

Add your domain to a sub-directory
This is where you tell your host where to send requests for your site.

6. In this section, you are adding an existing domain (the one you registered) and you are putting it into a sub-directory. In the Pointer section, tell your host that you are putting the files in a sub-directory and tell them which one it is. (/sub-directory name/ is the format you would use). Enter the name of the sub-directory that you just created.

7. Click Save and you’re done. Right now, a request for your site isn’t going anywhere, however. You have one last thing to do.

8. Head over to your domain registration site and select your Domain Manager there. You’ll see a link to ‘Set Nameservers’. Like this:

Set Your Domain's Nameservers Here
My nameservers are already set but the link is on the right.

9. Click on the link and this will come up:

This is where you enter the nameserver settings.
Sett the nameservers here.

10. Back on your hosting site, there will be two nameservers   listed, a 1 and a 2 designation. Some hosts might have three or four servers which shoot out the same stuff depending on which one is up and which ones are down. Never mind that now, you just want to tell your domain registrar where to send requests for your site. These nameservers are little domains on their own, hence the .com designation at the end. Once you enter them, as shown here, click OK.

11. The process from this point on is automatic but it takes time. Average time is about two hours before the main registry starts routing requests for your site to your host. Your host then routes that traffic to the sub-directory you just created in step 7.

OK, what now? If you type in your domain, after waiting a while, you’ll be sent to your sub-directory, right? Oh no! There is nothing there…yet. Every site is automatically based on two types of file, that I know of anyway. One file is named ‘index.html’ and the other is named ‘index.php’. If the host can’t find an ‘index.html’ file, it will look for an ‘index.php. file. Your job now is to put up a very simple ‘Under Construction’ index.html file that will be your placeholder. When someone types in your domain name, they will see your placeholder and know that you are working on your site. How do you do all of this? It’s easy. My next post will tell you all about it.

Thanks for reading. If you have questions, comments or ideas, please let me know. Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney

Domain Registration, Hosting, Internet

Your Very Own Website – Cheap!

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Did you know that for the price of a dozen lattes, you can set up your own website and .com name in a matter of minutes? Yup, for less than the price of a vanity plate for your car, you can carve a niche for yourself on the World Wide Web. Here’s how you can do it.

NOTE:  I use GoDaddy and FatCow but I do not work for either company, neither am I being reimbursed for anything I say here. GoDaddy is pretty good but I’m sure you can find similar or better hosts than FatCow. Above all, read reviews of these services before you sign up.

1. The cheapest domain registration that I have found is at GoDaddy.com. Depending on the type of domain you choose, you can get a full year or two of registration for less than $20.00, less than $12.00 for a year. Head over and see what kind of cool name you can think of for your site. Contrary to popular belief, not all the good names have been taken. Additionally, some names have expired and are abailable to be picked up again. Give it a shot. Remember, shorter is better. I like .com names simply because everyone remembers them. I had to use .ca for this one but most of mine are .com sites.

TIP: Just because you use GoDaddy for your domain registration, don’t feel that you have to use their hosting services…they’re expensive!

2. Since this is your first site, shared hosting is fine. No need to pay for things you don’t need (such as speed), so once you get your domain registered, head over to a hosting company such as FatCow. If you wonder why my site is sometimes slow to load, it’s because I use FatCow. However, you can host your site for less than $4.00 a month and you can sign up for two years, making the total less than $100.00 for that amount of time. If you don’t know what your future holds, book it for one year and have some fun. Should you decide not to use their hosting once your time is up, you can still keep the domain over at GoDaddy.

TIP: In my opinion, it’s better NOT to have your domain registration and hosting with the same company. If the hosting company goes belly up, you’re pretty safe with GoDaddy as a registration spot.

3. Once you set up your domain, use it to set up your hosting. FatCow seems to require a domain name to get an account. Once you get the hosting account, there is no limit to the number of domains you can host. That’s why they call it shared hosting, right? I have twelve sites on my one account so FatCow’s no-limit hosting is real. The downside to that is that the sites are often very slow to load. Once I get things going a bit more, I will switch to a faster (and more expensive) hosting company.

4. After you get the hosting, go back to GoDaddy and set the nameservers to route traffic over to your site. The details of all of this are a bit much for this first post on creating a new site so I’ll end this here. Trust me, it’s not complicated, it’s not technical and much of it, believe it or not, makes perfect sense. If you can use Word or Excel or configure your router, you’re up to creating your own website.

That’s it! For about $50.00 a year, you’ve got your own site. ($12.00 for the domain for a year and about $38.00 for the hosting per year) Think of it! Your very own soapbox for almost nothing. Yay!

TIP: Almost all of my sites use WordPress. You don’t have to know anything about coding html or css to use WordPress and your blog posts are entered in your browser, easy as pie, not complicated at all. Installing WordPress isn’t difficult and there is a five-minute installation routine that will hold your hand the whole way through. As these posts proceed, I will write about installing WordPress myself.

Thanks for reading! Questions and comments are welcome.

Computers, Encryption, Internet, Security, Windows

Security – Strong Passwords

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The biggest part of online and computer security is figuring out a strong password. Today’s post will be short, to the point and, I hope, fun. Here we go:

1. WordPress passwords are already quite secure, I mean the default ones. They are made up of letters (caps and small), numbers and symbols. When it comes times to add a new user, here’s a neat trick that I use with the help of Google Translate. I type in a phrase that is easy for me to remember, then I translate it into a foreign language. That foreign language has to use the same letters and symbols as English, Chinese doesn’t work, but if you choose something like Creole, this system will work well.

Example: I hate chickens translates in Creole to: M ‘rayi poul

That example is far too short to be really secure but I’m sure you know what I mean. The best part of this is that some of the symbols are already there. French uses different accents with some letters which would be very difficult to crack.

2. Mnemonic passwords are always fun, too. You can make up your own or try this website: Mnemonic Password Generator It will create a password for you which should be easy to remember with the use of sounds and the use of words for the five symbols in the generator.

3. Simply using 3 instead of e or 5 instead of f will create a strong password. Add to that some symbols, maybe enclosing everything in (brackets) works well, too. Typing symbols instead of your year of birth is another suggestion. !(%@ is 1952, right? Mix things up a bit and use things you know as well as mnemonics and you’ll be secure in everything you do online.

4. Passwords for online banking, email and blogs should be very secure. Keeping track of them on your computer doesn’t have to be as secure but you still want to prevent anyone from accessing them, just in case your computer is stolen. Using Locknote, as described in my last two posts is easy and fast. Send the Locknote to yourself in an email and keep a copy in your Dropbox.

5. Finally, change your passwords every few months. If you feel that something strange is happening in Facebook or your email account, change your password immediately. Don’t wait! If you’ve clicked on something and don’t feel comfortable about it, change your password immediately. Getting your account back after you’ve been locked out is time consuming and, frankly, embarrassing.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney

Computers, Encryption, Internet, Security

Email Encryption

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This is my second security related post. In searching for an easy way to encrypt email messages, I discovered that every technique was far to difficult to gain wide acceptance. How many of us use anything but web-based email anyway? POP3/IMAP email is what your ISP offers you when you sign up for your Internet access and, to my mind anyway, it’s a thing of the past. When you change ISPs, do you really want to change your email too? With web-based email (think Hotmail or Gmail), your email address is permanent, more or less.

Besides the problem with changing ISPs and having to change your email address, POP3/IMAP systems require you to download your email to your computer in order to read it. If there is a virus or malware in your email, it’s pretty obvious that it’s on your computer now, too. With web-based email you would have to download an attachment or click on a link in order to get burned by malware or a virus. Sure, it can still be done but the email isn’t on your computer. It’s on your email company’s servers and those are usually protected by reasonably robust virus scanners.

Given all the above information, what is the easiest way to encrypt your email? Well, my best bet would be Locknote by Steganos. As described in my last post : Security and Encryption , Locknote is a free, self-contained encryption container, program and message all in one unit.  Every other method required the use of a fully installed program, keys and confusion. Locknote is as simple as the proverbial pie. Here’s how you use it to encrypt your email:

1. Download and unzip Locknote.

2. In the Locknote folder, copy the locknote.exe file and put it on your desktop. Leave the original locknote.exe in the original folder.

3. Double-click the .exe file and you’ll see this:

locknote opening message
This is all you get, a simple, self-contained app.

4. The text that you see is a description of what Locknote is. Highlight and delete that text and write your own note here. Sure, it looks like hell but it’s just an email message, nothing fancy anyway. When you are finished, close Locknote using the red X up on the top right. This is what you will see next:

Enter your password
Before you can save the note, enter a STRONG password

5. This is where you are in control of your own destiny as far as sending encrypted email. A strong password is made up of three things: letters, numbers AND symbols. Don’t use a phrase or a name, use a series of numbers, letters and symbols. Symbols are !@#$*&^%, things like that. Use more then eight, fourteen is a good number here. Once you have settled on a password, and there are lots of ways to remember a good one, type it into the space and then enter it again in the second space that pops up next. Click OK.

6. At this point your Locknote.exe file is encrypted. No one can open it without the password that you just entered. Even you can’t open it if you have forgotten your password. Locknote uses ‘AES 256bit encryption’ and it’s secure, believe me. You can open the file, change the text and close it. Locknote will use the same password each time you close the program after asking you if you want to save the changes. The note can be changed 100 times but the password will stay the same UNLESS you decide to change the password. (File, Change Password)

7. Once your ’email’ note is written, you have to do one of two things in order to email it to someone. Actually, three things because you have to somehow get the Locknote password to that other person. You can use a separate email, a text SMS message or a telephone call. Think of something creative but DON’T put the password in the same email as your Locknote attachment.

Here are the two things you can do. Choose one, whatever is simplest for  you and your recipient:

1. Since you can’t send an ‘.exe’ file in an email. Here is what you’ll see:

Hotmail refuses to send an .exe file
For obvious reasons you can't send an .exe file in an email.

In order to get around this, you’ll have to change the file type from ‘.exe’ to ‘.txt’. Right-click the file and choose rename. Move the cursor to the far right, backspace three spaces (to the period) and type txt. Then hit enter and you’re done. Now you have locknote.txt on your desktop. If you try to open this file, Notepad will open it, no problem, but it will show as gibberish.

Open Hotmail or Gmail and attach the file ‘locknote.txt’ to it. In the body of your message, tell the recipient to download the file and then change the last three letters to ‘.exe’ instead of .txt. At that point, Locknote will work again. Your friend just has to double-click it, enter the password and read your message. To reply, all they have to do it delete your text or add to it and reverse the process.

2. The other way to send Locknote through your web-based email is to make a zip file. Right click, choose ‘add to zip’, choose a name and that’s it. Send it off as an attachment and have the person on the other end unzip it. Fairly easy but I prefer the first option.

If all of this seems too technical or too difficult, then you have to trust that no one else will read your email. If you really want to keep your email private, this is by far the easiest way. If any part of this is confusing, comment or ask me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney

Computers, Internet, Photography, Windows

SkyDrive

SkyDrive, part of Microsoft’s Hotmail division, gives you 25 gigabytes of storage for free. Yes, you read that right. While I have posted about the glories of Dropbox before, SkyDrive serves up more than 12 times the amount of room for the same low figure…that would be FREE!

You might think that SkyDrive is just for photos, and it works extremely well for that, but you can put just about anything you want in it. Sure, it’s fun to share photos but you can also share documents and other files, too. Don’t feel that you have to share everything, either. You control access to your own SkyDrive, just the way you can with Dropbox. If you want to share photos, for example, select a current contact or add an email address and SkyDrive will send out an email to the person with a personal invitation which includes a link to the photos.

Let’s say that four or five friends take a vacation together. Instead of screwing around with swapping pics via email or Facebook, you can all upload your pics to the same folder or each person can create their own folder and upload their pics to that. Depending on the permissions, you can share the folder for viewing or allow anyone to add, edit and delete photos, too. Watch out for that one, though. Make sure you set the permissions correctly or one of your ‘friends’ just might delete some of your pics.

It should be obvious that you need a Live account to use SkyDrive, right? Head over to msn.com and sign up for a hotmail account, if you don’t have one already. SkyDrive is available with any hotmail account, depending on where you live, I guess. Maybe in your part of the world you don’t get 25 gigs but here in North America you do. Once you’ve signed up and signed in, you’ll see the SkyDrive link at the top of the window. Click on it and you’ve got instant access to 25 gigs of space to use at your discretion. No porn, please. Even if you are the only person who can see what you put up there, part of the agreement or EULA that you ‘sign’ says no porn.

Here’s how I am using SkyDrive right now, as we speak. On Saturday I was the official photographer for my niece’s wedding. During the day and evening, I took 1248 photos. How the heck do I share all of those with friends and relatives? Well, I am uploading them all to one of my Skydrive accounts. Once the upload is finished, I can share the album with anyone who has an email address.

Here’s a pic of the GUI for SkyDrive:

The SkyDrive menu
This is where you set permission or add files.

This is a small pic, the original was very wide but you get the idea. Folders listed on the left, details across the center and folder controls on the right, shown with a mouse-over or hover to reveal the small ‘info’ button. You can add folders at the top, hell you can even access these drives from Windows Explorer simply by mapping a network drive. Details on that later.

You know, people think Hotmail is a silly concept, only used by teens or tweens. It’s not. With SkyDrive, Hotmail has become real competition to Gmail and any other free or ad supported mail service. I’m not a fan of Microsoft in any way but Hotmail is what I use day in and day out for my email and online storage. Give it a shot. Tell ’em Brian sent you.

Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney