Make your own website

So you want to have your own website? But you don’t even know where to start. Well that is what this post is all about, showing you how you can have your own website.

Firstly there are a couple of things that you will need. You will need to register your domain name for example www.mydomainname.com , there are a lot of companies that will do this for you on the internet, this is really not very expensive depending on the type of domain you want (.com, .co.za, .biz, .org…). Be careful, you have to renew your domain name each year, so as not to lose your domain name. But usually your host (discussed next) will do this for you.

After you have a domain name you must find a company that will host your website for you, this is called your web host or simply just your host. When looking for a host there are a couple of things that you have to look out for, number one is how reliable is your host, how much uptime do they have, simply put the more uptime they have the less your site will be offline.
Secondly what is the amount of Disk space that they offer you, usually websites aren’t really that big, but they can get quite big if and when your business expands Usually a good starting size is about 5 gigabytes .

Thirdly you must check how much bandwidth they offer you. Bandwidth is basically how much data can be transferred to and from your site, think of it as a road, the more lanes are in it the more cars can drive on it. The same with bandwidth the more bandwidth you have, the more people can visit your site. Example: your page is 10MB in size, so every person who visits your site, automatically downloads 10MB of data to view your first page, now say 1000 people visit your site that is already 10 GB so watch out how much bandwidth you have.

You also have to check what is their line speed, this is the fastest that a web browser can download your page. Usually hosts have a very fast internet connection so you do not really have to worry about this.

Lastly you must also see what services they offer, like data bases (If your site needs a lot of updating, like a blog, then I would recommend using databases) and depending on what your site does, can the host’s server (the computer that you save your website on) support client and server side scripting?

After you have a domain name and a host you must start writing your own website. Websites are written in HyperText Markup Language or HTML. This is not a true programming language but a markup language using tags like and
to change the format and layout of your webpage.

After you have Written your website and tested it to make sure all the links work, you have to upload it to your ftp server, (the address and login details should be provide by your host).
And that is it, that is all it takes to get a website.

Below are a couple of links that you might find useful in your web developing.

http://www.mweb.co.za/productspricing/Hosting/uncappedhosting.aspx
Mweb is a host situated in South Africa, that offers a really good Uncapped hosting package. They have uncapped disk space and bandwidth, and also their web hosting packages are very affordable.
http://www.axxess.co.za/hosting-south-african
This is also a very good host in South Africa, they do not offer as much as Mweb, but I would recommend them.
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
This site will teach you everything you need to know about HTML and other web developing languages, all for free.
http://filezilla-project.org/
Filezilla is a free FTP client to help you with uploading your site to the server.

How to speed up your Windows 7 pc

As complex and daunting as this might seem it is really not that hard to do. but let us first take a look at what makes your PC so slow in the first place. The biggest contributor to this ongoing hassle, is memory, or the lack thereof . Usually when our PCs slow down to where we want to pick it up and throw it out of the window (which will not solve your problem!) we take them to some or other computer shop where they ask you a lot of money to do what you can do yourself, if you only knew how.

1. But how you ask, well first you can go through your programs and delete the programs that you no longer need.

• Go to the start button on your desktop (usually bottom right of the screen).
• On the right look for "Control Panel" open it. The control panel will open up.
• Look for "Programs" or "Uninstall a Program". The uninstall programs  window will open.
• Go through the list and look for programs that you no longer need or don't use 
• Select "Change/Uninstall" from the top of the window ( Be careful, once its deleted you cannot get it back!)

Follow these general rules to stay safe when deleting programs:
If you do not know the program DON'T delete it!
Only delete programs that YOU have installed yourself, and you know you won't need it any more!
You can also clean up some more space by doing the following

• Go to Windows Explorer also called My Computer.
• Right click on your default drive, usually "C"
• Click on "Properties" at the bottom of the drop-down window
• This will open up the properties panel for that drive. Select the "Disk Cleanup" button on the general tab (it should open up in this tab when you open the properties)
• The "Disk Cleanup" window will open. Make sure all the check boxes are ticked and click on "Clean up system files"
• It will ask if you are sure that you want to delete all of these files, click on "Delete all".

2. After you have done this you must clean up your system registry, for this you will need a external program. I always use CCleaner from Piriform, you can find it here: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/standard  

• Download and install the cleaner
• Open CCleaner from the desktop shortcut automatically created.
• Once it has opened, cllick on "Registry" on the left hand panel
• Click on "Scan for issues",  the program will now scan for registry problems.
• If it has finished scanning you will see a whole list of errors and problems found in the right hand panel, don't worry what they are just click on "Fix selected issues..."
• A popup window will appear asking you if you want to backup your registry, this is only a precaution so that you can recover your registry as it is before you fixed it. If you select yes, you will be prompted to save a backup file on your hard drive.
• After this another popup window appears, this just gives you a  information on individual problems, but just click on "Fix all selected options"

3. Now that you have cleaned your registry you must do a full virus scan on your computer, this is done in your Anti-Virus programme, if you do not have one yet, I strongly reccomend you get one NOW!
You can get a free one here: http://free.avg.com/za-en/free-antivirus-download
Just download and install this antivirus on your computer and you are safe. Now that you have a antivirus you must open it and run a full scan on your computer, if problems are found your antivirus should fix the problem on its own.

4. Your computer should now be considerably faster but I still reccomend defraging your system, this should also speed up your computer. Open the properties panel of your default drive (See above). Go to the tools tab and click on "Defragment now...". Once the defrag window opens click on the drive you want to defrag (usually "C" drive) so that it is highlighted, next click on "Defragment now". your drive will now be defragmented.


Well your computer should now be considerably faster. The above are things that you should not only do when your computer  is slow, but it is good housekeeping to do this atleast once a month.

Download videos from youtube

I have always wondered how people can download videos from YouTube, but i could never find the correct software for the job.

The other day I read a article on how to speed up your Internet download speed and came across a very nice bit of software that really works. it is called Internet Download manager. You can find here
http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/

Installing :

• Download the executable from the above link, click on "try Internet download manager"
• When the download box opens click on "open" or "run" depending on your browser. 

Internet download manager should configure itself correctly and then you can start using it (you don't need to open it before browsing it runs in the background of your computer.)

Now go to YouTube and when you watch a video you should see a small notification from idm in the top right hand corner saying "download with idm" click on this and idm should download the file for you.


Idm will manage all your downloads from the Internet, and also it should speed up most of them.