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Table of Contents for this issue.....

1.    Authors Comments

2.    Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

3.    Setting up Your First Website and Email

4.    FTP – File Transfer Protocol (Video)

Author's Comments

Lot ’s going on at the company this week.  The highlight was the completion of the test of a new shipping container for shipping temperature sensitive pharmaceutical products.  This container must maintain the internal temperature in the range of a refrigerator (2° - 8° C, 36° – 46° F) for 120 hours (5 days).  This must be done without any external power to the container.  The container kept the temperature under the high limit of 8°C for 190 ½ hours.  This is just 1 ½ hours short of 8 days.  Our R & D is showing great results.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments  

A good question was asked about copyrights. “When you copyright your piece and use a pen name that is not currently your legal name, do you use that name after the "copyright" mention or your legal name?”  

This is a great question and took some research, but Google prevailed and I found the answer at http://www.ivanhoffman.com/pennames.html.  In the article, Mr. Hoffman who practices intellectual property law in California states that a work can be copyrighted in the pen name of the author.  He has some other interesting information about copyrights so take a look.  

Another question concerned using a web based email address for your business address.  Web based email is hotmail, yahoo mail, gmail, etc.  This does not present a professional appearance since it says “I do not own my own Internet real estate”.  You really need an address that is your-name@your-domain-name.com.

You say to yourself, “I don’t have a domain name or website so how can I have my own email address?”  My suggestion is to set one up.  You say, “I don’t know how.” My suggestion is to let me guide you though the process.  You say, “I don’t have a domain name yet, and I don’t know what I want to use.”  My suggestion is to pick a domain name that represents you and set it up.  It does not have to be the domain name that you will ultimately use for marketing your products.  In our case, we use John Howe , Inc. www.jhowe.com as our base site.  All the email addresses from our other sites forward to the jhowe.com email address.  You can establish a one page website and have your own email address associated with it.  It is yours forever and is your identity forever (as long as your pay your domain registration).  

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input.  With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.  

Setting up Your First Website and Email

I will make you a deal, if you use Hostexcellence.com for your website hosting, I will lead you through setting up a website and establishing your own email address.  I will create a set of videos to show you how.  Just use my affiliate link with Hostexcellence so I can receive small compensation for my efforts, and I will make the time to do this.

The reason I am suggesting Hostexcellence is that I have used it for several years, and I know how to do things on it quickly and efficiently.  If you have a favorite web host that you are considering, I am sorry but I do not have the time to learn the quirks of several web hosts to help everyone.

Hostexcellence has a program called Express Excellence which costs $2.95 per month for a two year contract (no set up fee).  If you want to test the water, it costs $5.95 per month for three months plus $25 set up fee.  There are prices in between these for other lengths of service.  My advice is if you have been sitting around procrastinating about jumping into having your own website, take the plunge and sign up for the two year plan.  Take the leap of faith and don’t look back.

You can register your domain name wherever you want.  This should cost under $10.00 per year.  Hostexcellence is too expensive at $15.00 per year.  YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN NAME WITH THE SAME COMPANY THAT HOSTS YOUR WEBSITE.

Also, try to stay with the “.com” extension.  It is still the most respected of the domain name extensions.

In the future, when you establish your other web site(s), you can upgrade to the next hosting plan (Business Excellence) which is what we use.  This will host up to eight unique domain names.  You can keep your base domain that you started with in your Express Excellence account and add seven additional domains to it as you build your business.

If you are ready to jump, send me an email at john (at) boomer-ezine.com and let me know that want to participate in the project.  Also, go to Hostexcellence using the following link to establish my affiliate link on the Hostexcellence site.

https://www.hostexcellence.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=jvwh

Now is the time to establish your own .com email address.  TAKE ACTION!

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

This is the Internet protocol that is used to transfer large files and volumes of data over the Internet.  It is most commonly used to upload web pages from personal computers to the web server where the website is hosted.

I use FTP in my business to transfer large CAD (computer assisted design) files between the company drafting computer and a vendor (smaller files can be sent as email attachments, but the large CAD files often exceed the size limit on email attachments).  We design an item using our design software.  When we want a vendor to bid on making the item, we develop an RFQ (request for quote) and email the RFQ and ask for the vendor’s FTP information.  The vendor will give us the FTP access information and we will transfer the file from our computer to his computer using FTP.  The vendor can then open the file with his CAD software, study the item to be manufactured, and send us a quote for making the part.  All this is done electronically – no “blueprints”.

There are two ways to use FTP.  You can learn the 36 or so FTP commands and become an FTP wizard using the brute force method or you can use a program that handles the FTP automatically.  I recommend the latter.

Get an FTP program for your home computer for this communication.  You can find various FTP programs using Google.  Some of them are free for personal and non-profit use.  Most of them have a free trial period so you can play with them and see how they work.  I personally use CuteFTP which costs $39.99.  This program acts like and works like Windows Explorer with a drag and drop interface.

Now let’s talk about uploading web pages.  When you establish a website with a web host, you will be given FTP access to your website.  This consists of a user name and password.  To start an FTP connection, load your FTP program and give it the name of the website or the IP address to which you want to establish the FTP connection and click Connect.  If you have not already set up your user name and password, you will be asked for it.

When the connection is established, the screen will show a split screen with all the files on your home computer on the left and the files on the website on the right.  You can click on any file on either your home computer or your website and rename or delete any of them.  If you want to upload a file from your computer to the website, you highlight it and hold the left mouse button down as you drag it from the home computer side of the screen to the website side of the screen.  The file will be sent via FTP to the website and will appear on the website side of the screen indicating that it was transferred over the Internet to the website.  That is how it is done.  Too easy!

I was telling you about starting your own website earlier.  This is how you create your first webpage and put it up.  You do not even have to have an HTML editor.  Did you know that you can create an HTML page with MS Word?  If you want to create that one page website, create a nice looking page in Word and when you get ready to save it, click “Save As” and specify for it to be saved as a Web Page (*htm, *html).  This can be your home page to establish your “turf” on the Net.  Now you can add a personal email address to go with your home page.

I have created a short video showing the workings of FTP using CuteFTP and accessing one of my websites.  It shows how easy it is to use FTP to upload a webpage from my home computer to the website.

Click here to play the video.

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Videos/V1I30Video/Click-to-Play.html

The Sample Home Page that we uploaded in the video can be viewed at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Sample_Home_Page.htm.

Scout around and check out what is available for FTP programs.  A free one that sounds like it operates similarly to CuteFTP is SmartFTP.  You might take a look at it.  You can download CuteFTP and try it for 30 days for no charge.  Thirty days will give you plenty of time to upload your home page to establish your website.  

That wraps up our issue for this week.  Start planning your new website.  Until next week, stay tuned.  

John and Linda Howe

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Copyright 2006 John Howe , Inc.