Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
11
Why store your content in a database when it's just text? Isn't it just easier to have this material
surrounded with some variant of HTML or XML tags? When you think about a blog as a moving tar-
get, a combination of static and dynamic elements, the answer becomes apparent rather quickly.
Maintaining a blog full of static posts quickly becomes a logistical nightmare.
Coming up with enough blog content to keep people visiting can be hard enough without having to
continually think about how many posts should be on the front page, making individual perma-
linked pages for each of your posts, and all the comments people make on them. This is a job ripe
for automation, and the best way to automate content delivery is by keeping your data in one easily
accessed place.
Using FTP to Upload Files
The last piece of the preinstallation puzzle is a means to upload files from your computer to your
host. Do this with a program that uses the Internet standard File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Some of
the best FTP clients are available free of charge:
•
FileZilla
—Runs on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh; http://filezilla-project.org
•
CyberDuck
—Macintosh-only; http://cyberduck.ch
•
CoreFTP
—Windows-only; www.coreftp.com
note
You can even run a basic FTP
client from your Windows or
Linux command line.
For the purposes of this section, we focus on FileZilla, which is a
simple FTP client application that connects to your web host and
uploads your WordPress files with just a few setup steps. When
you signed up with your host, most likely they gave you information about uploading files to their
FTP server. Given its cross-platform character and its lack of cost, you might even find that your
host has step-by-step instructions for setting up FTP with FileZilla—one of the authors'
(McCallister's) host did!
After downloading and installing FileZilla, follow these steps to set up file transfer between your
computer and your web host:
1.
Launch FileZilla.
2.
Go to File, Site Manager (or click the first icon on the left in the toolbar). A dialog box appears.
3.
Click New Site to enter your information, as in Figure 11.2.
4.
Here is where you insert the connection information you received from your host. This includes
the following:
•
Host
—This is usually the same as your domain name, with ftp in front, for example,
ftp.myWPblog.com.
•
Servertype
—This should always be FTP.
•
Logontype
—For your website, this should usually be set to Normal. Anonymous FTP is for
when you visit a software download site, where the keepers don't really care who you are.
The Normal setting requires a password to get to.
