Getting Started Chapter 5 – Testing and Troubleshoot

We have set up a domain and integrated it with hosting account. Now the time has come that we check if everything has gone by our plans.

Step 1

Type in the domain name name you registered in the address bar of your browser. Press enter and wait for your page to load. It shouldn’t too long as the site has nothing to show, or in other words its empty.  You will probably see a page with the directory listing of your home folder, i.e., public_html or htdocs.

Troubleshoot

I see a page which says ‘You account has been created’ or something similar instead the directory listing.

This is nothing unusual. Hosts usually create an index page by default. You don’t need and will have to delete it later.

My site doesn’t load at all. My damn browser shows a server timeout.

There can be a lot reasons to this. Lets discuss the common ones.

  1. Make sure your domain properly configed. Just check whether the nameservers you entered are correct or not.
  2. It may take up to 24 or 48 or 72 hours, depending on your host, for you domain to propagate.  You domain might not have propagated. You might have to wait for few more hours.
  3. Your cache memory still has the old values for your domain. Clear the cache and you’ll have your site working.

Step-2

Now the time has come to create our first personalized homepage (for testing).

Log on to your hosting account’s panel and find for something like ‘File manager’ and go to root folder (public_html on Linux servers or htdocs on windows servers). In this file you need to create a new file by the name of ‘index.html’. If a file named ‘index.html’ or ‘index.php’ or any index file already exists, you have to delete it first before creating the new one.

Once created open the file so that we add some stuff to it. I’ll say just type in a warm welcome for yourself, something like “Welcome to your site.” !!

Go open your website in an another window and you’ll see your message. So that means you are done with with testing.

Now we are through with the testing which means we can soon go live to a wider audience.

Mistakes made and problems faced by a blogger

When I started with blogging, I had a pretty unclear picture in mind on how to go about blogging. So the result was … mistakes. Human tendency to play and mess around with things is too high that no one gets started in the first go. You need to get through a lot of trouble.

Well mistakes cause problems and problems may lead to mistakes. Here are a few:

Domain with a typo

What if you are with limited resources and buying a domain. While entering the domain you typed “yourdoman.com” instead of “yourdomain.com”. They look pretty similar, right. (If still didn’t find the difference, they differ by just an “i”) Anyone can misjudge this to be right and carry on with the registration. But after registration , you’ll know that you wasted a domain and your 10 bucks. Such a situation sucks. Right?

No Backup, no blog

Well, I have been in such a situation several times now. Some mis happening may lead you to a dead end. Thinking positive, you didn’t take backup, and next day you loose your blog. You’ll be left with nothing expect two options. First to start all over again and second to quit.

What the heck, installation

Installation is fun once you are familiar with it. But for the first timers it can be a hell of a job. I’ll illustrate a few situations :

a) You installed wordpress and but forgot to note down the password provided to during installation. In such a situation, an experienced person would surely change the password using phpmyadmin or do something similar. But a newbie would probably reinstall the whole thing.

b) This happens with many of us, not only bloggers, I’ll say everyone. You downloaded, uploaded and are ready to install a software. And now while installing you come to know that your host wont support all the features and now you need to look for a new host. That is really annoying right!

c) In due to course of installing something, you have a power cut or your computer hangs. Then you’ll surely want to bang your head against the wall that now you gotta start all over again.

d) While installing you come across a field that has to be filled but you don’t know what to exactly fill. eg. you need to enter your mysql username. You created ‘user’ using control panel but you didn’t know that your host add some thing to it like “cpuser_user”. You’ll have good trying “user” when it wont work.

All’s well, that updates well

Suppose while updating your wordpress installation, an error shows up and your blog stops working. If you are a hardcore webdeveloper then maybe you’ll get over this but if not, you’ll have a hard time. You’ll feel helpless as you know what went wrong but really can’t do anything about it. Your blog will be nothing more than a living dead body as it would have everything but nothing would work.

This has even happened to me last year when while updating my blog, something happened and I lost everything.

No money, what to do?

If you got a job or have any other source of steady income, then this point wont bother you. But for people who are beginning or are still studying in schools or colleges then this should be a problem. You have to arrange the startup amount for the initialization by any means. And most people tend to start working as freelancers or turn to PTCs or such programs. Once you are through you’ll feel relieved as not only bloggers but everyone feel at ease if they got money around.

Time and tide wait for none

Well, its really hard to take out time if you are employed somewhere or you need to study. A blog really requires a lot of work to be done. If you can’t devote enough time to it then its gonna be difficult, both for you and your blog. With shortage of time, you can’t really interact with your readers properly, can’t post regularly(you may take my example on this). Nothing is left important when everything is important. You have focus on everything and mange your time well.

My site’s ready, what next?

So every thing’s set and you are ready to take over the world but…… how? Even when a blogger is through with his site, he is yet to face biggest challenge of all, traffic. Getting traffic is the most difficult job for a blogger, an internet marketer or even a small shop owner. To convince people to visit your blog and comment is quite tough.

Out of ideas, can’t think of anything

You have been going great guns past few months but suddenly ………….now what?

You really can’t think of anything interesting to write about. That’s a general thing to happen once you have written so much. Even when you have some ideas, there may come some stituations when you’ll not be able to exploit them. eg. You just got a brilliant idea in your head but while surfing you come across a post, by a fellow blogger, on the same topic. Well, that would be sad and in 90% cases you tend to drop that idea.

No one wants me to blog

Situations will arise when people around you will think that you are wasting your time. That would be very discouraging and some might even quit. You may lose your interest and all the inspiration. I’ve been in such situations and lemme tell you that it really sucks. One day or the other you’ll feel like, “Forget it! Blogging is not worth my time”. errr…. That was ugly.

& many more problems are faced by the bloggers.

You would have gone through similar problems or even something which I was not able to think. I know you wouldn’t mind to share your experience with me or tell about something which I can improve on in this article.

A blogger’s life is sweet, live it to the fullest.

Better and faster way to propagate your site without using nameservers

Originally posted on 2008-11-06

Sorry for such a long title. :P

What you see written up there is pretty much true but unpopular. Most of the times webmasters tend to just change the nameservers which take days to propagate,and this becomes pain in their butts. Now written below is a faster way to do it.

The answer is A records. Yes, they usually take only few minutes or sometimes hours to take effect worldwide.

What are A records?(from Wikipedia)

They return a 32-bit IPv4 address, most commonly used to map hostnames to an IP address of the host.

How to implement them?

First of all, check whether your host provides you with Dns facilities. If they don’t, you should try editdns.net.

Steps:

1. Note the shared ip address of your hosting account. If you use cpanel then the ip address written on the fronpage. If you don’t use cpanel, then just do a dns lookup of your host’s nameserver and get its IP address. You can use network-tools.com for this.

2. Add the following three A records to your domain:

(a) yourdomain.com – ip address you noted in the above step

(b) www.yourdomain.com – same ip address (without this record www.youdomain.com won’t work)

(c) *.yourdomain.com – same ip address (without this you won’t be able to create sub-domains using your hosting account. “*” means a wildcard entry)

You are all done and your domain will be working in a few minutes or very rarely hours.

Advantages of using A records:-

1. Faster propagation of domain.

2. You have control of other records like MX, CNAME, etc. instead transferring your controls to your host.

3. Gives you ability to use services like google apps, live domains, etc. to the full extend.

Disadvantages:

1. You won’t be able to use email accounts at your host till configure your MX records or you always have option to use google apps whcich is free.

2. Just one as far as I remember :P

Note: You need to use AAA records if the ip address s IPv6.

Enjoy!

Google Apps and how to set it up!

Originally posted on 19 jan 2009

Still using the ugly looking mail service from your hosting provider?
Its time for change!! Google’s waiting for ya!

Wondering what is Google Apps?? Here’s an overview:

An initiative by Google which provides free/paid mail service (@yourname.com) to individuals/ business/ organizations. And that’s not all. You make use of google talk, calender, docs, etc. using your address @yourdomain.com. “That’s cool”, I know!

Requirements:

* You need a domain. ( you know that!) even a co.cc would do!
* You need access to dns setting!! Most domain registrars provide you with that! If not read the “Note” at the end!

The “How to” :
* Reset your domain’s nameservers! Point your nameservers to your dns service provider’s nameservers (for those with no dns service provided by the the registrar).
* Check for the shared ip address in hosting’s control panel (or in short you need ip of you hosting providers’ nameservers!).
Instruction’s for cpanel:
1. Login into your cpanel account
2. In the left panel with all the stats, second is given the shred ip.
If you are unable to find the ip in your hosting’s panel, try these steps:
1. Go to http://network-tools.com/nslook/
2. Enter the first nameserver, generally ns1.somedomain.com, as the domain.
3. Select A records as the query type.
4. Click go.
5. Note the ip from results.
* Go to your domain’s dns control panel.
* Create the following records:
A record- yourdomain.com – ip noted above
A record- www.yourdomain.com – ip noted above
A record- *.yourdomain.com – ip noted above (* means wild card)
* Go to http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new and signup for google apps.
* Back to Dns control panel. Create few more records:

MailServer Hostname: – Priority- Type

ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. – 10 – MX
ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.- 20 – MX
ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.- 30 – MX
ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. -40 – MX
ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.- 50 – MX
ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. – 60 – MX
ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.- 70- MX

* Go to your google apps Control panel : http://google.com/a/cpanel/*yourdomain.com*/
* Click on “verify your ownership”.
Follow the steps and click on “I’ve completed the steps”.
* Back to Dashboard and Activate everything. Just click activate and the “I’ve completed th steps”. You are already done with all the steps.

So, now you are ready to use your gmail using @yourdomain.com address. “That’s awesome!” I know.

Note: * When you dns provider provides you with no dns service:
1. Go to http://editdns.net and register.
2. Add your domain.
3. Back to you dns panel: Change your nameservers to
ns1.us.editdns.net
ns2.us.editdns.net
ns3.us.editdns.net
4. Use editdns as your dns panel and follow steps mentioned above.

So are you planning to use it. Sure you are!! I know you wouldn’t mind leaving a comment!