Build Your Own Website

Chapter One...
Start Here
Welcome to our course on building your own business website using Joomla, the
worlds most powerful web building tool!
Chapter One includes the following four sections:
1.1 Why Joomla is Better than Wordpress
1.2 Evolution of Web Building Tools
1.3 How to Protect your Online Business
1.4 Steps to Secure your Domain Name and Web Hosting
In Section 1,1, we begin with a summary of the many benefits of building your
business website with Joomla. Because so many business owners make the
mistake of trying to use Wordpress for their business website, we also include a
precise explanation of why Wordpress business websites eventually turn into a
poorly organized mess.
In Section 1.2, we provide a history of the internet and web building tools to help
you better understand where Joomla fits into the bigger picture.
In Section 1.3, we warn of major problems that have led to many online
businesses being forced to shut down and how you can protect your online
business from this problem.
In Section 1.4, we review essential steps for securing your online business
domain name and web hosting.
Questions? Feel free to post any questions on our course website forum!
http://collegeintheclouds.org/forum
Are you ready to take your online business to a higher level?
Lets get started!
Build your Own Business Website
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 1
1.1 Why Joomla is Better than Wordpress

In this article, we begin with a summary of ten general benefits of building your
business website with Joomla the world's most powerful web building tool. We
will then describe ten specific reasons why Joomla is better than Wordpress for
building a modern interactive website.
Ten Reasons to Choose Joomla to Build your own Business Website
Joomlas easy installation along with its intuitive administration panel makes it
very popular with users who want a website they can control without the need
to know any computer programming - while also being packed with thousands of
optional features. Joomla sites offer several advantages over other web building
platforms. Below are the top ten reasons you should use Joomla to build your
business website.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 2
Ten Benefits of Joomla over other web building tools

Joomlas easy installation along with its intuitive administration panel makes it
very popular with users who want a website they can control without the need
to know any computer programming - while also being packed with thousands of
optional features. From the beginning, Joomla sites offered several advantages
over other web building platforms especially in the area of Content
Management. Below are ten reasons for building your website with Joomla.
#1... Joomla offers a better organized more user friendly Control Panel
The Main Menu of the Joomla Control Panel is much better organized than the
Main Menu of the Wordpress Dashboard or any other web building tool. Joomla
also provides a series of Quick Links which are not found in Wordpress.
#2... Joomla 3.5 is mobile ready

Beginning with Joomla 3.5, all Joomla websites come mobile ready. This means
that they have the ability to change their appearance to adapt to the width of the
browser screen and display content in a different manner on a desktop, tablet or
smart phone.
David Spring M. Ed.
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#3... Joomla offers thousands of free and low cost tools called extensions
Joomla offers many extra tools called extensions to help you build and manage
your business website. It is important to know not just the Joomla core but also
how to select, install and use essential Joomla extensions.
The Joomla Extension Directory is more transparent and efficient than any other
web building tool as all Joomla extensions are grouped into logical categories
and organized by function. When you click on to specific categories, you see a
list of only the extensions which apply to that category. The extensions are
ranked by popularity. Then when you go to the page of a particular extension, the
reviews are posted right below the extension. This makes it very easy to quickly
identify the advantages and drawbacks of all of the Joomla extensions.
#4... Joomla comes with a database so it can be used to build an interactive
website rather than an uninteresting and difficult to change static website
The term static means that the web page contains only text and images. A static
website does not change or interact with the viewer in any way.
Many traditional website building tools are more about design than function. They
are built using HTML and CSS computer programming codes. With traditional
web building tools, you may come away with a beautiful looking web page. But
there is typically no way for the customer to interact with your website, and it is
very difficult for your to change and grow your website over time. With Joomla's
hidden database, if you want to organize data sent to you by users, such as an
email sign up list, you can set up multiple mailing lists and send out custom
newsletters with just the click of a button.
David Spring M. Ed.
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#5: Joomla uses a Category Manager to help a business owner carefully

organize website content.
According to Google, a typical small business website has more than 250 pages
and more than 1000 images. These pages and images should be organized into
categories to keep the website structure from becoming a mess over time. Sadly,
some web building tools such as Wordpress organize content by date rather than
by category. If you will be building a small business website it is important to
know how to use predefined categories to structure your website content and
menu items in a manner which can grow as your website pages grows.
Why a Category Manager is essential for a small business website

A small business website is different from a personal blog in that you will likely
have much more content which means you will have many more pages and
many more images. If you have an online store, you will have categories of
products and within each category, each of your products will need its own web
page. If you business is educational, you will have categories of topics and each
subject within each category will also have its own page. Each web page will
consist of a series of text, images and videos. Therefore, if you have ten primary
categories of products, each with four subcategories, you will have 40 categories.
If each category has an average of 10 products and 10 images, you will have 400
products and images. This huge amount of content will quickly become a major
mess unless you carefully organize your web content with a content
management system.
#6... The Joomla Media Manager also allows you to organize images in
folders by categories and subjects
A content rich website can have hundreds of articles or products. If each
article/product has ten images, you could have 1,000 images. With the Joomla
Media Manager, the images can be organized by topic rather than date. Even
better, the images can be organized by article with article folders placed inside of
category folders which can be numbered in the order that the categories appear
on the main menu. If you have a business website with dozens of products and
images, Joomla will help you organize all of your pages, products and images in
simple linked tables so that they all work together as an integrated whole.
David Spring M. Ed.
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#7...The Joomla Article Manager Table has more features than any other
web page building tool
The Joomla Article Manager includes not only dozens of options for each article
you write, but also includes an Options area for setting the default values of what
to display and how to display it for all of your articles.
#8... The Joomla Menu Item Manager offers more than one dozen menu
item types
Most web build tools lack the ability to define different menu item types. Joomla
divides the creation of a menu item into several crucial steps. The first step is
selecting a Menu Item type. The most common choice is Single Article. But you
can select Category Blog and Joomla will put lots of articles on the same page
(similar to what Wordpress does). Or you can click on Category List and the
Menu Item will display a list of articles. In fact, there are more than 20 different
kinds of menu item types available for a Joomla website!
#9... The Joomla User Manager allows you to precisely define user access
groups
A huge advantage for Joomla over other web building tools is the ability to define
your own user groups and permissions. This is extremely important to nonprofits,
business owners and instructors who would like to better define which users are
in which groups so that different groups of users will see different pages in
addition to all groups seeing the public pages.
#10... Joomla offers online help through the official Joomla forum
Over the years, with the help of thousands of volunteer members of the Joomla
community, the Joomla forum has provided answers to more than 70,000
questions. There is a direct link to the Joomla forum in the Control Panel Help
section of every Joomla website. To reach the Joomla forum, go to the following
link: http://forum.joomla.org/
Why Joomla is Better than Wordpress
One of the most decisions any new website owner faces is which Content
Management System they will install on their domain. This decision often comes
down to Joomla versus Wordpress. This is because the other two options,
Dreamweaver and Drupal, are difficult to use and lack many important features.
David Spring M. Ed.
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Many novices have been lured into getting a Wordpress blog due to the fact that
they can get their site hosted for free on Wordpress. Many have also been misled
by claims that Wordpress is easier to use than Joomla. Sadly, after spending
many hours, days and months trying to adjust the appearance and structure of
their Wordpress website, they are left with a site where they cannot control the
appearance and the content is a mess. This is particularly a problem for small
business owners or nonprofit organizations that depend on their website to
generate revenue and promote their cause and therefore requires a lot of highly
organized content on their site.
There have been dozens of articles written on why Wordpress is better than
Joomla or Joomla is better than Wordpress. However, none of these past articles
have compared the actual interfaces and functions of Joomla and Wordpress.
In this article, I will use the Joomla and Wordpress interfaces and functions to
explain why it is a mistake to use Wordpress for anything other than a personal
blog and why it is irresponsible to claim that Wordpress is easier than Joomla. In
the long run, it is much easier to control the appearance and structure the
content of a Joomla website than a Wordpress website.
Comparing the Installation of Wordpress to Joomla
It is easy to install Wordpress on the Wordpress.com website. You do not need to
get a hosting account or pay for hosting. But you are then left with a URL that
looks like mylamebusiness.wordpress.com. You are also left with a Wordpress
website which, as we will show below, is lacking many important functions.
With Joomla, to get a real domain name and shared web hosting costs about $10
per month. This is a very small price to pay for a modern interactive website.
Nearly all web hosts offer a One Click Install of both Wordpress and Joomla. The
one click installation process is nearly identical. Both Wordpress and Joomla
require setting up a database and installing the program in the database. The
entire process takes less than one minute. For both, simply click on Install Now.
Comparing the Default Sample Content
With Joomla, you have the option of installing Sample Content while Wordpress
comes with the sample content installed whether you want it or not. The sample
content on Wordpress is very basic with only a Home page and a sample page.
Here is the Wordpress Default Content Home Page:
David Spring M. Ed.
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Wordpress Sample Content is barren. In contrast, Joomla sample content is

quite detailed with more than a dozen sample pages. Joomla places a lot of
instructional articles and examples in their Sample Content. The Joomla Home
page therefore looks complex. This might misled a novice into thinking that
Joomla is harder than Wordpress when in fact, just the opposite is the case!
Because Joomla offers many more tools and features, it is actually easier in the
long run to build a fully functioning Joomla website than a basic Wordpress
website. You do not need to use any of these tools if you do not want them. But it
is better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them.
Comparing the Wordpress Login Page to the Joomla Login Page
There is no difference between the Wordpress and Joomla Login pages. Both
require you to remember your username and password to log in. Both also have
a direct link from the login page to the website Home page. After you log in with
Wordpress, you are taken to the Wordpress Administrator Opening Screen,
which Wordpress calls the Dashboard. After you log with Joomla, you are taken
to the Joomla Administrator Control Panel.
Comparing the Wordpress Dashboard to the Joomla Administrator Control
Panel: Joomla Benefit #1... Joomla Administrator Menu Items are better
organized than Wordpress Administrator Menu Items
Wordpress places their instructional articles in the backend while Joomla uses
their instructional articles in the front end. Joomla does a better job of
demonstrating the options for structuring a website. But it does look more
complex to the novice. Below is the Wordpress Dashboard:
The Wordpress Administrator menu is a poorly structured side menu which is

difficult to see and understand. Below are the top level menu Wordpress
administrator items with the submenus in parenthesis:
Posts (All Posts, Add New, Categories, Tags)
Media (Library, Add New)
Pages (All Pages, Add New)
Comments (No submenu)
Appearance (Themes, Widgets, Menu, Header, Background, Editor)
Plugins (Installed Plugins, Add New, Editor)
David Spring M. Ed.
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Users (All Users, Add New, Your Profile)

Tools (Available Tools, Import, Export)
Settings (General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, Links, Welcome Plugin).
Compare this to the Joomla Administrator Control Panel. After you log into
Joomla, you are provided with a horizontal top menu which contains all of the
administrative links in drop down menus.
Below is the Joomla 3.5 Control Panel Top Menu
Joomla places their administrator functions in a horizontal top menu rather than a
vertical side menu. Clicking on any of these top menu items reveals a submenu.
Arrows to the right of submenus indicate quick links such as Add New Article.
For the sake of readability, the Component Submenu is not shown. Below are the
top level menu Joomla administrator items with the submenus in parenthesis:
Site (Control Panel, Global Configurations, Clear Cache, System Information)
Users (User Manager, Groups, Access Levels, User Notes, Mass Mail Users)
Menus (Menu Manager, Main Menu Item Manager)
Content (Article Manager, Category Manager, Feature Articles, Media Manager)
Components (Several default components plus the ability to add dozens more)
Extensions (Extension Manager, Module Manager, Template Manager)
Help (Joomla Help, Official Support Forum, Documentation Wiki, Joomla
Extension Directory and other useful Joomla links)
All of these menu items can be confusing to a novice. But there are many more
menu items to learn when writing in a MS Word or Libre Writer document. So to
help the novice, Joomla also offers Quick Links to the most important screens.
David Spring M. Ed.
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This was the Quick Links screen in Joomla 2.5:
In Joomla 3.5, Quick Links have changed to a Side Menu which is easier to see
and use from a portable device. Below is the new Quick Links Side Menu.
The most important screen for either Wordpress or Joomla is the Article
Manager. Click on this link to go to the Joomla Article Manager Table.
Joomla Benefit #2: The Joomla Article Manager Table has more features
than the Wordpress All Posts Table
In the Wordpress Administrator Menu, click on Posts, All Posts to see the All
Posts Table. This is the Wordpress Version of the Joomla Article Manager:
David Spring M. Ed.
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By default, Wordpress orders articles by the time and date they were posted.
Clicking on the arrows to the right of the title (arrow hidden) changes the order to
alphabetical. Clicking on the arrow to the right of the date (arrow shown) changes
the order back to date. But there is no way to sort articles by subject! Also,
whatever way they are shown in the table, all articles are ordered by date posted
in the front end of the website. Below is the Joomla Article Manager:
The Joomla Article Manager has four main advantages over the Wordpress All
Posts Table. First, one can set articles to display on the Home Page with the
Featured Articles function or in the Main Menu if Featured is set to No.
Second, Joomla Ordering arrows make it is easier to control the order of articles.
You have much greater control over where any article appears on the page and
how functions such as READ MORE buttons are displayed.
Third, the Joomla Access button allows you to set some pages for public display
while other pages are reserved for special groups.
David Spring M. Ed.
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Fourth, the Joomla Options button allows for all kinds of different ways to display
pages. Below are just a few of the settings available from the Joomla Article
Manager Options Screen:
These options allow you to control nearly every aspect of the appearance of your
articles and pages with just the click of a button. The Wordpress All Posts Table
is simpler than the Joomla Article Manager Table. But is it simpler because it is
missing many important functions.
Joomla Benefit #3... The Joomla Add New Article screen offers more
features than the Wordpress New Post screen
Whether you use Wordpress or Joomla, you have to click on Add New to add a
new post or a new article. Below is the Wordpress Add New Post Screen:
With Wordpress, you give the post a Title and add text. To add images, click on
the Add Media button (assuming you have already added the images to the
Wordpress Media Library). You can create categories and assign posts to
categories. But by default, Wordpress organizes posts by date rather than by
category. Below is the Joomla Add New Article screen:
David Spring M. Ed.
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With Joomla, you also give the post a Title and add text. To add images, you click
on a button called images. Like with Wordpress, the images need to be added to
the Joomla Media Manager before inserting them into the article. But in addition,
Joomla allows you to set whether the article appears on the Home page or not
and whether the article is accessible to the public or requires registration to view.
There are also more than one dozen custom settings which are in the Joomla
Article Edit side menu (not shown above). Once again, Wordpress appears to be
simpler. But that is because it is missing several important functions.
Joomla Benefit #4... The Joomla Category Manager table offers more
features and is easier to use than the Wordpress All Categories Table
Wordpress has you add new categories using a different process than adding
new Wordpress posts. Instead of being taken to a different screen, new
categories are added in the same screen as the table of categories. When a
category is created, a category blog menu item for it is also created in the Front
End Side Menu and all posts assigned to this category are automatically placed
in this blog page. This is one of many reasons that Wordpress is harder to learn
than Joomla. Folks using Wordpress have trouble figuring out how to add and
use categories. So they often skip this screen and put all posts in the same
category. This results in their Wordpress website eventually turning into a mess.
Below is the Joomla Category Manager screen:
David Spring M. Ed.
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To add a new category in Joomla, click on NEW in the same manner that you
click on NEW to add a new article, add a new menu item, or add a new module
to a Joomla website. This repetition of actions makes Joomla much easier to use
than Wordpress.
Joomla Benefit #5... The Joomla Media Manager offers far better
organization than the Wordpress Media Library
Below is the Wordpress Media Library with a bunch of images uploaded.
The Media Library is perhaps the worst problem with Wordpress. I recommend
having as much space devoted to images as to text. A content rich website might
have one hundred articles (or one hundred posts). If each article/post has ten
images, you could have 1,000 images on your website. Sadly, Wordpress will
organize these images by the month and year they were loaded. In other words,
your Wordpress image folder will eventually be a disorganized nightmare.
Below is the Joomla Media Manager
David Spring M. Ed.
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Note that, with Joomla, images can be organized by topic. Even better, the
images can be organized by article with article folders placed inside of category
folders which can be numbered in the order that the categories appear on the
main menu. For example, above are the folders for the four articles in the first
category. Open any of these folders to show the images which are numbered in
the order in which they appear in the article. Thus, even if you have one
thousand images, they can be organized as ten images, each in ten articles
folders which are each in ten category folders. Creating new folders is done
simply by clicking on the Create New Folder button. You can also view the folders
and/or images in a table by clicking on the Detail View button.
Joomla Benefit #6... The Joomla Menu Item Manager offers more features
than the Wordpress Pages Table
The Wordpress Pages table is a very basic table. To add a new page or new
menu item, you click on Add New. Then give the page a Title and some content.
The title automatically appears in the main menu and the content appears on the
page. What is missing is the ability to define different menu item types.
Below is the Joomla Menu Item Manager:
David Spring M. Ed.
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To add a new menu item, simply click on New. This brings up this screen:
Joomla divides the creation of a menu item into several crucial steps. The first
step is clicking on blue Select button to select a Menu Item type.
This brings up a selection screen:
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There are several categories of menu item types. Click on Articles to see the
most common types.
The most common choice is Single Article. But you can select Category Blog and
Joomla will put lots of articles on the same page (similar to what Wordpress
does). Or you can click on Category List and the Menu Item will display a list of
articles. In fact, there are more than 20 different kinds of menu items available for
a Joomla website! After you choose a menu item type, the New Menu Item
screen will change to reflect the choice you made. With a single new article on a
page, the following screen will appear:
Joomla now knows you want an article. Clicking on the lower Select button takes
you to the Joomla Article Manager where you can select the article you want to
link to this menu item. In other words, with Joomla, you first write the article and
then create a menu item for the article.
With Wordpress, it is much more limiting. You first have to create the menu item
(in other words the Wordpress Page). You then add the content directly to the
page. If you want to add a post to a page, you have to install a separate plugin or
alter the code. Once again, Wordpress appears to be simpler than Joomla. But
once again, it is because Wordpress is missing two very crucial functions the
ability to assign menu item types and the ability to assign articles to pages.
David Spring M. Ed.
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Joomla Benefit #7... The Joomla Extensions system offers more features
and is easier to use than the Wordpress Plugins system
The Wordpress Plugins Menu is the equivalent of the Joomla Module Manager
and Plugin Manager all rolled into one as Wordpress does not distinguish
between components, modules and plugins. They are all called Plugins. You can
add more plugins by going to the Wordpress Plugin Directory. However, the
categories on this website are quite a disorganized mess. The plugins are not
categorized by function. Instead, they are categorized by tags which are listed
by terms such as widget, post, plugin, admin, posts, sidebar, twitter, google,
comments, images, page and links. Clicking on the Plugins tag brings up a list of
126 pages organized solely by the date they were updated. The tag called
Widgets has 222 pages of randomly assorted extensions. With Wordpress, to
find the best plugins for your website, you literally have to read several hundred
pages. Then you need to read hundreds more pages to learn how to use these
plugins.
You can enter search terms. But these do not properly categorize the plugins. For
example, enter the term shopping cart and you will get 33 pages of entries
showing 236 plugins. Clicking on Most Popular does bring the highest
downloaded shopping carts to the top of the list. But you are still left to wander
through 33 pages of random content which includes many plugins that are not
shopping carts but simply payment systems. If you want to see the customer
reviews, you need to click on the plugin and then click on another page to see
the reviews.
The Joomla Extension Directory and upload system is much more transparent
and efficient. First, there is an All Categories page which shows you all of the
categories and all of the subcategories and all of the extensions in each:
Second, go to the Ecommerce section and click on Shopping Carts and you will
find 24 options, all of which are actually Shopping Carts! Instead of 33 pages of
mostly junk, you get 2 pages of well-organized information.
David Spring M. Ed.
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You can quickly tell that VirtueMart is a non-commercial (or free) extension that
includes a component, module and plugin. You can also tell that 392 people have
reviewed it. When you click on VirtueMart, you are taken immediately to a page
with a summary of features and the latest reviews. After selecting the extensions
you want and downloading them, you install all of them the same way with the
Joomla Extensions Manager. Components then appear in the components menu
item, modules appear in the Module Manager and Plugins appear in the Plugins
Manager. Below is the Joomla Module Manager:
Note that this Module Manager screen looks just like the Article Manager, the
Category Manager and the Menu Item Manager. There are two ways to add a
new module. First, you can go to the Joomla Extensions Directory and load the
extension you are interested in using the Joomla Extension Manager.
The second way to create a new Joomla Module by clicking on New which takes
you to the Select a Module Type screen. Joomla allows you to create many
different kinds of modules. The most common module is a Custom HTML box.
You can give the box a title and select a position in the page to display it. You can
then add text and images just like it was an Article. You then assign this box to
any pages you would like. There is no question that it is much easier to add and
configure extensions with the Joomla system than with the Wordpress system.
This is huge because neither Joomla nor Wordpress works very well by itself.
Both require a lot of extra tools. Joomla makes this process of adding tools
extremely easy while adding Wordpress plugins is a real nightmare.
David Spring M. Ed.
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Joomla Benefit #8... The Joomla User Manager offers more features than
the Wordpress User Table
The Wordpress User Menu Item is the equivalent of the Joomla User Manager. It
is also very basic. There are only a few roles which a user can be assigned to.
Below is the Joomla User Manager:
A huge advantage for Joomla over Wordpress is the ability to define your own
user groups, access levels and permissions. This is extremely important to
nonprofits, business owners and instructors who would like to better define which
users are in which groups so that different groups of users will see different
pages in addition to all groups seeing the public pages. Wordpress does not
offer anything close to this versatility.
Joomla Benefit #9...The Joomla Design Control Template is much easier to
use than any Wordpress Theme
The Wordpress Appearance/Themes Tab is similar to the Joomla Template
Manager. Clicking on this menu item brings up the Manage Themes screen:
To customize the Twenty Twelve theme, click on Customize. There is not much
that can be customized. By comparison, these are some of the dozens of
customization options of the Joomla Design Control template:
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A major problem with Wordpress is the inability to place text over a header
image. The only way to get both words and an image in the header is to create
an image with the text in the image and upload that. By contrast, with the Joomla
Design Control template, you can load a background image into the template and
then place the text in an HTML module loaded into the same Logo position.
These are just a few of many problems with Wordpress themes. You run into the
same lack of function when trying to change the appearance of menus, forms,
positions and just about anything else on your website. If you want to control
every aspect of the appearance of your website with just the click of a button, the
best way to do this is to use Joomla and install the free Design Control template.
Joomla Benefit #10... Joomla SEO is better than Wordpress SEO
Last but not least, some have claimed that Wordpress has better Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) than Joomla. This is ironic because Joomla offers a several
specific ways to add meta tags and descriptions to your Joomla website and
article while Wordpress does not! Here is a quote from the Wordpress website:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Meta_Tags_in_WordPress
It is important for website developers to understand that a default installation of
WordPress does not contain the description and keywords meta tag data. Meta
tags can be added manually, through changes to the Theme template files or
through WordPress Plugins.
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Meanwhile, Joomla allows you to add a site-wide Meta description just by going
to Site, Global Configurations in the Main Menu:
Page Source Meta Data Comparison

If you go to the Home Page of a Joomla website and right click on Page Source,
you will bring up a screen with the underlying code. This code is what search
engines use to classify and rank websites. Below is an image of the Page Source
for a Joomla website before adding free SEO tools:
Below is the Page Source for a Wordpress website without any additional tools:
Wordpress does a better job with the title (which must be changed manually in
Joomla). But Joomla does a better job with the Description and key words. Both
fail to change the generator without the addition of free tools. Both Joomla and
Wordpress offer free plugin tools to improve their Search Engine rankings. Later
in this course, we describe how to add several tools for improving the SEO of
your Joomla website. But the claim that Wordpress is better out of the box at
SEO than Joomla is simply not true.
(Well Organized) Content is King
Rather than getting all wrapped up in Meta data, it is important to realize that
meta data is only one small part of search engine categorization and ranking. Far
more important than Meta data is website traffic and linkage. These two elements
are both strongly related to the quality of the content on your website and the
organization of the content on your website. If your website is a disorganized
mess, you are not going to keep a lot of visitors and your visitors are not as likely
to refer your website to their friends. This is why a Joomla website is likely to
have better SEO than a Wordpress website. It is because visitors will spend
more time reading a well-organized website and are more likely to refer their
friends to a well-organized website. If one objectively compares the interfaces
and functions of Joomla versus Wordpress, there is really no contest. Joomla is
much better than Wordpress in nearly every area.
David Spring M. Ed.
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So why would anyone think Wordpress is better than Joomla?

I think there are three main reasons. First, humans are by nature herd animals.
They repeat things others tell them whether it is true or not. If you say a lie often
enough, it becomes an accepted fact. Second, humans tend to defend their
decisions even in the face of contrary information. We are creatures of habit. If
we start out using a Wordpress website, perhaps because it is free, we get used
to the Wordpress way of doing things. We then come across a Joomla website
and think of it as odd or difficult even though Joomla actually puts more power
in our hands with just the click of a button. Third, and perhaps the most important
reason is instruction. Joomla has not done a very good job helping beginners.
They really need to tone down their Demo website and their Sample Content to
just the basic functions of writing an article and creating a menu item for it. These
instructions need to be put on the backend of the website in addition to the front
end. Wordpress may have a poor tool for building a complex interactive website.
But they have done a much better job than Joomla in writing articles on how to
start building a Wordpress website and then placing those articles in the backend
of their Dashboard right where they are most needed.
Joomla websites are easier to update over time.
Because of the Joomla Graphic User Interface, and because Joomla allows you
to integrate the organization of your articles and images, it is easier to make
changes to your Joomla website over time. This saves you a great deal of
money as there is no need to hire an expert or a computer programmer to update
your website. Below is the simple form you fill out when you are editing an article
or creating a new one. Joomla is so easy that, after it is set up, it can be
maintained by part-time volunteers. This makes Joomla perfect for non-profit
organizations which may suffer a large turn over from year to year. Novices can
make changes to their own sites including adding articles, menu items, links and
videos. Because of these and many other advantages, Joomla is currently the
most powerful web building platform in the world and the ideal platform for
building a small business website.
This concludes our article on the benefits of Joomla. In the next article, we will
review the history of the internet to see how Joomla evolved and where it will be
going in the future.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 23
1.2 Evolution of Web Building Tools

This article reviews how websites have changed over time and the importance of
the Joomla interface and its hidden database in building a modern interactive
website. This topic is important because most web building tools will lead to a
dead end because they fail to give you control over the hidden database that is
the key to a successful interactive website.
For your online business to succeed, you need five things:
First, you need to secure a unique domain name for your website.
Second, you need a web hosting company to place your site on their
server.
Third, you then need to install a web building program such as Joomla in
the main folder on your web server.
Fourth, you should build your website in an interactive manner so that

customers actually want to click on the button to buy your products and/or
services. The images, text and prices which illustrate your products are
typically organized by and stored in a series of hidden expandable tables
known as a Data Base.
Fifth, you need to motivate customers to link to your website and then
interact with your website. We cover all five of these topics in this book
and course.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 24
A Brief History of the Internet

The Internet began in 1969 as a way for two universities to exchange research
data more rapidly. The first internet link was established between UCLA and
Stanford computers at 10:30 pm on October 29, 1969. The goal was to type in
the word LOGIN. About 20 seconds after the link was established, the entire
system crashed. They were however able to establish a connection and transfer
data over a phone line using computer coding.
Computer Guru Kleinrock

Below is an excerpt from an interview with Kleinrock describing what took place:
"We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI...
"We typed the L and we asked on the phone, "Do you see the L?"
"Yes, we see the L," came the response.
We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O... "Yes, we see the O."
Then we typed the G, and the system crashed...
This brief experiment launched a revolution which is now called the Internet.
IP addresses to DNS and URL addresses
Several more universities joined in the effort. They used a string of numbers
called Internet Protocol (or IP) addresses to call each other on the phone and
used modems to transfer information through those phone lines. A typical IP
address might be 216.27.22.162 - Instead of a domain name, they used a long
string of numbers! By 1981, there were 213 Universities with servers connected
to this system. It was hard to remember everyones IP address. So in 1983,
programmers at the University of Wisconsin created the Domain Name System
(DNS), which maps text based domain names to number based IP addresses
automatically. This way you only need to remember a domain name like
mywebsite.com rather than a long IP address.
Example of a Domain Name in a Web Browser

A URL or Uniform Resource Locator is simply a longer more complete version of
your domain name. For example, http://www.mywebsite.com. The letters HTTP
stand for hypertext transfer protocol. The letters www stand for the worldwide
web. In other words, the DNS converts your number based IP address into your
text based URL which is what we use today to go to a website on the internet.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 25
1990 The Website Concept is Born

Up until 1990, there was an internet, but there were no websites. Transferring
data was more like sending a fax over a phone line. Then Tim Berners-Lee had a
great idea. Instead of merely transferring data back and forth one message at a
time on a phone line, why not have a place where the data is is centrally stored
on a special computer, called a server and then displayed on a screen and can
be accessed by anyone who makes a request to the server? In late 1990, Tim
Berners-Lee and others at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, more
popularly known as CERN, proposed a new protocol for information distribution.
This protocol, which became the World Wide Web in 1991, was based on
hypertext--a system of embedding links in text to links in other text. Hyperlinks
are essentially connectors between groups of text. By Christmas 1990, BernersLee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web including:
#1...The first HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP),
#2...The first HyperText Markup Language (HTML),
#3...The first Web browser (WorldWideWeb, which was also a Web editor),
#4...The first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd),
#5...The first web server (http://info.cern.ch), and
#6...The first Web pages that described the project itself.
Tim Berners-Lee at his computer

On August 6, 1991, Tim put all of these tools together to create the first Web
page. The domain name was info.cern.ch. Below is an image of this page:
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 26
The inventor of HTML Tim Berners-Lee also posted the first image on the web a
year later in July 1992. It was a band made up of CERN staff members:
A year later, in 1993, the first graphical web browser for the public was released.
It was called Mosaic. A web browser is a program placed on your home computer
so that you can more easily view content transmitted over the internet.
In 1994, Netscape came out with an even easier web browser called Navigator
Today, the four most common web browsers are Internet Explorer, Apple Safari,
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. We recommend that you use Firefox to build
your website because it comes with a special tool called Firebug to analyze
website problems.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 27
1994: Websites expand from Educational Organizations to Online Stores

In 1994, HotWired placed the first commercial banner on the internet.
Up until 1994, because the internet was developed using public funds,
commercial businesses had been prohibited from using the internet. Once this
prohibition was lifted, many commercial businesses flooded the internet. Amazon
and Ebay were both started in 1995 along with many other online stores.
Remember the Dot Com bubble? Opening the internet to commercial businesses
was the spark that led to this rapid expansion of economic activity.
1995: Javascript and PHP start the Interactive Revolution
Until 1995, all websites consisted of static pages. These were simply web pages
with words, images and links to other pages with words and images. Simple
forms could be filled out but beyond that there was very little interaction between
the viewer and the browser or between the viewer and the server. In 1995, two
new interactive computer programming languages, JavaScript and PHP were
introduced. Suddenly, for the first time, people could click on and interact with a
website in real time.
Both Javascript and PHP are based on a technique called scripting. Scripting
means inserting a simple code into the HTML which stands for something much
more complex which is placed into a library of scripts. Scripting languages like
Javascript and PHP are what makes interactive websites like Facebook, Google
and Amazon possible.
Scripts are a library of premade computer codes which can be inserted into
other computer codes to trigger more complex actions.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 28
An Example of Scripting
Imagine that you want to display something very complex on several web pages.
For example, you want to include the entire text of the book Moby Dick on every
web page. You could type out the entire book every time which would take
quite a while. Or with scripting, you just place the Moby Dick book in a library of
other books you want to refer to. Then when you get to the part on your webpage
where you want to insert Moby Dick, you simply tell the web browser to go to the
library and get the Moby Dick book and put it on the web page.
A Crucial Difference between Javascript and PHP
The difference between PHP and JavaScript is that PHP interacts with the Server
(or the place where your website lives) while JavaScript interacts with your home
computers web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox).
The Problem with Javascript: People refused to update their web browsers
The browser in your computer is what connects you to websites. The Javascript
system works only as long as the viewer has an up to date web browser.
Because Javascript and PHP scripting libraries keep getting new bigger and
more powerful books every year, computer screens will not display correctly
unless users update their web browsers to the current version. The problem with
Javascript was that people refused to update their web browsers. If you have an
old browser, you will have trouble connecting to newer websites. This is why folks
would often receive a warning like the following when they went online:
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 29
Most folks ignored these warnings and kept using the web browser that came
installed on their computer. This led to even sterner warnings like the following:
Wiser website builders now realize that their customers are not going to update
their web browsers. We have therefore moved away from Javascript to interact
with customers and instead use PHP which is updated on the server and
therefore does not rely on the customer to update their computer. No customer
has ever gotten the following warning. But it summarizes how websites have
changed in the past few years.
Why you should use a PHP based program to build your business website
PHP has two huge advantages over Javascript. First, PHP is more reliable than
JavaScript. The benefit of a server side script like PHP over a user side script is
that it is not dependent on the upkeep of the browser or the customers computer.
Java Script will not work on old computers or old browsers. But PHP will as
long as the web host has the most current version of PHP installed.
Why an HTML program is not adequate for a modern business website
The second advantage of PHP is that it is used to control a database called My
SQL which is inside of the server. Databases are simply tables of data. PHP is
dynamic in that the viewer can click on different buttons to see different answers
in the data table. This is why all three major Content Management Systems
(Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal) are based on PHP. PHP control over its
database is the life blood of a modern interactive website. However, an HTML
program like Dreamweaver does not easily interact with a database. This is why
Dreamweaver is not an adequate tool for a building business website.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 30
Comparison of Web Building Languages

Important Features
PHP
Javascript
HTML
Interactive
Yes
Yes
No
Does not require viewers

to update their browsers
Yes
No
Yes
How do I get a PHP based website?

Now that you understand why you need a PHP based website for your online
business, the next question is how to get one. You have essentially two choices.
You can either read a big thick book on how to program with PHP or hire a
computer programmer who has read books on PHP programming (warning: it is
much harder than learning to program with HTML!). Or you can build your
website with Joomla which hides the PHP program behind a series of simple
screens.
This leads to the next question. How do I learn Joomla?
This is where our book and course come in. Our goal is to make it easier for
business owners to learn Joomla so they can control their own PHP based
website.
Which book would you rather read?
This is a very important reason why millions of PHP based websites are now built
using a Content Management System (CMS) like Joomla which offers simple
Graphic User Interfaces to build our websites rather than complex PHP computer
coding.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 31
1996 to Present: Evolution of Web Building Tools

In 1996, Microsoft came out with an HTML website building tool called Front
Page. It was primitive and required knowledge of HTML a computer language
for building primitive static websites. In 1997, a competing tool called
Dreamweaver was released. It also required knowledge of HTML but was slightly
better organized than Front Page. In 2006, Dreamweaver was purchased by a
software company called Adobe which combined Dreamweaver with other tools
such as Photoshop to sell as a complete website building package.
Dreamweaver Web Building Tool is very complex
Dreamweaver was and still is very expensive (about $400 per person or per
computer). But it offers a dual screen interface to help build a website. As you
can see in the following image, the HTML computer programming is in the top
screen followed by a graphic display of what the computer programming will look
like in a web browser. To the right of these screens are lists of CSS sheets and a
list of the computer files. Above is a controlling menu with dozens of tabs.
There are however many problems with Dreamweaver. The biggest challenge is
the need to learn HTML and CSS computer programming. This is on top of
learning how to use the various sections of the complex Dreamweaver Graphic
User Interface shown above. The look on these students faces pretty much says
it all. Learning to use Dreamweaver, HTML and CSS computer programming is
like learning how to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Even worse, Dreamweaver was and still is an HTML based web building tool.
This means that most Dreamweaver built websites do not have access to an
interactive database. Without a database, your website cannot interact with your
customers. A better way was needed to build modern interactive websites.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 32
Drawbacks of other Web Building Tools... Drupal and Wordpress

A third website building tool called Drupal was released in 2000 to compete with
Frontpage and Dreamweaver. This was the first tool based more on PHP than on
HTML. Unfortunately, Drupal is very complex and like Front Page and
Dreamweaver - requires a lot of computer programming knowledge.
In 2003, Wordpress introduced a tool for building a simple blogging website. One
can create a Wordpress blogging website with just the click of a couple of
buttons. You do not even need a domain name or a web host. Wordpress will
give you a subdomain. For example, myblog.wordpress.com, and then host that
domain name on their server all for free! However, as we explained in the last
section, there are several drawbacks to Wordpress blogs:
First, Wordpress organizes content by date rather than by subject. This poor
category method will eventually turn your Wordpress website into a mess.
Second, it is much more difficult to control the appearance of a Wordpress
Blog than a Joomla site. Wordpress templates, called themes have few options
for changing the appearance of the header, menu tabs and mobile boxes
compared to the Joomla Design Control template.
Third, Wordpress offers a very limited number of extensions (which
Wordpress calls Plugins). Extensions and plugins are additional functions which
can be added to a website to expand what your website can do. The WordPress
extensions directory is poorly organized in comparison to the Joomla Extension
Directory. This makes it more difficult to choose between WordPress Plugins and
much more difficult to modify a Wordpress website to match the specific needs of
a growing business. This is important because these add-on extensions are more
important to the success of a small business than the core web building tools!
Fourth, Wordpress lacks a way to easily organize images and articles.
Joomla has an easier ability to organize web pages, articles and images by
folders using categories. In addition, Joomla tables are much better organized
than WordPress tables. This can make a huge difference over time as even
posting only one article a day with only a single image per article can result in
one thousand articles and images in just 3 years. The more content you have on
your site, the more obvious it becomes that WordPress is not very good at
organizing website content. Wordpress simply lacks the ability to organize a large
amount of content. If a person only wants a simple blog, Wordpress does an
excellent job. If one wants more, such as commercial applications, then Joomla
with its thousands of extensions offers a better alternative.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 33
Content Management Systems (CMS) and the Database Revolution

As the content of web pages got more and more complex, it became apparent
that static HTML pages (which are not connected to a database) are not
adequate to handle the massive amount of data being stored and transferred on
a modern website. Modern websites often have hundreds of images and articles
and dozens of pages and menu links. Since a small business wants to sell
products and since those products will likely be organized on a database, it is
important for small businesses to use a database driven web building program. A
way was needed to organize complex website content. This led to using MySQL
databases controlled by PHP computer programming.
However, PHP is a very difficult computer program to learn. It is much harder
than HTML. Instead of giving simple commands like HTML, PHP asks questions
seeking to find answers in a database. HTML is like a dictatorship. The decisions
are simple to make and the dictator can make decisions quickly. PHP is more like
a democracy in that it can take a complex process to decide what will be
displayed on the viewers computer screen. The key to learning PHP is knowing
which questions to ask and how to ask them. It takes a long time to learn PHP
computer programming.
2008 Joomla emerges as a solution to the PHP Complexity Problem
Gradually a solution to this PHP complexity problem emerged. Instead of using
PHP programming, questions are asked by clicking on a series of buttons. These
buttons are connected to the hidden PHP program. At the same time, databases
were hidden behind a series of more user friendly tables. So when you build a
website, instead of seeing a complex PHP program connected to a complex
database, you see a series of simple buttons connected to a series of simple
tables. This system of buttons and tables is called a Content Management
System or CMS. A Content Management System is a website building program
that organizes all of the text and images on your website into a series of simple
tables which are displayed on your computer screen using a series of simple
User Interfaces. Joomla calls its tables managers such as article manager,
category manager, etc. Joomla uses a series of Click Here buttons to help you
build your website. Each time you click on a button, you are actually doing PHP
programming and entering data into your database. You just dont realize it
because the PHP program and the database are both hidden. All you see when
you are building a Joomla website are tables and buttons. This book and our
course will teach you which buttons to click on and in which order.
What exactly is Joomla and Who Runs It?
The word Joomla is Swahili for All Together. Joomla is an open source project
meaning it is not controlled by any private company. Joomla is developed entirely
by volunteers - an active international community of thousands of computer
programmers who give freely of their time to create and continuously improve
Joomla making it the worlds best open source web building platform.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 34
Joomla is the first tool to give regular people simple control over all of the
functions of a PHP based website without any knowledge of PHP programming.
Joomla is an international program meaning that one can easily build a Joomla
website in more than 60 languages. There are literally millions of Joomla
websites worldwide with thousands of new Joomla websites being built every
month.
2008.. Joomla introduced Joomla version 1.5 the world first true Content
Management System
In January 2008, Joomla released Joomla version 1.5. It was truly a revolution in
combining simplicity with a well-defined content management structure.
Amazingly, Joomla was offered to the public for FREE. Thousands of free
extensions or add-ons were developed for Joomla 1.5. All of these add-ons could
be installed automatically with the click of a button. Joomla was such an
improvement over previous web building tools that in less than one year Joomla
became one of the worlds most popular web building platforms.
In 2012, Joomla introduced Joomla version 2.5
The next long term version of Joomla, 2.5, was introduced in January 2012. It will
be supported through 2014. So if you want to build a new business website now,
your best option is to follow our instructions for building a Joomla 3x website.
Joomla 3.5 arrives in summer 2014
The latest version of Joomla, version 3.5 became available in the Summer 2014.
The chief benefit of Joomla 3.5 over Joomla 2.5 is that it offers more support for
mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets which as many as one in
three customers use to surf the internet.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 35
Thankfully, it is pretty easy to transition from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.5 provided
you are careful to choose a template and other tools which works on both
versions of Joomla. Joomla continues to be the best choice for building a truly
interactive business website.
The Joomla Development Cycle... Future Versions of Joomla
Joomla is currently experiencing a rapid state of development and improvement.
Joomla is introducing major improvements in the structure of Joomla about every
two years. This means that the next long term version of Joomla, version 4.5, will
be released in the summer of 2016. This series of rapid innovations does make it
difficult for an online business to keep up. However, it also means that Joomla
online business websites are better all of the time. Ironically, one of the biggest
mistake a business owner can make is moving to a new version of Joomla too
soon! Joomla will release an experimental version of Joomla, called version 4.0
in 2015. This version should NOT be used for a real business website! It will
likely have numerous problems which will take a year or more to resolve. In
addition, it will take a year or more for Joomla extension developers to develop
compatible extensions for Joomla 4x. You should therefore wait until at least
Joomla 4.2 to migrate your business website to version 4x. In this book, we are
recommending and using Joomla version 3.2 which is much more stable than
versions 3.0 and 3.1. Updating from Joomla 3.2 to Joomla 3.5 will likely involve
simply clicking on an Update Button. So it is important to understand the Joomla
development cycle in order to have a reliable business website.
Joomla Drawbacks
Joomla does suffer from a couple of shortcomings. One is that some of the
extensions are loaded with bugs and have poor instructions. Research
extensions carefully and use only ones with a good track record and clear
documentation. We will review how to add the best extensions in this course.
Another drawback of Joomla is that there are very few Joomla courses available
at high schools and colleges. Instructions on how to build a Joomla website have
not been very clear. Prior to this course, folks have learned mainly by trial and
error. One of the goals of this course is to offer you the best step by step
instructions for building a dynamic and interactive Joomla website. Our aim is to
give you the ability to create a modern dynamic and interactive website.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 36
Why Joomla is still your best choice for a business website

Given all of the benefits of Joomla, why are the majority of the websites today still
built using Wordpress? And why are the majority of the website development
courses still teaching Dreamweaver? There are a few legitimate reasons to build
a Wordpress site. If you are on a limited budget and cannot afford a web host,
then a free Wordpress blog might be the way to go. This is especially true if all
you will be using the website for is a personal blog with only a few pages. As for
Dreamweaver, I cannot envision any circumstances that would warrant suffering
through such a primitive interface with almost no ability to work with an integrated
data base, a web cart or social networking capability.
If Joomla is so much better than Dreamweaver or Wordpress, why do folks
still use Dreamweaver and Wordpress to build websites?
There are many books, blogs, courses and instructors who still teach and
recommend either Wordpress or Dreamweaver. I think there are three reasons it
has taken Joomla so long to become the worlds primary web building tool. First,
Joomla courses are partially to blame for making Joomla seem much harder than
it actually is. The Joomla DEMO site is far more confusing than it needs to be.
Joomla extensions are also to blame. Some of them barely work. Thankfully,
there are also many terrific Joomla extensions that work very well. We cover
these in this course. Second, my experience is that computer programmers tend
to seek programming fixes too soon and overlook the fact that many users know
nothing about HTML or CSS. This is especially true of instructors who are still
teaching Dreamweaver. I sometimes wonder if these experts are deliberately
making things hard in order to force more users to hire programmers to build the
websites for them. Third, and most important, there is a natural tendency to favor
the web building platform one is most familiar with. I call this the First Cheese
Theory as most adults still favor the cheese they grew up with as a child. This
kind of narrow minded refusal to try new things is okay if your website is just your
personal hobby. But it is not okay if you are trying to build an online business in a
highly competitive world.
The Bottom Line is
To succeed at business, you need the best tools possible. If you fail to seek out
these tools, your competitors surely will. And it wont be long until they are taking
market share away from you. The internet world of today is dramatically different
from the internet of just 6 years ago. It is certain that the internet 6 years from
now will be radically different from what it is today.
Thankfully, there are more than 10,000 Joomla developers working around the
world to keep the Joomla platform ahead of the rest both now and in the future.
I used to get mad every time Joomla came out with another update. Today, I am
grateful they are open to change and improvement. In the long run, as you want
to expand your website far beyond your initial dreams, you will be glad you chose
Joomla as the foundation upon which you built your virtual small business.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 37
The Next Revolution: Improving Online Web Building Education

One remaining barrier to expanding access to better business websites is that
Joomla instructional books, videos and courses are dominated by computer
programmers. Unfortunately, it is difficult to be both a good teacher and a good
programmer. The Joomla books currently available on the internet reflect this
problem. Nearly all of them still advocate installing Joomla manually. This is
crazy. Just as bad, nearly all of them are still teaching HTML and CSS computer
programming as the way to modify Joomla templates. This is also crazy.
This book is the first step in the next revolution. Our intention is to change the
way Joomla is taught and the way Joomla websites are built. In the following
pages, we provide you with a much easier way to build and run your business
website. The tools for doing this have existed since 2011. Now we have a book
and a course to teach you how to use these revolutionary new tools.
Suggested Activity: You will need a good web browser to build your
website. We recommend that you download the free Mozilla Firefox Web
Browser. We will build our example websites using this web browser. To install
the latest version of Firefox, go to the Mozilla Firefox English page:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new-b/?utm_expid=657898508&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
What's Next?
There have been major changes in domain name support in the past year. We
will therefore review how to obtain and protect your domain name.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 38
1.3 How to Protect your Online Business

One of the first steps in building your business website is obtaining your domain
name, such as mybusiness.com from a domain registrar and selecting a web
host for your website. Some companies register domains and provide servers to
host websites. There are not major differences in price between domain
registrars. The wholesale cost is about $8 per year and registrars charge about
$12 to $15 per year (especially after the first year). However, there are major
differences between the policies of various registrars. There are also major
differences between the policies and prices and reliability of different web hosts.
So it is important to spend some time on each of these decisions.
If you have read any of my past Joomla instructional websites or books, you
know that for many years, I used and recommended the world's largest web host
and domain registrar, GoDaddy. However, recent events have caused me to
change my mind about the wisdom of hosting any small online business website
in the United States or using any domain registrar in the United States. In this
section, I will explain my reasons for changing domain registrars and web hosts
and the process I used to find a new domain registrar and a reliable non-US web
host. While the selection of a better domain registrar was obvious, it is not easy
to find a good reliable web host. With so much profit to be made in the web
hosting business, the bad web hosts greatly out number the good ones. If you
are thinking about moving your domain name out of the US or getting a new web
host, you may find some useful advice in the process described in this section.
Then in Section 1.4, we will describe the exact steps of securing and/or
transferring your domain name and web hosting to a new registrar and web host.
Why you should move your online business (domain name and web
hosting) to a non-US server
On August 8, 2013, the NSA forced Ladar Levison, the owner of a small secure
email business called Lavabit, to either turn over all of his data or shut down his
online business. Ladar chose to keep his promise to his customers. He shut
down his business. Until it was shut down by the NSA, Lavabit had 400,000
users all of whom lost access to their email accounts. One of Lavabit's
customers was Edward Snowden. The NSA justified shutting down Lavabit with
what they call the Three Hop Rule which, according to the NSA, gives them the
right to all of the data of anyone who has any relationship to anyone who has any
relationship to an NSA suspect. Since Snowden is an NSA suspect and since the
400,000 Lavabit users are on the same email database as Snowden, the NSA
gets to download all of the data of all 400,000 people. In case you were
wondering, those 400,000 people were just the second hop. Anyone who knows
any of those 400,000 people is the third hop. In other words, nearly everyone in
the world is included in the third hop.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 39
"This experience has taught me one very important lesson. Without

congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend
against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the
United States.
Ladar Levison, Founder of Lavabit
I too am deeply concerned about the NSA attacking and/or shutting down online
businesses that it does not like here in the United States - including important
online privacy businesses such as Lavabit, Silent Circle and the TOR project. I
am also upset about NSA treatment of whistle blowing heros such as Jacob
Appelbaum, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden all of whom have been
driven out of the US simply for defending online freedom and online privacy.
In order to protest the NSA takeover of the internet in the US, and in order to
protect my own websites and those of thousands of my students from an NSA
takeover, I have decided to move my websites and online business to servers
located outside of the United States.
I have a several reasons for writing this instructional article explaining to others
how to also move their online businesses. First, I teach courses in building small
business websites. I have helped thousands of small business owners build their
own business websites over the past 20 years. Over one hundred thousand folks
have used my online courses to build their own websites. I have helped
countless political activists including folks from the Occupy movement - build
their own websites. I want my students websites to be safe from being shut down
by the NSA. Second, I am worried about my own online business websites.
Some of them have been critical of the NSA and other powerful people. I do not
want any of my websites and databases to be shut down by the NSA either.
My third reason for writing about the dangers of using US web servers is that I
was shocked that NSA harassment forced Jacob Appelbaum to leave the US a
few months ago. Jacob was a researcher at the University of Washington and
one of the lead developers of the Onion Router (TOR) project. He is one of
America's brightest young computer programmers and security experts. Jacob is
certainly not a terrorist. If the NSA is allowed to attack and drive out bright young
people like Jacob Appelbaum, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden, then
outspoken trouble makers like me might be next. So moving my websites to a
safer place is the first step in my own potential getaway plan.
You may not think the NSA is out to get you and that your website is still safe in
the US. But the NSA is hundreds of times bigger than you think. As Jacob
Appelbaum recently said, The NSA is worse than your worst nightmare.
The following video describes several shocking tools the NSA uses to hack
online businesses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILAlhwUgIU
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 40
So if you want to make sure your online business website is safe from the NSA,
then keep reading. If you still think this article does not apply to your online
business, then please listen to this Ladar Levison video. He did not think it would
happen to him either. This is one of the most shocking videos I have ever
watched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui3KpztUzVg
Ladar is the guy in the white shirt. The guy next to him is his attorney
who is trying to keep him out of jail. Here is one of the things Ladar said in
this video:
What Im opposed to are blanket court orders granting government access to
everything. If the American people knew what our government was doing, they
would not be allowed to do it anymore. What we have seen in recent years is
their willingness to use those laws in ways personally I consider to be
unconstitutional, unethical and immoral."
Edward Snowden noted: America cannot succeed as a country when individuals
like Mr. Levison have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful.
The next day, another US email encryption provider, Silent Circle, shut down.
Another US secure email service, Hushmail, caved and handed over their
database to the NSA. Once people realize that their data is not safe with
Hushmail, they too will go out of business. The lesson here is that the only safety
for your online data is by moving your data, website content and email service to
servers which are located outside of the United States. For those not familiar with
US history, our Founders fought a Revolutionary War over this issue. King
George issued General Warrants allowing his (NSA) agents to terrorize the
colonists. The whole point of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution was to
eliminate General Warrants and require Specific Warrants stating the exact
things to be taken and the reason they are taken before a person's property or
their online business website and database could be seized. The NSA has
brought back General Warrants and sadly both the US Congress and the US
federal courts have authorized this massive invasion of privacy.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 41
In addition, the NSA and other US agencies have shut down thousands of other
online businesses without a court order merely by asking US hosting companies
and US domain registrars like GoDaddy to shut them down. US web hosts
always comply even without a court order. The problem with shutting down
online businesses without a court order is that there is no opportunity for the
online business to defend themselves in front of a neutral judge before they are
driven out of business and their reputation is destroyed. This is not only a
violation of the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution. It is a violation of basic
human rights.
The US is not a safe place for any web related business
I was pretty upset at how the NSA treated Ladar Levison. He was a guy who
worked hard for more than ten years set up his online business. Then the NSA
moved in and shut down his online business. If the NSA can do this to Ladar
Levison, and thousands of other online businesses, they can shut down any of us
who have an online business or any small business website or social
organization or political website. Sadly, neither the US Congress or US Courts
have been willing to stand up to the NSA. So much for our 4th Amendment right
to privacy. This means that no online business is safe in the US. If your online
business is not safe in the US, then it is time to move it out of the US. This article
will tell you how to move your site to a safer country - one not run by the NSA.
GoDaddy ignores the US Constitution to take down innocent websites
On January 9 2014, a freedom supporting domain registrar in Canada called
Easy DNS won a huge victory when a British arbitrator agreed with them that a
registrar cannot take down and block the transfer of a domain name just on the
say so of law enforcement or anyone else who does not have a court order. What
happened was that in 2012 a US Domain Registrar, GoDaddy.com (the world's
largest domain registrar) took down a domain called JotForm.com just because
of a request from the US Secret Service. Jot Form is a small online business that
help folks create online forms. See their website below. Apparently someone
made a bad form using Jotform's online interactive web tools.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 42
Even worse, GoDaddy, ruined JotForm's business reputation by redirecting their

website to a page called NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM.
JotForm.com became unreachable and the website's two million user-created
forms all stopped working. 700,000 of JotForm's customers were harmed along
with JotForm. JotForm immediately contacted both GoDaddy and the US Secret
Service and offered to remove any offensive form. But both GoDaddy and the US
Secret Service refused to help them or provide any information as to what the
actual crime was. One of JotForm's customers, the owner of a multimillion dollar
Canadian company, stated: I will now have to question purchasing any more
services from US internet related providers."
Contrary to the US Constitution, GoDaddy did not ask for a court order.
Sadly, this sort of take down happens quite often with GoDaddy and other US
web hosts. Somebody with a badge out of a box of Cracker Jacks can probably
email your registrar right now and tell them to unplug your domain name from the
internet and there's a good chance they'll do it... Take out a domain name, you
shut down it's voice, it's message or it's economic activity. You make it go away.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140116/16464725911/domain-registrars-webhosts-isps-dns-providers-soft-underbelly-coercive-control.shtml
The only registrar with the courage to oppose the US government was a
Canadian registrar named EasyDNS, who pointed out that there's a thing called
due process. They helped Jot Form get their domain name back. EasyDNS went
to Verisign (the domain name wholesaler who controls the dot com extension)
with a "request for enforcement." Verisign refused to enforce the ICANN rules.
EasyDNS appealed that ruling to the National Arbitration Forum who ruled in their
favor saying:
No court order has been issued which would prohibit the transfer of the domain
names from the Registrar of Record to the Gaining Registrar. Therefore, there is
nothing in the Transfer Policy which authorizes the Registrar of Record to refuse
to transfer the domain names.
The following is from the Easy DNS website blog:
http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/17/the-price-of-freedom-and-the-cost-of-adomain-name/
For many people, a domain name is more than a piece of digital real-estate, it is
their livelihood, their ability to express themselves freely and connect with others.
Recently, GoDaddy removed a domain off of the Internet with no notice, no due
process and no concern for any impact their actions might have caused.
Jotform.com was taken offline at the request of a single U.S. government
employee. No court hearing, no motions, just a simple request. Removing
jotform.com off of the Internet was a spineless act by GoDaddy, devoid of any
consideration for due process...
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 43
This continual attack on due process in relation to domain names is an attack on

the very principles of free speech and free enterprise. Some of our competitors
are accomplices in this trend to trash domain ownership rights. It needs to stop...
With this latest affront to freedom, your choice of who manages your domain
name is more crucial than ever. At EasyDNS, we take our responsibility to
protect our customers digital real estate very seriously. A large part of that
responsibility is ensuring that due process is followed.
Millions of small business owners have their online business domain names
currently hosted by GoDaddy or other US domain registrars. My advice is if you
want to protect your domain name and online business, the first and most
important thing you need to do is move your domain name registration to the
Canadian registrar Easy DNS.
Comparing Easy DNS to GoDaddy
Moving your Domain Name Registration to Easy DNS will cost you a few more
dollars per year. GoDaddy charges about $12 per year for domain name
registration. EasyDNS charges $15. So getting peace of mind will cost an extra
penny per day. Even if you have your domain name at another hosting company,
it would be a good idea to transfer your domain name to EasyDNS. You do not
need to change your web host to change your registrar. They are independent
processes. Supporting EasyDNS is a way to protect not only your online
business but all online business from attacks by the out-of-control US
government who seem to be doing everything they can to destroy online
businesses in the US. I have moved all of my domain names to EasyDNS. You
will not lose any time you have already paid for at your current Registrar as
EasyDNS will credit you all of that time and then add one additional year to your
domain registration when you transfer your domain registration to them.
January 13 2014 GoDaddy joins the Evil Microsoft Empire
Recently, the hosting situation here in the US got even worse. GoDaddy and
NSA PRISM partner Microsoft announced a partnership. Microsoft had already
taken over the upper management of GoDaddy so it was just a matter of time
before this happened. All new GoDaddy customers are automatically given a free
Microsoft account. The announcement said that older GoDaddy accounts would
be moved over to Microsoft over time. At the same time, GoDaddy announced
they were increasing the restoration penalty fee for anyone who let their domain
name annual fee lapse to $80!!! Here is the statement from GoDaddy.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 44
GoDaddy is therefore following the Microsoft Monopoly model of charging their

customers fees which are ten times higher than what they should be. As Linux is
much more secure than Microsoft Windows, hopefully, I will have all connections
to GoDaddy severed before this final Microsoft takeover occurs. In Section 4.4,
we will describe the exact steps for transferring your Domain Name to Easy DNS.
The NSA Economic Doomsday Machine
For the past 20 years, the one bright spot of the US economy has been our lead
in technology and cloud computing. However, businesses and individuals do not
want their data handed over to their competitors or handed over to the
government. Just take a look at how the NSA handed over Airbus data to Boeing.
Businesses will increasingly migrate their data to places they view are safer. The
systematic takeover or closure of companies such as Lavabit, Silent Circle,
Hushmail, Microsoft, Google, Apple, AOL and all of the other partners of the
NSA mean that all of these companies will eventually be driven out of business
because their business model cannot succeed when their potential customers
know they are being run by and for the NSA. All of their employees will lose their
jobs. Some economists have estimated that American technology businesses
could lose over $100 billion just in cloud computing contracts worldwide over the
next three years as businesses move their data overseas to avoid the NSA.
However, cloud contracts are just the tip of the iceberg.
As people around the world realize that companies such as Microsoft and Apple
or any US based web hosting company - cannot be trusted to protect their data
or their privacy, the total economic loss to the US will be in the trillions of dollars
and millions of US technology workers will likely lose their jobs all thanks to the
cyber monster called the NSA.
As Jennifer Granick of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society recently put it:
The U.S. government, in its rush to spy on everybody, may end up killing our
most productive industry. Lavabit may just be the canary in the coal mine.
How will the US economy be affected if online businesses leave the US?
It will not be good. Many studies have confirmed that nearly all job growth in the
US and around the world comes from small new companies. Much of this growth
has been in internet startups. One of the most comprehensive reports, written in
May 2011 by McKinsey Research called Internet Matters:
The Net's Sweeping Impact on Growth, Jobs and Prosperity, is at this link:
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/internet_matters
It has become obvious that the Internet is changing our livesthe way we work,
shop, search for information, communicate, and meet people. Two billion people
are now connected to the Internet...Almost $8 trillion exchange hands each year
through e-commerce... The Internet accounted for 21 percent of (world) GDP
growth over the last five years.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 45
According to this report, the largest sectors of the economy are housing, banking
and health care. This is followed by transportation, education, agriculture and
energy. While the Internet is not yet counted as a separate sector of the
economy, if it were it would rank higher than agriculture, energy or education as a
percent of world GDP. The report concluded that the average British citizen
spends more than $1,000 per year in online shopping. In short, the Internet is the
future of business in the US and in the world. The report notes that most this
internet related economic growth has been in the US. However, thanks to the
Snowden revelations, that is likely to change as new internet startups move to
European servers in order to escape from the dangers of NSA created hacker
attacks. The NSA has made a critical blunder in destroying the internet industry
in the US. Congress has made an equally critical blunder in allowing the NSA to
destroy this important American industry.
What about just getting your own private server?
You could just purchase a private server for your business. Don't get a Windows
server because the NSA has instant access to those things. However, if your
server is in the US, the NSA still has access to it. After all, Ladar Levison had his
own private servers and the NSA still took them anyway. The bottom line is the
web server and the office controlling the server must be outside of the US.
The second reason that a private server is not a good option for most small
business owners is that servers (which are just fancy computers) must be kept
up to date to maintain their security. Ladar Levison is a computer programmer.
So he was able to keep his private servers up to date. For the rest of us small
online business owners, a hosting plan at a web hosting company is a much
better and less expensive option. So the goal is to ditch our US hosting company
and move our website and database to a non-US hosting company.
Which country to move our web hosting to?
This decision to move my online business out of the US has led to months of of
research into where to move my websites. At first, I was thinking about Germany
mainly because this is where Jacob Appelbaum and Laura Poitras are located
and I figure they might respect privacy more in Europe. However, I could not find
a good small business hosting option that had English speaking support. There is
also the issue of latency. It adds about one second for a web page load to go
back and forth to Europe. So I decided to move my websites to a web hosting
company in Canada for a couple of important reasons. The first is that I and most
of my students speak English. I wanted to find a web hosting company where the
staff spoke English as a first language and where the Knowledge base (or
instructional articles) was written in English. Also there are almost no latency
problems with using a Canadian web host and most of my students are here in
the US.I am aware that Canada is a member of the NSA program called Five
Eyes and is also a member of the freedom-restricting TPP trade agreement.
However, Canadian courts have a much better track record of protecting internet
freedom and privacy than almost any other English speaking country.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 46
In particular, Canada is not directly under the thumb of the NSA. The NSA would
at least have to get a Canadian warrant in order to take down your online
business. Canada's Privacy Act, which took effect in July 1983, limits the amount
of personal information the government can collect, use, and disclose. Canadas
Communications Security Establishment (CSE)the agency responsible for
gathering foreign intelligenceis forbidden by law from monitoring domestic
communications. Mike Broadfoot, chief executive officer of Solium Capital in
Calgary, calls Canadas privacy laws the gold standard. There is a structural
advantage in Canada in that the privacy protection is more stringent, says Lloyd
Switzer, who runs Teluss 10 data centers in Canada.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-23/nsa-spying-sends-data-tocanada
Canada is also very close to my location here in the United States. There may
come a time when I need to follow in the footsteps of Jacob Appelbaum, Glenn
Greenwald and Edward Snowden and leave the US. In addition to moving my
websites to Canada, I may eventually move myself to Canada. One of the many
benefits of running an online business is that it can be run from nearly any
country. In addition, there are nearly one thousand web hosts to choose from in
Canada and all have fast internet connections to the US.
How difficult is it to change web hosts?
It is not difficult to change web hosts but the actual steps you will need to go
through will depend on where your website is being hosted now and whether you
are using an industry standard control panel called cPanel. More on this later.
You should create a backup of your business website. But you are not likely to
need it. Most good web hosts will do the transfer for you for free if it is a simple
cPanel migration. There may be some down time of a day or two. But it is better
than having your website and online business permanently shut down by the
NSA. In Section 1.4, we will describe the exact steps for migrating your websites.
Which Canadian web host?
This is the toughest question. Small business websites are more complex than
personal websites in that they must manage a lot of content and images in a
database with a content management system such as Joomla. They also have a
lot of traffic. It is therefore important to get a web host that offers a large amount
of data storage (more than 5 GB) and a large amount of data transfer (more than
50 GB). Because many business owners are not very computer literate, it is
important that there be an actual person for them to talk with or exchange emails
with about their website. It is also important that the web host have a good
knowledge base explaining how to build and run a website. A community forum is
also helpful. Because I am interested in helping new and growing small
businesses which will likely need to offer secure checkout web pages, I also
wanted a web host which offered SSL certificates are a reasonable price. But
perhaps the most important feature is a good reputation with their existing
customers.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 47
After several days of looking at hundreds of Canadian web hosts, I found a web
host in Vancouver BC called Fullhost.ca which offered most of what I was
looking for. Below is more about them and why I choose them.
Looking for Goldilocks in a non US Web Hosting Company
Within Canada, there are nearly one thousand web hosting companies. Because
I am not merely looking for a web hosting company for me, but a web hosting
company I can recommend to thousands of my students, I did extensive research
on nearly all of these Canadian web hosts.
Question #1: Are they really a Canadian Web Host?
The first problem I ran into was that many hosting companies which claim to be
Canadian hosting companies actually have some or all of their servers located
in the United States! In addition, many supposedly Canadian web hosts are
actually owned or run by US corporations and therefore are subject to US laws
and subject to the NSA!. I am not an attorney. But I do know that any business
with even a partial location in the US will be subject to the oppressive laws of the
US. I therefore narrowed my search down to web hosts that had all of their
servers located outside of the US and had an ownership which was entirely in
Canada. Here is how you can determine if a web host domain is actually
registered in Canada: Go to http://whois.domaintools.com/
Then enter the web host domain name in the search box to find out who owns
the Domain name. If the domain name is registered to a Canadian address, then
the company is likely in Canada. It is also important that ALL of the servers of
your web host be located outside of the US. To tell where a server is really
located, go to the following link. http://www.dailychanges.com/
Then enter the domain name of the web host in the search box. You will then see
information like the following for every server registered with this domain name.
This will tell you how many servers they have, who runs the servers and where
the servers are located and how many domain names are on each server.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 48
What this program does not tell you is how fast the server is or how much space
the domain names are taking up on the servers or how much free space is left on
the servers. One benefit of fullhost.ca is that they use a service called
Cloudburst to speed up your website loading times. They also use a program
called Cloudlinux which prevents one over-active website from crashing a server.
So the number of domains on a server is only one factor out of many.
To show you how bad the web hosting market is, some Canadian web hosts
had their domain names registered at GoDaddy in the US and were listed as
belonging to American corporations. Even worse, when you look for their servers,
they do not have any servers meaning they are farming out the actual hosting
to some unknown third party. Then if you call or email then, I found that many
never returned either phone calls or emails! Thankfully, Fullhost has servers in
Vancouver Canada and Montreal Canada and their ownership is in Victoria
Canada.
Question #2...Are they a medium sized web host?

Even after eliminating all of the non-Canadian web hosts, there were still
hundreds of truly Canadian web hosts to be weeded out. The second thing I was
looking for was a medium size web host. The problem with a very small web host
is that it is too likely they will go out of business. In fact, about twenty percent of
the web hosts I researched had gone out of business in the past year or two.
Both I and my students (most of whom also own small online businesses) need a
web host that we can count on to be around for the long run. On the other hand,
extremely large web hosts tend to have poor customer service and/or extremely
overloaded servers. This means that novices (which are most of my students)
have trouble getting good answers to their questions and their websites are slow
to load. I wanted to find a web hosting company that was small enough to build a
personal relationship with their customers but large enough to stay in business.
Fullhost has been around for more than ten years which confirms that they have
a sustainable business model.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 49
Question #3... Do they offer reasonable prices?

The third important factor was a middle of the road pricing structure. There are
web hosts that offer extremely low cost hosting. But there are at least four
problems with rock bottom pricing. First, extremely low cost host may not make
enough revenue to stay in business. Second, they may not offer enough disc
storage space or other features important to the needs of growing online
businesses. Third, cheap web hosts are very likely to overload their servers
causing websites to be extremely slow to load. Fourth, and perhaps most
important, cheap web hosts are not able to pay for a knowledgeable service staff
so essential to those who run into problems with their websites. Small online
business owners are always running into problems with their websites and these
problems need to be fixed immediately. A knowledgeable web hosting staff is
therefore every bit as important as a low price.
On the other hand, there are also problems if a web host's prices are too high.
Web hosting is a very competitive business. A web host whose prices are double
that of their competitors will also have trouble staying in business.
Most of my students are starting new online businesses on a very limited budget.
While they may eventually be able to spend $100 per month for their own Virtual
Private Server, they are often not able to afford more than $10 per month. So just
as a web host can charge too little, they can also charge too much. Some
Canadian web hosts charged $20 per month for only 2 GB of disc storage space.
Even a beginning online small business will need at least 4 GB of disc space and
an expanding small business can quickly reach 8 GB of disc space.
Fullhost's pricing structure is right in the middle of the pack. They offer a shared
hosting plan for $6 per month which includes 10GB of disc space and 100 GB of
transfer. This is more than enough for a starting small business. Then as your
business grows, they have other plans which you can upgrade to over time.
Question #4... Do they offer essential features such as cPanel?
I also wanted several basic features such as Cpanel (an industry standard web
control interface).
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 50
Question #5... Do they offer unlimited addon domains?

I also wanted the ability to add several websites and databases to the web
hosting account as it is common for small businesses to have several website
domains hosted on the same account. These are called add on domains. Each
website might need its own database for storing content, images and other data
unique to that website. For example, an online educational program might want
separate websites for each of its courses. Because the disc space on the server
is independent of the number of websites or databases, it does not make sense
to limit the number of domain names or databases a user has access to. Fullhost
offers Cpanel and unlimited addon domains.
Question #6... Do they offer Softaculous or any other easy way to install
multiple versions of Joomla?
It is not that difficult to install Joomla manually with cPanel. All you need to do is
download a version of Joomla from Joomla.org, load it into a folder with the
cPanel file manager, create a database for it and assign the database to Joomla
during the Joomla manual installation process. However, there is a program
called Softaculous which makes the process even easier. This program allows
you to select the version of Joomla you want to use and then automatically
creates an attached database for it. Instead of installation taking 30 minutes, it
takes about one minute. In the next chapter, we will explain how to install Joomla
using cPanel and Softaculous. Fullhost offers Softaculous meaning you can
install Joomla on your website in just a couple of minutes.
Question #7... Do they use current technology?
I also wanted a web host that was at least trying to be current on modern web
technology. There have been many advances in web sharing over the years. I
wanted a web host that offered some of these high tech advances. For example,
there are several ways to increase the speed and efficiency of a web server.
These include adding programs such as Cloudflare and/or CloudLinux to the web
host's servers.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare cuts the loading time of your website in half by routing your website
through their special data centers and splitting your content into static and
dynamic content. The static content is stored locally to speed up loading.
CloudFlare typically cuts loading time in half.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 51
What is Cloud Linux?

Cloud Linux is a Linux operating system which allows server loads to be shared
and distributed. This reduces the chances of your website going down as traffic is
diverted to other servers. There are several safety advantages to Cloud Linux.
Fullhost offers both Cloudflare and CloudLinux at no extra charge.

Question #8... Do they understand the importance of Linux servers?
I also wanted a web host that promoted and used Linux servers rather than
Windows servers. This was not merely because Windows includes a back door
to the NSA but also because Linux servers are much more reliable and faster
than Windows servers. Linux servers are much less likely to crash due to hacker
attacks. Linux servers are also more compatible with popular PHP based
applications such as Wordpress and Joomla. Fullhost offers Linux servers.
Why the Vast Majority of the Worlds Most Active Websites run on Linux
Microsoft has bribed, bought or taken over the world's largest web host,
GoDaddy in an effort to fool folks into thinking that slow, unreliable and unsafe
Microsoft servers are somehow gaining ground on fast, safe and reliable Linux
servers. GoDaddy in turn has moved a huge number of parked domains from
Linux servers to Microsoft servers in an effort to pad Microsoft numbers.
However what matters are websites that are actually being used. A March 2014
study by Netcraft confirms that people who really know what they are doing
choose Linux servers in overwhelming numbers. Microsoft may be able to fool
some of the people some of the time. But they seldom fool anyone who does
actual research. When your online business is on the line, you would be crazy to
use anything other than a Linux server. Below is the chart from Netcraft which
analysis websites actually being used since the year 2000.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 52
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/03/03/march-2014-web-serversurvey.html
Given that Apache, Nginx and Google are all using versions of Linux as are most
of the Other group, it is reasonable to conclude that at least 80% and possibly
90% of all active business websites are running on Linux servers while only 10%
are running on Windows servers (either paid by Microsoft to use Windows or
simply not paying attention or not caring about the performance of their website).
Netcraft monitors about 920 million active websites. The March 2014 survey saw
Microsoft lose 15.8 million websites in just the past month! Meanwhile, Apache
gain 3.2 million websites and Nginx gain 5 million websites in the past month!
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 53
Netcraft also analyzed the server programs used by the one million most active
websites. These are typically very large companies that have an entire staff of
computer technicians and web consultants. Thus, this group tends to use the
most cutting edge technology. Above is the chart of the servers used by the top
one million most active websites. This survey is 2008 to the present.
Once again, Windows is at just over ten percent. Given how slow and unreliable
Windows servers are, it is surprising that even ten percent use Windows. Apache
has fallen from 70% to 50% while Nginx has risen from 0% to 20%. The reason
Nginx is gaining ground on Apache is because it is slightly faster than Apache
and this matters to really busy websites. The other reason Nginx is gaining
ground is because a company called Cloudflare is using Nginx as part of its
platform. Cloudflare also offers several other features to super charge and
protect websites. So leading web hosts are moving in this direction including
Fullhost which offers Cloudflare to its customers at no extra charge!
http://blog.cloudflare.com/pushing-nginx-to-its-limit-with-lua
With Fullhost, you get all 6 of these state of the art web building tools plus
unlimited databases for only $6 per month. But wait.There's more!
Question #9... Do they offer an SSL certificate program?
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. SSL is a protocol that allows your
customers to browse your website pages anonymously and securely. You can tell
if a webpage is secure because the beginning part of the link will begin with https
rather than http. HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure.
There are some minor drawbacks to SSL in that it can slightly slow down your
website loading time. Therefore not all of your web pages need to be secure.
One of the many benefits of Joomla is that it offers excellent support for SSL
configuration of your business website. You can select which web pages load
with SSL and which do not.
David Spring M. Ed.
Page 54
SSL prefixes are typically used for special secure web pages where your
customers would enter private information like their credit card number or
medical information or attorney-client privileged information in order to prevent
hackers from gaining access to this information.
SSL requires two things. First, the page information is encrypted. Second, the
page provides a special certificate stating who owns the page. This certificate is
called an SSL certificate. You need to get this certificate from your web host. But
not all web hosts offer this and some who do charge a fortune for the service.
Fullhost offers a range of SSL certificate programs from free to hundreds of
dollars per month for higher levels of security. Thus, a new business owner on a
limited budget can start out with a low cost option and then move to a more
secure option as their business grows.
Question #10... Do they have good reviews from their customers?
Another very important factor is a caring attitude. How much time and effort did
they put into their own website? How well organized was it? Did they have an
easy way for customers to reach them to get help? Did they have good reviews
from their existing and past customers? This final factor alone eliminated many
web hosts that looked great on the surface but failed to deliver on their
promises. In fact, there was only one web hosting company I could find that had
been around for more than five years that did not have any negative reviews
AND had dozens of positive reviews on a variety of web host rating services.
That company was Fullhost. This was why I spent so much time researching this
company. They are obviously taking good care of their existing customers and
have been doing this for more than ten years.
Question #11... Do they have a good knowledge base and/or a good
community forum and/or instructional Youtube videos?
Because I teach courses in how to build Joomla websites, I was also hoping to
find a web host who at least knew what Joomla was and was willing to work with
me to put some good articles on how to build Joomla websites into their
knowledge base. I was also hoping to find a web host that either already had a
community forum or would be willing to set up a community forum and either
already had a series of youtube instructional videos or would be willing to create
them. Sadly, Fullhost lacks all of these important educational tools. The one
drawback of Fullhost is that their knowledge base is very limited and they do not
have a community forum. Nor do they have instructional youtube videos. Thus
every new web builder has to re-invent the wheel rather than learning from the
advice of others.
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Fullhost's customer service seems to be handled almost entirely by email tickets.

This is surprising because a good knowledge base, a good community forum
and instructional youtube videos not only help customers find quicker answers to
their questions than they would get by submitting a ticket, but these educational
programs also could save Fullhost a lot of money as there would be fewer
service tickets being submitted. A good knowledge base and a good community
forum would likely cut the number of service tickets submitted in half as well as
greatly increase the number of happy customers and referrals to others. A ticket
system may work for a smaller web host. But it will not be very efficient as the
web host grows over time. In addition, a good knowledge base, an active forum
and informative youtube videos is a terrific marketing tool. Given all of Fullhost's
other benefits, they would likely grow much more rapidly if they had a greater
presence in terms of educational resources. My hope is that, as Fullhost grows,
they will recognize the value of a good knowledge base a good forum and add
both to the service area of their website.
Fullhost Summary: Fullhost got consistently high reviews from numerous
independent sources higher than any other Canadian web host. Moreover, then
have maintained these high ratings for more than ten years. This is a major
accomplishment. They obviously have a very knowledgeable and experienced
staff. As noted above, they use Cloudflare which doubles the speed of their
websites. Full Host also offers Cloud Linux which helps protect websites from
overload crashing. And they have R1Soft which takes hourly backups of your
website. For $6 per month, they offer a plan with 10 GB of storage and unlimited
databases. They offer free site migration if your current web host uses Cpanel.
The phone support at Fullhost is non-existent. But their ticketing support system
is excellent. I was most impressed that they offer deals to first time users and
non-profit organizations. The staff at FullHost is also aware of the NSA scandal
and the benefit of being out of the US. On a popular web forum, they said:
We've generally found that particularly after this whole NSA scandal, most
Canadians simply feel more "comfortable" keeping their data within Canada.
This statement was in response to an American who posted the following
comment in a post titled Leaving the US: With the current administration of our
government and their endless pursuit of warrantless data collection and the
harassment of web providers, we have decided to seek a web provider in
Canada... Customers expect, no, demand, that their data is safe and secure, and
the fact is, that will not happen on any USA based server.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1292962&highlight=fullhost
My advice to Fullhost is to improve their knowledge base, start a forum and a
Youtube channel with instructional videos on how to use their hosting services,
how to build a Wordpress website, how to build a Joomla website, how to add a
shopping cart, how to improve search engine rankings and other topics of
interest to online business owners. I have written to Fullhost with these
suggestions. Sign up for our free email newsletter list and I will keep you posted.
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1.4 Steps to Secure your Domain Name and Web Hosting

In Section 1.3, we described why you should move your small business website
to a hosting company in Canada and why we recommend a relatively small
Canadian web hosting company called Full Host. In Section 1.4, we will review
the exact steps to transfer your Domain Name to a Canadian registrar called
Easy DNS and the steps to migrate your small business web hosting to Full Host.
While these are independent processes in that you can transfer your domain
name without transferring your web hosting or transfer your web hosting
without transferring your domain name, there are some steps common to both.
We will therefore start with the common steps.
Create a Plan of Action
Your plan of action should include unlocking your domain names, updating your
applications and databases and then backing up your website. You might also
want to update your domain name contact information. However, you should be
aware that if you change even one thing on your domain name contact
information, GoDaddy will lock your domain name and prevent it from being
transferred for 60 days! You therefore may want to transfer your domain name
even with outdated information and then update it AFTER it has been transferred
to Easy DNS. After your domain is unlocked and your data is backed up, you can
change your domain name registration to a Canadian registrar and select one of
several migration methods to your new web host - depending on the status of
your current small business websites.
Step 1: Unlock your domain names
Because GoDaddy accounts for well over half of the website hosting market, I
will describe the process for this web host. If you have a different US web host,
the process is about the same. If you are like most small business owners, you
started your online website years ago and likely did not have time to keep your
domain and hosting account information up to date. Before you change, log into
your account and make sure all of the information is correct. Click on My Account
at the bottom of the page. Then click on the green Domains, Launch button.
A list of your websites will appear. Double click on a domain name to open it.
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If lock is set to On, click on Manage and change it to Off.

Step 2: Update the contact information on your website?
If you are willing to wait 60 days before transferring your domain names to a
different registrar, then go ahead and update your contact information before you
do the transfer. From the same Domain, Edit screen as above, click on the
Contacts tab to update your domain name contact information.
Before you edit any of your Contact Information, you should be aware that if you
edit this information, GoDaddy will lock your domain and not let you transfer it for
60 days! Therefore, if you can still receive emails from your current contact
information, you should NOT edit it and instead edit it AFTER you have moved
your domain to a new Domain Registrar. If you want to change your contact
information and are willing to wait 60 days to transfer your domain, choose the
Edit All Contacts button to edit all of your contact information on the same
screen. Then click on the All Domains link to return to your list of website domain
names. Repeat this process for all of your domain names.
Step 3... Update your Applications
Next, update your applications. Applications include web building tools like
Joomla and Wordpress. Click on My Account in the top menu. Then click on
Hosting and click on the Hosting Launch button. Go Daddy offers two different
kinds of hosting control panels. Old accounts have a GoDaddy control panel and
newer accounts have a much better and more useful cPanel screen. Either way,
click on Applications to bring up a list of your applications. Update them to the
latest versions of Joomla 1.5 or Joomla 2.5 or the latest version of Wordpress.
You can also click on Actions, Details to get the name/number of the database
associated with each application. Write this number down or copy paste the
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database names and numbers into a document as you will need them later.
Step 4... Update your database passwords
Next, update your database information. From your control panel, click on
Databases to bring up a list of your databases. If you are like most business
owners, you lost the passwords to your databases years ago. You can recover
your old password by selecting the database Actions, Details option. You can
also change the database password to something you can remember. But if you
do this, you will need to go to the File Manager for your account (from the Control
Panel), change the permissions to Read/Write and then update the password in
the configuration.php file. Once we have updated the domain name information,
the applications and the databases, we are ready to backup our websites.
Step 5... Backup your website
The method you use to backup your website(s) will depend on the type of tools
you used to create your website(s). There are three common types of small
business website creation tools. The most well organized small business
websites are built using a free Content Management System (CSM) called
Joomla. Unlike a personal blog, a small online business might have hundreds of
pages, thousands of images and dozens of addon tools such as web forms,
video players, shopping carts and Enewsletter organizers. Joomla does a better
job than any other system of organizing and displaying all of this content. The
second most popular free CMS is called Wordpress a system more appropriate
for a personal blog. The third website building method is to use one of hundreds
of proprietary or commercial web building tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver or
a tool provided by your current web host. Wordpress and/or proprietary websites
can become a real disorganized mess over time.
If you are using Joomla or Wordpress, nearly all of your content will be stored on
an interactive database. You will need to backup or make a copy of both your
website static files and your dynamic database. The database files are backed up
in the databases screen and the static files are copied from the File Manager
screen. A lot can go wrong with this process. If you had the wisdom to use
Joomla to build your website, you are in luck. There is a free tool called Akeeba
Backup that can quickly make a complete copy of your Joomla files and
database and also migrate them to a different web host in a matter of minutes.
If you are using any of the other options, you have two choices. You can either
follow the backup options provided by your web host. Or you can manually copy
the content from your website into a folder on your home computer and then
install Joomla on your new web host account. I strongly recommend manually
copying your files and images off of your current site and considering this
migration your opportunity to switch to the Joomla web building tool. It may take
a few more minutes now but it will save you years of headaches down the road.
I also recommend manually copying your website if you have an older Joomla
1.5 website. This is simply a matter of going to each page on your current
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website and copy/pasting the pages and images and links into folders on your
home computer. This way if everything else fails, you can use this information to
completely rebuild your website using Joomla 3x on your new web host.
Another thing to be aware of is that there are two main types of computer server
operating systems, Linux and Windows. Linux is much safer than Windows which
is why the Canadian web host I recommend uses Linux. If you current host uses
Windows, you should make a manual copy of your website and use Joomla 3x to
build a new website with your new web host. There is no way to make a
Windows hosted website safe from the NSA or other potential hackers.
There are also three main kinds of control panels. About one third of all small
online businesses use the old GoDaddy control panel. Another third use cPanel.
Another third use a Windows based control panel called Plesk. The easiest kind
of migration is for those lucky few who have cPanel on their current host and are
migrating to cPanel on their new host (Full Host uses cPanel). This involves only
changing a couple of minor settings in cPanel. All you have to do is open an
account and send them a ticket. Full Host will make the changes for you in a
matter of minutes and you are good to go. If you have multiple websites, during
the migration process, keep both hosting accounts and only migrate one website
at a time. The first website you migrate should be your main website. All other
websites will be placed in folders, called Addon websites, inside of the folder for
your main website. Your remaining websites should be copied and moved one at
a time from your old host to your new host. Each website may take a day or more
to move. So if you have ten websites it could be a while. On the other hand, if
your websites are all Joomla 2.5 or 3x websites on cPanel, you could be done
migrating in under one hour! Domain names take a little longer to transfer which
is why that step should be done first.
Below is a table of suggested options depending on what control panel you have
and what application you used to build your website.
Current
Current
Plan of Action to migrate websites to new
Control Panel Application host
Linux cPanel
Any
Linux GoDaddy
Joomla 2.5
Linux GoDaddy
Joomla 1.5
Update information, backup files, transfer domain

name, set up a hosting account, submit a migration
ticket.
Update information, backup files using Akeeba

Backup, transfer domain name, set up a hosting
or Joomla 3.x account, submit a migration ticket. If there are any
problems, use the free Akeeba Kickstarter to restore
your files.
Update information, manually copy all pages, text
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Wordpress or and images from your current website into a folder

Proprietary
on your home computer. Then transfer domain
name, set up a hosting account, install Joomla onto
your new hosting account and manually rebuild your
websites using Joomla.
Windows Plesk
Any
Update information, manually copy all pages, text

and images from your current website into a folder
on your home computer. Then transfer domain
name, set up a hosting account, install Joomla onto
your new hosting account and manually rebuild your
websites using Joomla.
For excellent videos on how to install and use the free Akeeba Backup Core tool
with any Joomla website, see this website.
https://www.akeebabackup.com/videos/63-video-tutorials/1529-akeeba-backupvideo-course-with-brian-teeman.html
The latest version of Akeeba Backup Core version 3.9.2 only works with Joomla
2.5 and Joomla 3.2 (not Joomla 1.5) Be sure to move Akeeba Backup files and
all other backup files to your home computer so you can access them even if
your website no longer loads. Then delete the file from your website backend
with Akeeba Backups, Manage Backups, Delete.
Step 6: Get a Business Related Gmail Address before getting your web
host
When you set up your web hosting account and/or your domain registrar account
you will need to provide them with an email address. You will need to give them
your personal email address. But it would be better to provide them with an
intermediate email address that you can then have forwarded to whatever email
address you would like to use. This way, if you change your personal or business
email address, you merely change the forwarding of the intermediate address
rather than changing the email address associated with your domain name
and/or web hosting account. Gmail is ideal for this intermediate address. Go to
Gmail.com to create a new gmail address. Then when it is set up, go to settings
to forward your gmail address to your normal email address.
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Step 7... Open a shared hosting account with a Canadian Web Host.
In Section 1.3, we described the benefits of a Canadian Web Host called Full
Host. All you need to do to open an account with them is to go to their website.
Then click on Shared Hosting. Then choose the first option and click on it. Then
pay for a few months with a credit card. If you pay for a year, you get a 10%
discount. On the other hand, they do not give refunds after 30 days. So, you can
also just pay for a few months. Before migrating your websites to them, you
should also move your domain names to a Canadian Domain Registrar.
Step 8... Protect your Business Website Domain Name by moving it to a
non US registrar
Next we will describe the simple steps for changing your domain name registrar
from GoDaddy.com to Easy DNS. As mentioned above, your domain lock
must be turned off and your domain contact information must be current.
Go to your current registrar, such as GoDaddy.com, and log into your account.
Then go to Domains. For GoDaddy domains, click on the green launch button to
open the domain. Click on the Lock/Manage button to unlock each domain. It will
take 15 minutes for the change to take effect.
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Then click on the Contacts tab and edit any contact information so that it is
correct and up to date. Some information can only be changed in the GoDaddy
account settings area. Next, verify that the domain name is not listed as not
paid. Speak with a customer service person at GoDaddy and verify that your
account is current. The charge for domain name registration at Easy DNS is $15
per year per domain name which is about $3 per year more than at GoDaddy.
But at least they will protect your online business from being taken down!
Once this is done, we are ready to move our domain names to Easy DNS.
First, open a free account. https://web.easydns.com/Open_Account/

After the transfer request has been submitted, the Administrator Contact listed for
your domain name will receive an email asking for confirmation of the request to
transfer the domain to easyDNS. If you have privacy enabled on your domain
name, you may need to turn this off in order to receive the confirmation email.
After the request is confirmed, it will take up to 5 days for the domain registration
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to transfer from your old registrar to your new registrar. Transferring the domain
name should not affect the appearance of your web site on your web host.
Why Register Your Own Domain Name
A domain name, such as mygreatwebsite.com, is what you use to advertise and
promote your online business. While it is possible to have a free website
without having your own domain name, it is generally not a good idea for
anything more than a personal blog. The reason is that your domain name is
your online presence. It gives your business credibility if you have your own
domain name. As your online business grows, you want links to your website to
remain stable. Therefore the time to secure your domain name is when you first
start your online business. You can and should secure your domain name before
you officially organize your online business. Since each domain name is unique,
your first choice in a domain name may have already been taken. Therefore the
availability of a domain name may determine what you call your online book or
business. Having your own domain name also means that should you move your
website to a new web host, your domain name and customers and visitors to
your website can move with you.
How to Register Your Own Domain Name
To secure your own domain name, simply register it with a domain name
registrar. The world's biggest registrar is GoDaddy.com. In a previous article, we
explained several serious drawbacks of registering your domain name with
GoDaddy including the fact that they have taken down and destroyed many
online businesses without any court hearing or court order.
We then explained the process for registering your domain with a more secure
registrar called EasyDNS.com. The cost for your domain name will be about $15
per year. You can also register your domain name directly with most web hosts.
The benefit is that you only have one bill for web hosting and domain registration.
However, there are a couple of drawbacks to doing this. Some dishonest web
hosts especially some who offer a free domain name have been known to
register your domain name under their name rather than yours. If you later move
your website to a different web host, they can block you from taking the domain
name with you or charge you a huge fee to get full control of your domain
name. But a more important reason to register your domain name with EasyDNS
is that they have been willing to protect the domain names of their customers.
Most web hosts are not in a position to challenge an authority figure who comes
to them and asks them to take down a website. EasyDNS is therefore a more
secure place to register your domain name.
Choosing your Domain Name
Before registering your domain name, there are a three things you should think
about. First, you should research the domain names of businesses similar to the
one you would like to start. There is a drawback in getting a domain that is too
similar to your competitors. But domain names of other successful online
businesses can give you ideas of what you can call your business. Second,
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consider the extension you want to use at the end of your name. Most
businesses tend to end with dot com. However, a non-profit social organization
should choose dot org. There are dozens of new extensions which you might
want to consider such as dot info. Next you want to see which of your domain
name options are actually available. Most domain name registrars have a
search box which tells you if a domain name is available.
Once you know that a domain name is available, you could register it online.
However, in order to avoid problems, it is better to actually call the domain name
registrar on the phone and talk with a real person to confirm that the domain
name is available and that you can get this domain name today. You will need to
set up an account with the domain name registrar and pay for the domain name
with a credit card. So be sure to have the credit card available when you call.
Step 9: Point your new domain name to a name server
One question your domain name registrar is likely to ask you is the names of
your web host primary and secondary domain name servers.
The domain name servers, also called DNS1 and DNS2 are the address where
your domain name is linked to or pointed to the data in the folder or directory on
your web hosts servers. This is why you should secure your web hosting account
before getting your domain name. Your web host will give you the DNS names to
provide to the domain registrar. If you do not have a web host yet, you can still
obtain your domain name as your domain registrar will simply park your domain
name on their servers until you are ready to point it at your web host.
Many domain registrars also offer web hosting. But since hosting and domain
registration are different specialties, you will likely want a web host who
specializes in web hosting. Many domain name registrars also offer a free email
address at your domain name while it is parked at their site. For example,
david@mygreatwebsite.com. However, you would be better off to use your web
host to provide your email addresses. So get your web hosting, then secure your
domain name, then site up your website and then add email addresses.
What is a DNS?
When you type the name of a website into a browser window, then click GO, you
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are magically taken to the website associated with that domain name. But the
internet does not actually use website names. Instead, it uses a series of
numbers which are associated with the location of the server which your website
is hosted on. There may be as many as a thousand websites on a single shared
server. Domain Name Server is the name/number/address of the server(s) used
by your web host. The IP address or Internet Protocol address of the server is a
number such as 123.4.5.6. However the DNS numbers of your web host are
often listed as simply ns1.mywebhost.com and ns2.mywebhost.com. These are
the names that you give to your domain name registrar.
DNS translates your domain name to the actual numeric IP address used by
routers that control traffic on the Internet. If one domain name server is
overloaded, having a secondary DNS can help insure that folks are still able to
reach your website. This is why you web host should provide you with two DNS
addresses which you then provide to your domain registrar. If you ever transfer
your website to a new web host, you will need to contact you domain name
registrar and give them the two new DNS numbers of your new web host. For
safety reasons, it is a good idea to have an overlap period when you have
hosting at both your old and your new web host during the transfer process.
While the DNS numbers may be posted on your web host's website, it is also
wise to call your web host and confirm with a real person that the posted DNS
addresses are the ones they actually want you to use for your shared hosting
account. Alternately, when you signed up for your web hosting account, your web
host likely sent you an email confirming your new account.
It is also likely that on this same confirmation email, they listed the DNS names
they want you to use for your account. So track down and save this email. Then
copy and paste the DNS addresses into your Domain Registrar's DNS form.
Enter the Name Servers into Your Registrar's Settings for Your Domain
Once you have your web hosts two name servers, log into your account at your
domain name registrar. Then go to Manage Domains and select your domain
name. Below is the Caprica Manage Domain screen at Easy DNS.
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Click on nameservers which takes you to a screen showing where your domains
are initially parked.
Click on Edit to enter two new DNS addresses.
Be sure to enter both the primary and the secondary DNS address. There may
be spots for more DNS addresses. But these are generally not needed and can
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be left blank (assuming you have a good web host).

If you cannot find the place to set your name servers, look for instructions in the
HELP section of your domain registrar's website. If you still cannot find the steps
for entering your web host DNS numbers, then submit a support ticket, email
them or call your domain registrar for help. Be aware that even after setting the
new DNS addresses, it may take a couple of days for this change to be
transmitted on the internet.
Move your domain related email
It is common for website owners to have their domain related email accounts at
their web host. If you decide to move your website to a new web host, you should
also move your domain related email accounts to your new.
If you have domain related email hosting with your former web host, you would
lose them when you change the name servers associated with your domain.
Thankfully, you can recreate the same email accounts at your web hosting
account. First, recreate each existing email account, such as david@mysite.com
at your new host including forwarding and assigning sufficient storage for each
account. Ideally, you should also have all email account at your old web host set
to forward your email to an independent email address so you can continue to
receive all of your email during the transition. Once you change DNS for your
domain name, you will receive new email through your new host. But you may
not be able to reach your old mail host to retrieve email that comes during the
transition period.
Step 10... Choose your most important domain name to install first
Whichever domain name you install first with your new web host will be placed in
the main or top level folder of your website. It is also called your Primary Domain.
All other domain names, called Add On Domains, will be added as sub folders
inside of the main domain folder. So you should choose your most stable domain
name (one you do not plan on selling or getting rid of) as your primary domain.
Once you have done this, use the Automatic Installation process to install Joomla
into this main folder and set up your Primary domain website.
If you have an Akeeba Backup of this website, you can re-install this website
following the instructions on the Akeeba back up video or you can build a new
Joomla website from scratch or by copy/pasting content from your old Joomla
website. Once your first website has been transferred over, you can transfer over
any Add On domains using a nearly identical process.
You are done!
Congratulations! You now have both your domain name and your web hosting on
servers no longer under the direct control of the NSA! Sign up for our email list
and I'll keep you posted for more updates! If you have any questions, feel free to
post them on our forum at collegeintheclouds.org. I am looking forward to getting
all of my domain names and online business out of the NSA controlled United
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States as quickly as possible. Hopefully, you are too!

What's Next?
Now that we have our domain name with Easy DNS and web hosting with
Fullhost, the next step is to install Joomla and a few important additional free
tools called Extensions. In the next chapter, we will show you two ways to install
Joomla and describe twenty of the best free extensions to add to Joomla.
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Build Your Own Website

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Chapter One...

David Spring M. Ed.

1.1 Why Joomla is Better than Wordpress

Build your Own Business Website

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Ten Benefits of Joomla over other web building tools

#2... Joomla 3.5 is mobile ready

Build your Own Business Website

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#5: Joomla uses a Category Manager to help a business owner carefully

Why a Category Manager is essential for a small business website

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Build your Own Business Website

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Build your Own Business Website

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Wordpress Sample Content is barren. In contrast, Joomla sample content is

The Wordpress Administrator menu is a poorly structured side menu which is

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Users (All Users, Add New, Your Profile)

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This was the Quick Links screen in Joomla 2.5:

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Build your Own Business Website

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Build your Own Business Website

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Build your Own Business Website

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Build your Own Business Website

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Build your Own Business Website

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Page Source Meta Data Comparison

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So why would anyone think Wordpress is better than Joomla?

Build your Own Business Website

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1.2 Evolution of Web Building Tools

For your online business to succeed, you need five things:

Fourth, you should build your website in an interactive manner so that

Build your Own Business Website

David Spring M. Ed.

A Brief History of the Internet

Computer Guru Kleinrock

Example of a Domain Name in a Web Browser

David Spring M. Ed.

1990 The Website Concept is Born

Tim Berners-Lee at his computer

Build your Own Business Website

David Spring M. Ed.

David Spring M. Ed.

1994: Websites expand from Educational Organizations to Online Stores

Build your Own Business Website

David Spring M. Ed.

Build your Own Business Website