I'm a member of a small society with an html website (cmyf.org.uk) built many years ago -most of the information is static and very rarely edited but we would like to add blogging and other functionality. My question is, should we set up a CMS site under a new domain name, or is there a way to combine the existing static site and a new section with modern CMS under the same domain name, without needing to import existing content into the new CMS? We are working with a very small budget so would like to save on domain hosting costs.
You can easily create a dedicated subdomain, i.e.blog.cmyf.org.uk, and set up any cms just for blogging purposes (e.g. WordPress or Ghost CMS). Ask your domain provider or server admin for help - by definition creating and configuring a subdomain is free (in comparison to registration a new domain).
Most of the common off the shelf CMS/blogging software can be relatively easily configured to run from a subdirectory under the webroot.
That would be one way to have both sites co-exist happily, on the same webhosting package and domain.
There may well be other or more desirable ways to accomplish the same thing but they all depend on the details (which software/blogplatform, what webhostingcompany and what kind of features they offer, etc.)
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I'm new to coding, quite obviously. I created a web design using HTML in Adobe brackets. How do I create my own website from here? Like getting a domain or host. Not sure if those are even the right words to use
Welcome to the wonderful world of web development! Congrats on making your first HTML site.
I am not sure how much you know about the topic, so I will try to explain the basics of getting a site "online".
Websites essentially allow you to access other people's HTML documents in a file directory. You have probably noticed some URLs in the form "www.example.com/file.html". This means that to get your site online, you will need a computer to "host" your HTML files from. Since you probably don't want to leave your computer on 24/7, you will need to use a web hosting service. There are loads of web hosting companies that offer similar services, but they all have the same goal essentially - providing the means for people to remotely access your files. My hosting service of choice is Digital Ocean because they offer a decent price on a small web server. Through your web server (which is essentially a computer running Linux in a warehouse somewhere), you can install web server software (like Apache) which will allow you place your html files into a special directory which will can be accessed from a web browser (something like /var/www/html). Once your files are uploaded to your server, you can access your website through your server's IP address (some esoteric number in the form of http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx).
Of course, you don't access websites through an IP address (at least most humans don't). This is where a "domain name" comes in. The web provides a nifty feature (DNS) which allows you to map a domain name to an IP address. So you can go to your favorite domain purchasing website (something like GoDaddy, which you have probably heard of) and purchase an open domain name of choice. Once you purchase the domain (something like DragonFire09.com), you can map this domain name to your web server's IP address.
These are the two main steps to getting a site online! I hope this provides some insight. Note that getting a website online costs money because you need to pay for a hosting service and a domain, however its a great experience because along the way you will get your hands dirty with Linux and other parts of the web stack.
Of course, you can always create files locally and test them through your own web browser free of charge.
Good luck!
Is there some means to identify the CMS (Content Management System) which was used for creating a webpage based on its HTML source code?
Sometimes I see webpages and immediately wonder with which tool they were developed. With tool I mean CMS like Wordpress, Drupal, Typo3, etc. I could think of some fingerprinting-technique which could do that.
It's hard to pinpoint the backend CMS accurately. Almost all CMS systems out there support custom themes which would have completely different HTML code.
Your best educated guess would be to try and identify the CMS by:
The robots.txt file in its root directory.
The existence of the CMS admin panel login page.
The folder structure used to serve page resources such as images
and css files.
The presence of a specific CMS backend file.
The URL structure of default services such as RSS.
For example, if you are to guess if a certain website uses WordPress, you would do the following:
1- check the existence of robots.txt and if it contains "Disallow: /wp-admin/" then there is a high chance this is a WordPress website.
2- If you get a response from accessing the default WordPress admin panel at http://domain_name/wp-admin , then there is a high chance this is a WordPress website.
3- If this file exists http://domain_name/wp-mail.php then there is a high chance this is a WordPress website.
4- If we get a valid RSS feed at this URL http://domain_name/?feed=rss2 then there is a high chance this is a WordPress website.
Now if a site meets 3 out of the 4 detection rules listed above, you can safely say it's a WordPress website.
You need to do the same thing in identifying unique detection rules for each CMS you want to detect.
Note that there are existing services such as http://whatcms.org/ and http://guess.scritch.org/ that do what I described in this answer.
Good luck!
Presently, we host our java/j2ee web application with a third party hosting company.
Application URL is like abc-xyz.com
This primary domain abc-xyz.com is going to expire in couple of months. Client doesn't want to use this domain anymore and wants to register completely a new domain. In order to accomodate primary domain change, what needs to be done? Thank you.
This is a very broad subject.
If your client is willing to pay for the service why not just let the hosting company move the contents to the new domain. As far as what to do with the web application it really depends on where and how paths have been declared.
Some developers use static paths. I have seen some sites store the domain name in a text file and reference it through out the site, so a path would look like this where
x='new domain name'
<img src="x/images/yourpic.png">
However using static paths can be very frustrating. It is better to use relative paths in respect to the root of the domain. So the above would look like this instead:
<img src="../images/yourpic.png">
Another thing to consider are the paths to the datasources. If you are running something like cold fusion the datasource is set in the cold fusion administrator so moving a site can be as simple as moving the tables and pages then ensuring that the datasources are set correctly. In php developers typically will set a connect function for all database connections in one file.
This may or may not answer your question but the bottom line is that it really depends on how the site is structured and what type of platform is being used.
I am developing a login and account system for use with an existing website, this will run on a subdomain under the main site url.
I would like to use a subdomain that is generic enough so it isn't tied to an account system but not off-putting to users.
I was thinking of www2 but I am concerned people will see this and think its not "legitimate".
Thanks
Some more context.
The new site is currently used for the login and account system but I will eventually migrate the whole website to the new system, this means the services and pages served by the subdomain will very a lot so it can't be specific to one thing.
Try something generic in the interest / knowledge domain of the existing website. What does the existing website do or provide? This can help you determine a proper subdomain.
Some generic examples:
info.domain.com
account.domain.com
auth.domain.com
app.domain.com
to.domain.com
Providing a better subdomain is going to require some more context.
I need advice.
I inherited a website that's been around a long time. The website gets a lot of organic traffic from Google. The business and website owner is upgrading the site to make the content more manageable. At the moment, a wordpress CMS powers half the site. Physical html pages make up the remainder of the site. Here's a summary:
1) Guide section which consists of a php wordpress driven blog found at http://mysite.com/guide. Individual pages in the guide section have urls such as http://mysite.com/guide/4930-hello-world or http://mysite.com/guide/489-welcome-to-my-site. The business owner spent 2 months populating these pages and is reluctant to scrap it for another system.
2) E-commerce section which consists of a thousand static/physical product pages. The product pages are NOT dynamically driven and no url rewrite rules are involved. The pages have urls such as http://mysite.com/products/239123-sofa.html and http://mysite.com/products/23-office-desks.html
The owner wants to use a non-PHP ERP or CRM solutions to power the website's e-commerce section and streamline some of the business' accounting, inventory, marketing and work-flow operations.
I have never worked with ERPs or CRMs before. Some questions I have are:
1) Is it a good idea to have one website under one domain driven by two different technologies? Wordpress manages pages such as http://mysite.com/guide/4930-hello-world while a Microsoft application manages pages such as http://mysite.com/products/239123-sofa.html. As mentioned earlier, the business owner is reluctant to scrap wordpress because he put considerable effort into populating it.
2) What challenges will I experience implementing url-rewrite rules (because it's two technologies under one domain, but different sub-directories)? I need to make sure the website retains its Page Rank and SEO goodies.
3) What server configuration challanges will I experience?
I've never replaced a legacy system of this magnitude on my own before. I appreciate any advice or feedback you guys can offer. Also let me know if there's anything else I should research.
Thanks
You can think of a configuration where you have separate logical/physical back-end servers for each system. Then you can have a front-end proxy (for instance Apache with mod_proxy) serving all the requests and separating them between the different back-ends.
This will also work as an application level "firewall" protecting you from unwanted requests, since you will only forward URLs that you recognize.
With regards to #1:
Big picture, while it's tough to say with the level of detail you've specified I'd say you'll probably want to make the system homogenous: use one technology and permanently redirect the legacy pages. It'll be much more cost-effective to maintain. Port the legacy WordPress content over to a new, single system.
With regards to #2:
If you're using ASP.NET, you can write an implementation if IHttpHandler to do the URL redirection, issuing an HTTP 301 (permanently moved) so that Google knows where the content has been moved to. I'd imagine other technologies have similar capabilities.
With regards to #3:
If you're using a single technology, this issue should be alleviated.