Contents

• The basics
• Unix on your laptop
• Wordpress on your laptop
• Getting ready to go public

Getting ready to go public

1. Keeping your site safe in case something goes wrong
2. Renting a computer on the internet which can run wordpress
3. A url that you can pass on to your fans and post on social media
4. A way to move your site from your laptop to the internet

1. Keeping your site safe

   As some point something is going to go wrong. You might make some changes to your site which breaks something. Or you might drop your laptop and lose your files. Or some nasty hacker might break your site out of spite. When something goes wrong you will want a backup (probably several) so you can get your site back. Here are some articles which explain the options and some additional tips to keep your site secure.
   • How to backup wordpress
   • Wordpress backups: Mistakes to avoid
   • Wordpress security tips
   Let's try this out. We are going to use another test wordpress site on your laptop. You won't be able to run two versions of wordpress at the same time but you can use vagrant halt and vagrant up to start and stop them. Use the instructions in the previous lesson to create another wordpress site on your laptop. Use a different folder name like testsite so that you don't mess up the site you have been working on. Use the test site for these steps:
   • Add a post to your new test site. It doesn't matter what it is as long as your can recognise it
   • Use the wordpress setting menu to find the UpdraftPlus Backups plugin, install it and activate it
   • Use UpdraftPlus to backup the test site to your Google or Microsoft drive
   • Make some obvious changes to the test site such as the text and style
   • Use your backup to restore the original version - the changes you made should have gone away
   • Make sure you are comforable about backing up and restoring the test site before you go further
   • Halt your testsite
   • Now switch over to your main wordpress directory and start up the site
   • Install the backup plugin
   • Make a backup of your main site
   • Halt your main site and switch over to your testsite directory
   • Use your main site backup and restore it in your test site
   • Your test site should now be an exact copy of your main site when you made a backup
   • If things go wrong search around for help to see what went wrong
   • Once you have successfully used your backup to copy your site you can get rid of the test site folder
   From now on make backups of your wordpress sites. The articles have some good suggestions of what to back up and how often. Remember to move the backups somewhere safe such as another computer or online storage like OneDrive or Google Drive.

2. Renting a computer

   You could actually publish your wordpress site from your laptop but that is not much good if your run out of power or shut it down. It can also cause performance and security problems.

   A better option is to use a computer on the internet. There are free options including ones provided by the Wordpress organisation but these limit what you can do. Instead there are many companies, called "hosts" which rent computers for wordpress sites starting from around £5/month.

   The WordPress organisation provides some links for some good hosts. Search around for reviews and special offers. Before you pick one and sign-up look ahead at the next two steps as you might be able to save some money.

3. Getting a url

   The great urls you see for other websites come from companies called "Domain Registrars". Registrars like WhoIs.com or NameCheap.com will let you see what is available and how much it will cost per year to use the url. Your first choice of url is probably already taken. Have a look at different endings and combinations of words and punctuation to get something close. Also note that you only get to rent url's - you don't get to own them forever.

   Some of the hosts you looked at will also offer urls and include it in the price. Some will only offer a url which includes their company name or has funny letters and numbers which will be cheap but might not be what you want. Some will offer anything you can get through one of the registrars. Check the details of what they offer and what will be cheapest. Getting your url from the host company makes things slightly easier but your will find plenty of instructions if you rent your computer from a hosts and rent your url from a registrar.

4. Moving your site

   Your host will probably provide some instructions and apps to move your wordpress site onto their computers and may also provide some backup apps as well. Read about what they offer and look at reviews to see what other people say.

   You may be able to use the backup that you created on your laptop. The good thing about that is you will be able to experiment on your laptop and make sure you like any changes before you publish them on the internet. There are some wordpress plugins which can make this easier and articles with ideas and suggestions to help.