Blog Building Experiment

Part of what makes a blog successful can no doubt be found by looking into the principles of user interface (UI) design.  The user interface is what the user sees and how the user interacts with a website.  In the eyes of the average user, the user interface IS the system - most users are not concerned with how a website or blog works; only that it does. 

Quality Content does not equal User-Friendly

Time and energy expended producing quality content can be easily negated by a poorly designed or structured site which fails to communicate that content effectively.  User interface design is a broad topic which warrants much discussion here at Blog Building Experiment where the focus is on determining how a blog evolves to become successful.  This article aims to address the topic of effective user interface design at a very high level and will hopefully provide some general insights into how one might go about achieving it.

I recently found myself asking the question “What are the characteristics that embody good interface design?”  It’s usually quite simple to tell apart the two extremes; most people know a poorly designed site when they see one, and the same can be said vice versa.  When you come to design your own blog though, being able to tell apart bad design from good doesn’t guarantee you’ll know how to implement the latter yourself.  You’ll need to know what it is that distinguishes good designs from the bad, not just that “it is”.  Seeing the Mona Lisa doesn’t mean you could paint it.

Texts on UI Design

I decided that user interface design was something worth looking into further, so I went searching for books on the topic.  The first one I came across was Wilbert Galitz The Essential Guide to User Interface Design.  At 857 pages, it’s not a short book, but for anyone serious about learning the principles of UI design, it does contain quite a bit of useful content and gets quite specific. 

I can’t personally recommend any other user interface design books, but one which I continue to hear very good reports about is Steve Krugs’ Don’t Make Me Think - A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.  It’s quite a small book - 216 pages, for anybody not yet enthused enough about user interface design to crack out a textbook door stop.  The other thing which separates Krug’s book from Galitz’ is that Krug’s focuses only on the web, rather than user interfaces across the field of computing as a whole.  In hind sight, Krug’s book is probably a better place to start for a novice looking for a practical and light hearted introduction to web usability and design.  A search on Amazon will reveal a number of texts dealing with UI design.

Don’t Make the User Think

One of the core concepts underpinning all user interface design and usability texts is perhaps best summarised by the title of Steve Krug’s book - “Don’t Make Me Think”.  In general terms, a poorly designed interface makes itself most apparent when the user has to begin thinking to figure out how to use the platform which is supposed to be facilitating the task they actually wish to achieve.  Anything which gets in the way of the user completing the task at hand is a hindrance in terms of usability.

These hindrances can manifest themselves in a multitude of forms.  It could be something as simple as using buttons which cause confusion because they don’t actually look like buttons.  Another example would be using headings whose font size doesn’t properly distinguish itself from that of the body text, making page scanning difficult.  Yet another example would be using some special widget which shows you the time on your webpage, but isn’t actually serving any purpose, other than to distract the user from the task at hand.

Reduce thinking - use standards

In the context of web interface design, standards refer to widely recognised and accepted ways of implementing or structuring the visual layout of content on a webpage.  When a user sees blue underlined text on a webpage, there’s a general expectation that that text is a link.  This is perhaps the simplest example of a web design standard.

By adhering to standards guidelines in the design of a website or blog, you make it easier for the user to focus on the task at hand, rather than the technology which facilitates it.  Over time and with experience, users come to expect to see and interact with elements of a webpage in certain ways.  This is their mental model of how things work and how they should be.  When something contradicts the user’ mental model, cognitive dissonance tends to ensue.  All of a sudden the focus shifts from performing the task at hand to negotiating the technology which is supposed to be facilitating it.

Many First Sites will not be User-Centric

For people who have never built a website before, the concept of conforming to standards can come across as being a little draconian and crippling to creativity.  For many people, the first website or blog they create won’t conform to standards very well and won’t be very user-friendly.  This is usually caused by things such as a lack of consistency between individual page’s design structure and the application of bleeding-edge technologies.  These sites often contain little widgets or gadgets which are “neat”, but like a digital clock on a webpage, are unlikely to have much utility as far as the user is concerned. 

Intentional or not, the design of many people’s first site is what I’d refer to as “creator-centric”.  By this I imply that the focus of such sites tends to be for the most part on the creator’s experimentation rather than on creating something overly practical.  This is a great way to learn, but if you wish to draw more people to your site or blog, it becomes important to adopt a more “user-centric” approach.  One of the best ways to do this is by adhering to standards where they exist, so as not to disrupt the user’s mental model of how things should work.

Surviving the standards monotony

For those who look at standards as an impending doom for originality on the web, fear not.  There’s still plenty of ways to add your own distinctive signature to your work and leave your mark on the world.  The crux of the user-centric approach is to always ask yourself what would be most useful and unambiguous to your users and how can you make achieving the user’s goal as simple as possible.

UI Shortcomings of this Blog

At the time of writing, this blog is not the quintessential example of a user-centric blog.  The WordPress blogging software has provided a generally tidy layout for this blog, but I can see allot of room for improvement on my part.  Like anything, UI Design needs to be tended to in proportion to other aspects of a blog or site.  Unfortunately, not even the most user-friendly UI in the world would write my articles for me (I asked it and it said No), so article writing has taken priority at present.

Examples of good UI Design

If you’re looking for good examples of UI Design, think of some of your favourite sites.  It’s quite likely they’ll be the ones which require the least thinking on your behalf to use and allow you to do what you want to do painlessly.

 This article aims to give a brief overview of what search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about and the role it plays in getting your blog noticed.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search engine optimisation is the process by which a website is designed or configured to make it as accessible and interpretable as possible to the algorithms search engines use to index and classify information.  There are certain steps that a blog or website owner can take in order to make their content more “search friendly”.  By optimising your content for maximum search engine compatibility, you’ll have a higher likelihood of getting your pages listed in search results which will in turn drive more traffic to your blog.

How important is getting your blog into search engine results?

For many blogs, search engine results will ultimately become the primary source of traffic.  Some keywords are searched for significantly more often than others, meaning the potential for different topics to gain exposure through search engines will vary.  Even for a mildly popular keyword search however, having your blog’s home page or its individual posts listed on the first page of Google search results essentially guarantees you a healthy flow of traffic.  It may take some time to get your blog ranked highly in Google search results, but working towards this goal is too big of a traffic building opportunity to overlook.

How does a search engine work?

Search engines scour the Internet applying various algorithms or procedures to the contents of webpages in an attempt to rank or classify information based on its perceived importance and relevance.  By doing this, search engines build up an “index” or list of pages found on the Internet. 

The largest search engines on the Internet such as Google have an index containing many billions of pages.  This index not only stores the addresses of pages found on the Internet, but also the perceived importance and relevance of a site, as calculated by the search engine’s indexing algorithms mentioned above.  When a user searches for specific keywords, the search engine looks to its index to determine which pages are most relevant to the user based on the keywords that were entered.

How can I optimise my site for search engines?

In the early days of search engines, the metrics by which a site’s relevancy and ranking were determined were somewhat basic and often well known to webmasters.  As a result, less scrupulous site owners would unfairly exploit their knowledge of search engines to get higher rankings.  While this may have worked well for some individuals, the overall effect was that the quality of search results became diluted by higher ranking, less relevant sites.  Today, search engines have gotten significantly more sophisticated and do a much better job of returning relevant results despite many unscrupulous attempts at “beating the system”.

These days, SEO has become more of an art than a science and what works one day may not work the next, as search providers continue to tweak their algorithms to provide the most relevant results.  Various SEO methods have been found to work with varying levels of success.  Allot of money is being made by “professionals” in the field of SEO who sell their knowledge, services and products to businesses and individuals looking to get a hand up in search results.  Unfortunately, telling good SEO advice from bad SEO advice can often be difficult, so make sure you carefully scrutinize any information you come across on the topic.

This article is not intended to go into any great detail regarding specific SEO methods, although a few simple examples of site optimisation techniques have been given below to give some context to the discussion. 

• Give your posts clear and concise titles that accurately describe the content they contain. The more accurate your title, the more likely it’ll appear when a user does a keyword search on the words contained in it, making your content more relevant.
• Add text descriptions to graphics or images. Most search engines can’t accurately interpret the meaning of images, so attaching an “alt” text description to an image helps.
• Check your spelling. If you spell something wrong, you’re relying on the user to spell it wrong also in their keyword search.

These are only a couple of very basic examples of SEO at work.  There are countless other methods designed to make a site more search friendly. This article however is designed primarily to introduce the existence of the field of SEO, rather than the fine details of its implementation.

Before attempting to perform any given search engine optimisation technique, make sure that it’s not something that is likely to get your site blacklisted by the major search engines.  Search engine algorithms often draw a fine line between search engine optimisation and attempts to unfairly exploit the system, which may result in the search algorithm omitting your website from search results.

What search engine should I primarily focus my SEO efforts on?

If you had to direct your efforts at optimising your blog towards only one search engine, the answer to which search engine you to choose would be simple: Google.  Google holds an online search monopoly and at time of writing handles almost 60 percent of all online searches.  To put this in perspective, the next two closest competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, only handle around 18 percent and 14 percent of online search queries respectively.

Why you shouldn’t get too caught up in SEO

SEO may be an important step in enticing traffic to your blog, but try not to lose sight of the fact that your blog should ideally provide something worth reading.  Getting wildly involved in SEO before you have anything worth reading is like promoting a new restaurant, having your customers turn up and then realising you never got around to purchasing any food to serve.  If you have a restaurant that serves up fantastic food, you’ll only need a few customers to get things rolling.  From then on in word of mouth will give your restaurant plenty of exposure without you having to actively seek it out.  Always aim to provide quality content above all else.  This alone will play a major role in driving your site up the search engine rankings.

This article details my first impressions, or first “WordPressions” of the WordPress blogging software package.  I chose to use WordPress to create this blog based primarily on seeing the results of other successful WordPress-driven blogs and having read a number of positive reviews.  Both of these factors instilled in me confidence that WordPress would provide the exact capabilities I sought from a blogging software package.  My basic criteria required something that would allow me to get things up and running quickly that didn’t compromise on flexibility and extendibility.  This article though, is not designed to promote WordPress but rather to give an account of my experiences with using the software having only recently launched a blog, so let’s get on with it.

The “Famous 5-Minute Installation”

If you look at the WordPress website’s installation documentation, you’d come across the “Famous 5-Minute Installation“.  Here you’ll be told that under most circumstances, installing WordPress is a very simple process and will take you less than 5 minutes to complete.  Through my own experience, I’ve found this estimation to be a tad bit optimistic.  It’s true - there wasn’t anything overly complex about installing WordPress, just niggling issues that turned the famous 5-minute install into my own version - the Infamous 90-Minute Install.  Admittedly though, the reason it took this long was in no way the fault of the WordPress software package. 

First of all, I had to establish how to go about create a MySQL database on my web hosting space.  This wasn’t overly difficult; it was simply time consuming establishing how to go about doing this using the control panel provided by my web host. 

Once I’d done this, I had some technical difficulties getting the WordPress software package files to upload to my web host’s server.  First of all, it was going incredibly slow.  I did some searching on Google and found out that this was because the Macromedia Dreamweaver FTP client I had been using was by default configured to upload files using Active FTP as opposed to Passive FTP.  This article won’t attempt to explain the difference between the two, but you should know that the two different versions of FTP do exist.  If you find you’re getting incredibly slow uploads, try and find out which version of FTP your FTP client is currently using.  Most web hosts will allow you to use passive FTP, although no doubt there are some cases where you must use Active FTP for whatever reason.

After uploading the files, I followed the installation instructions by going to the page http://www.blogbuildingexperiment.com/wp-admin/www.blogbuildingexperiment.com/wp-admin/install.php to start configuring my blog, only to find that I was not seeing anything much at all.  So, I then downloaded the FileZilla FTP client, installed it, and uploaded the WordPress package files all over again.  I tried the same address again in my Internet browser, and thankfully, this time round I got the screen I’d been expecting.  After this the rest of the installation process was quite simple as the WordPress software guided me step by step through the small amount of information I had to enter.

The moral of this installation story - you’ll probably need more than 5 minutes to install WordPress.  This probably won’t be due to any faults in the WordPress software but the associated hurdles you’ll inevitably have to overcome like those I’ve described above.  You may however strike it lucky and have no problems what so ever.

The Administrative User Interface

I’m happy to report that thus far I’ve found the WordPress administrative tools and interface to be organised quite well.  It’s easy to navigate between the administrative tools and the general layout is quite intuitive.  I found it didn’t take long before I’d familiarised myself with the basics of WordPress and gotten a feel for how things worked.  Admittedly I haven’t explored many of the available options and features of WordPress just yet, but starting out and writing posts like these has thus far been a relatively pain-free experience.

The Post Creator/Editor

When I say the Post Creator/Editor, I’m referring to the WordPress toolset that you use to write and edit your blog posts.  My personal writing preference when compiling documents more than a few hundred words long is usually to use Microsoft Word first, and then copy the content into another program if necessary.  I feel this gives me a better view of the document layout while I’m creating an article and I find all the tools in Microsoft Word to be very familiar. 

For all the posts that have appeared on this blog thus far, I’ve written them out in their entirety in Microsoft Word first before copy/pasting the content into the WordPress text editor.  I found that doing things this way often left me with uncertain results, where things like line returns (space between lines) were removed from my articles and other small niggling formatting issues became apparent.  However, I’ve now found a special button on the WordPress “advanced” toolbar that allows you to specify that the text your pasting is coming from Microsoft Word.  When using this button I’ve found that I haven’t gotten the same problems I was experiencing previously when pasting from a Microsoft Word document.

Another niggling issue I’ve had is with bullet points.  The first post I wrote on this site contained a bullet pointed three item list.  In the post editor view I could see the bullet points, but once the post was published they were no longer visible.  I tried viewing the page in a variety of browsers and found that it appears to be for the most part a browser compatibility problem.  Internet Explorer version 6 displayed the bullet points perfectly, Mozilla Firefox 2 displayed two small arrows rather than bullet points, and Internet Explorer version 7 displayed no bullet points at all.  No doubt there is a workaround or fix for this issue that I’m yet to find, but as the title of this article suggests, this article is designed to give “first impressions” of using the WordPress software.

Plugins

The last thing I wanted to briefly mention in this article is plugins.  One of the biggest reasons why the WordPress software is so extendible and customisable is because of plugins.  I’ve found the WordPress plugins manager very easy to use and configure plugins with.  For those not familiar with the term, a plugin is basically an additional software tool or feature that is “tacked on” to a main software package that provides some kind of enhancement.  As an example, one of the most popular plugins available is “Akismet”, which checks any written responses (comments) readers submit to your posts to determine if they look like spam or not. 

There’s a strong community of developers writing free plugins for WordPress that allow you to add on all kinds of neat features or tools to your blog.  An index of most of these plugins is maintained on the official WordPress website. The great thing about plugins is that they can also be “plugged-out”.  In other words, if you want to remove a feature, it’s as simple as disabling it.  This means that you don’t have to manually edit any code and then try and remember where you made the changes if you want to revert back to how things originally were.

Summing It All Up

Overall, my first impressions of the WordPress software have been very positive.  It provides a fantastic toolset and extendibility that allow users to start creating professional looking content in next to no time.  At the time of writing, Blog Building Experiment is what you might call the “vanilla” flavour of WordPress blogs.  Currently there’s been very little done in the way of customisation, so it may appear to look like many other start-up blogs that have been created using WordPress.  To put the extendibility and customisation possibilities of WordPress in perspective though, take a look at TechCrunch, created using WordPress and one of the top 5 most popular blogs on the Internet at time of writing.  As you’ll see, it looks nothing whatsoever like this “vanilla” flavoured blog.   

As I’ve been alluding to in this article, you may well come across one or two minor hitches getting your WordPress blog up and running.  Looking at it in perspective however, I’m very grateful that such a good tool exists that didn’t cost me a cent to purchase and has been predominately hassle free thus far.  WordPress is one of few pieces of open-source, free software that is actually quite easy to use and won’t leave you with a headache.  I’m somewhat of a WordPress neophyte who is still finding out about many of the features and plugins available. This article however has tried to portray WordPress through the eyes of a beginner.  As my knowledge of WordPress expands, I’ll continue to report back on my findings here on Blog Building Experiment.

This article aims to explain how you go about transferring content or files from your computer to your webhost’s server where it can be made publicly accessible on the World Wide Web. 

How a webhost distinguishes your home page from every other page

Before we get into the details of uploading your website to your hosting space, it’s worth giving a bit of a background on how a home page gets found among every other page on your site.  As has been mentioned previously in other articles, a blog can be considered a form of website, so the two terms have been used here interchangeably.  When a request is sent to a website, and the user hasn’t specified the exact page of the site they wish to see, the website will look for some default home page file to process or display.  This name of the default page is usually something like “index.html”, “index.asp”, “index.php”, “home.html”, “home.php” or something similar.  The default page name(s) a webserver will go looking for may vary slightly between different web hosts.  For example, web hosting provider “FutureQuest” looks for the following default file names: “index.shtml”, “index.shtm”, “index.html”, “index.htm”, “index.php”, “index.php4″, “index.php5″, “index.php3″, “index.cgi”.   The term “index” with some file extension (e.g. “.asp”, “.php”, “.html” etcetera) is perhaps the most commonly used default amongst web hosts.

 To demonstrate what’s just been said, let’s give a concrete example.  If Barry comes along and types in http://www.madeupsite.com/, the server on which the site is hosted will probably look for a file named “index.x”, where “.x” represents one of the web host’s valid file extensions.  This is because Barry has only specified the website he wishes to go to, but not the specific page on that site.  If one of the default file possibilities is found; “index.html” for example, the page will be displayed.  If none of the default file names that your web host is configured to search for are found, an error page is likely to be displayed.  The second scenario is that Barry types in not only the domain name, but also qualifies it with a specific page name, for example, www.madeupsite.com/some_page.html.  In this instance, the web server looks directly for the file “some_page.html” rather than the default “index.x” file name.  If it finds “some_page.html”, it will display the page.  If it doesn’t find it, you’ll see an error message, regardless of whether an “index.x” page exists on the web host or not.  This is because in this instance Barry has explicitly specified that he wishes to view “some_page.html”, not just the default home page.

So what’s this all mean?  It means the file name of whatever page you plan on using as your home page must conform to the home page naming standards of your web host.  If you’re going to be using third party blogging software such as WordPress, you’re not going to have to worry about creating this file.  This is because the blogging software file package should already contain a home page file.  For WordPress users, this will be the file “index.php”.   

FTP and what you need to know about it

The most commonly used method for uploading files to your webhost is to use what’s known as an “FTP Client”.  When you purchased your web hosting space, you should have received an email from your hosting provider containing the FTP details which you’ll need in order to upload your files.  This will include an FTP host name, username, password and possibly a port number if your web host does not use the default FTP port. If you haven’t received these details, consult your web host’s support centre.  An example set of FTP details might be:

FTP Hostname: ftp://ftp.uberhost.com/
Username: jimbo
Password: purplemonkeydishwasher

FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol”, which in simple terms is a communications standard that allows files to be sent to and retrieved from a webserver.  There are a number of both free and paid FTP client software options available.  One of the most popular free FTP software packages is FileZilla.  Using an FTP client to upload files to your web host is essentially just copying files from one folder on your computer to another folder on your web host’s computers.  Programs like FileZilla even provide a familiar looking graphic file and folder directory, so you can see exactly what files are folders are on your computer and what files and folders are on your webhost’s computer.

Important: once you’ve connected to your webhost’s directory, you may see files and folders stored on the web host that you did not create.  Often these directories contain important supporting files that are required for your site to operate.  If for some reason you feel compelled to delete any of these files, consult your web host first to establish which files are critical to supporting your hosting package.  As a standard, web hosts will often have already created a “www\” directory for you on the webserver.  This is usually the directory that all your website files should be uploaded to.

Uploading your site using WordPress as an example

The best way to get an idea of what’s involved in uploading your website to the Internet is using an example.  I’ve chosen WordPress as the example, simply because it’s the most widely used blogging software tools available and it’s free.  Rather than write an entirely new tutorial, I’ve found what I consider to be a very good video demonstrating the uploading process which can be found here.  Even if you don’t intend on using WordPress, this video still demonstrates the process of uploading your website files and the sort of installation steps you can expect to encounter using blogging software packages.  WordPress also maintains comprehensive documentation in regards to installation and troubleshooting and has strong user community forums in the event that you run into any problems.

You may notice that this video contains an additional step that hasn’t been discussed in any detail, which is creating a new MySQL database on your web hosting space.  All of the content you write for your blog using your blogging software package of choice and any configuration options must be stored in a database internally.  How you go about creating a new database will differ between web hosts.  Usually your web host will provide you with some form of control panel that allows you to administer database tasks such as creation and deletion of databases.  With most web hosts, creating a new database should be a relatively simple process.  Once you’ve created the database, you need not be concerned with how it is written to or read from, this is all handled through the blogging software package internally.  All you’ll need to do is provide your blogging software with the name of the database, which can be seen in the demonstration video mentioned above.  The blogging software then takes care of creating all the necessary database tables and internal structures so you don’t have to think about it.

If you’re using database driven blogging software like WordPress, having to upload files to your web host will be a one off event.  When you want to write a new post, it’s done online through the blogging software’s administration panel, so you don’t have to concern yourself with manually uploading any more files or content to your web host.  The only exception is in the event that a newer version of your blogging software gets released and you wish to upgrade to it.  In this instance, you will most likely have to upload at least some specific files or folders to your webhost’s server again.  The next article to come will discuss my “first impressions” of WordPress after using it as the blogging software tool of choice for this site.

This article assumes you’ve already purchased a domain name as well as some web hosting space.    Being as a blog is essentially a type of website, the term “website” has been used throughout this article to broadly encompass both a blog and any other non-blog related content you may be looking at publishing. 

Once you’ve purchased a domain name and web hosting space, you’re not able to simply type the domain name into your Internet browser’s address bar and be directed to your website.  The exception to this may be if you purchased your domain name and web hosting space through the same company, in which case the configuration may have been handled for you.  This article however, assumes that you purchased your domain name through one company and your web hosting package through another.

The “Low Down” on Domain Name Servers
In previous articles on this site, you’ve been told that there might be a few things that need to be configured for your domain name and web hosting space at some point.  This is that point.  This article focuses particularly on what is perhaps the most important of these configuration options - the “Domain Name Servers”.  To get your domain name pointing to your website, the domain name registrar (the company you purchased your domain name through) needs to know the names of the servers that handle your website.  The name of these servers should be attained from your web hosting provider.  You may also hear a domain name server referred to simply as a “Name Server”.  The two terms are interchangeable.  A domain name registrar will always require the name of at least two name servers (this doesn’t mean you need two web hosting packages).  This allows for redundancy; in the event one name server isn’t available, another name server can handle the request.  The following is an example of two domain name server addresses:

ns1.imaginarywebhost.net

ns2.imaginarywebhost.net

Once you’ve obtained the name server details from your web host, you can register these with your domain name registrar.  Most domain name registrars have a configuration option that will allow you to do this yourself online.  Note that your domain name registrar may have set some default domain name servers for your domain name, which probably point at the registrars own domain name servers.  In the event that you purchased your web hosting space and domain name through the same company, there’s a good chance these default addresses are actually correct and you don’t need to make any changes.

So there you have it, having now registered the domain name server details with your domain name registrar, your domain name should now point to the server on which your website will reside.  This means that when someone types your domain name into their Internet browser, when your domain name registrar receives the request for your domain, it knows the name server that the request should be directed to.  This is a very basic explanation of what’s going on behind the scenes.  A detailed explanation is beyond the scope of this article and is not something you need to be familiar with in order to get your site up and running.  If you are however interested, trying doing a Google search on the term “Domain Name System”.

Testing Out Your Domain Name
So you’ve configured the domain name servers, but now what?  Try typing your domain name into your Internet browser’s address bar.  Assuming you haven’t yet uploaded any of your website to your hosting space, this will likely produce one of two things:

An “Under Construction” style page or similar, which is like a placeholder on your site until you upload your own content.  This might contain the name of your site, a short description, the name of your hosting provider, or something similar.

An error page.

If you get the “under construction” style page, then you know it’s worked.  Many web hosts will give you a default home page before you upload any of your own content to your website, which is what you would be seeing.  If you get an error page, it’s probably for one of the following reasons:

Your web hosting provider hasn’t given you a default placeholder home page.

The changes you made to your domain name server details haven’t yet been processed.

The changes you made to your domain name server details were incorrect.

The webserver hosting your site is currently down.

Some web hosts may not give you any default home page at all.  This means that even though your Internet browser has gone looking in the right place for your website, because you currently have no home page file stored there, it returns an error message.

What’s next?
Regardless of whether you were lucky enough to get an “under construction” page or unfortunate enough to not, the next logical step is to now get your site’s content uploaded to your hosting space. If you plan on using a third party blogging software tool such as WordPress then don’t worry, you’re not expected to have created any of your own content for your site at this point. Instead, you’ll be uploading a series of files that have already been created for you as a part of the software package.  Once you’ve done this, providing things have gone to plan, you’ll have something meaningful to look at when you type in your domain name. Instead of just a placeholder construction page or error page, you’ll have your very own home page. In the event that you’re still not seeing your own home page after completing this next step, you’ll be in a better position to diagnose the exact problem than before.  A basic description of how to go about getting your site’s content uploaded to your web hosting space will be the topic of the next article to appear on Blog Building Experiment in the near future.