To understand what the robots.txt file does, it’s important to take a quick step backward. The internet contains many robots. These are programs that scour the internet. They are also called spiders, crawlers, etc. Basically, they go out and try to find what’s out there. In the case of someone like Google, they are trying to see what content is on the web so that it can index it. It can then present that information to people searching the internet in a organized fashion. I hope that makes sense.

Well, the robots.txt file tells participating robots what to and what not to index. So, you can tell a robot that you don’t want it to see anything. The problem with this in terms of completely hiding parts of your site is that the robots.txt file is easy to find. Anyone can read it. But it’s a good way to keep certain parts of your site out of search engines. And that is part of the battle to securing site. Now, let’s look at a sample robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /private/

This robots.txt file tells robots to stay out of the cgi-bin, images, tmp, and private directories.  There are many thing you can do with a robots.txt file, including specifying where a sitemap is located.  Hmmm, maybe we should cover that topic sometime in the near future.  So, the robots.txt file is a simple text file that tells internet spiders where they can and cannot go.  It’s that simple.  Well, unless you get more involved.

HTML is simply an acronym that stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is simply a file that contains tags that tell a web server what to spit out. You can create a web page in any text editor. This includes notepad. All you have to do is save it with the .html or .htm extension. Well, you need tags in the document as well, but that goes without saying.

Okay, so you know that html is just an acronym. And you know that html pages are simply text documents with tags in them. Now, let me show you the bare bones html structure you need to use:

Everything in brackets is a tag. You have to have opening and closing tags. We use the open tag first and then close it with the slash symbol in front of the tag name, enclosed with brackets. It's the way the markup language works. You have to start and end your pages with the html tag. That just tells the web server, "Here comes my html page." The header tag contains the title of the page, meta tags (we will explain in a later post), etc. The body tag lets the server know that the main part of the page is coming. This can contain text, pictures, tables, etc. We will have to cover that at a later point. But that's really the bare bones for you. We'll also cover some free tools soon.

That's right, we offer a ton of extra stuff, including free web hosting, when you buy or tranfer a domain through us!  This includes:

• Online Photo Filer
• 25MB email account
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So, why not get started and register a domain name.

So, what are sitemaps? Sitemaps are just sets of links that help people or spiders to see the site more clearly. Now, there are, as I already alluded to, two main types of sitemaps - those that are geared toward people and those geared toward search engines. The type for people are usually done in html and make it easy to see how the site is structured. It's a visual map. The other kind is usually an xml file.  It's not pretty looking to humans typically, but search engine spiders love them.  This allows them to quickly update their listing of what is on your website.  Then you can use things like Google Webmaster Tools or Yahoo Site Explorer to submit it.

"But aren't blogs for whiny little teenagers who have nothing else to do?" Well, sure they are for whiny teenagers, but they can also be used for a ton of other things. This also goes for businesses. You see, businesses are horrendous at engaging customers. That's because it's hard to have a public/private space for a company. It's hard to arrange a place where owners, executives, directors, and employees can interact with multitudes of customers. Well, blogs enable you to do this.

Building Business Relationships

Blogs excel at connecting people. And if there is one thing that any business would love more of - it's building relationships. You can connect with current customers and also build new relationships with potential customers. But, and this is a big one, that relationship must be taken hand in hand with transparency.

Business Transparency

Before you launch a blog, you need to understand that doing so will open your business to a certain level of transparency. This means that your posting says and shows something about who you are, what you value, and what you provide. But, if you allow commenting, there is another level of transparency. As soon as you allow folks to provide positive and negative feedback, you have an opportunity. This opportunity is to build more trust and deepen the customer relationship. But this kind of transparency can be very unnerving for established "brick 'n mortar" businesses. This means that you must be willing to take criticism and answer to your customer base at times. That's the way it goes. But, the dividends for that type of transparency are invaluable. Now, let's move onto how a blog can increase your visibility.

Search Engines Love Blogs

It's true. They just love them. Blogs create a steady stream of fresh content. If you plan correctly, you can leverage this search engine love for your business. This does take time, but it is really helpful. You can set up link and marketing strategies that will increase your bottom line.

Say "NO" to Perfection

I know, I know - this sounds crazy. But in the current age, you must throw this idea right out the window. People are skeptical of institutions, businesses included. And people are especially skeptical of "happy, shiny people." That means that they expect non-perfection. It's good to shed that marketed image and be personal. Now, folks want you to deliver on your product. Just be willing to let your guard down a little.

If you see the value of this idea, head on over to our hosting plans to get your blog going today. I highly recommend signing up for Linux hosting plan and using the "value applications" to auto-install Wordpress. Wordpress is the blogging platform we use for this blog.

Option #1 - Hire a website designer

This road is going to cost you. But, you will be gaining expert consultation and speed. You will offset that most valuable of assets - time. And most people these days are severely lacking in time. And you will get the look and feel that will best express your church. That alone should cause you to pause. But remember - it will cost you a lot of money if done by a good designer.

Option #2 - Get a Volunteer to Donate Their Time & Skill

If you have someone in your congregation who is a designer, maybe they will donate their gifts. Now, let me be very upfront about this. You have to be extremely upfront about your expectations. Both parties need to delineate how much time will be involved, the end result, etc.  First and foremost, you want to protect the relationships of those involved.  I can't underscore that enough.

Option #3 - Utilize an online website builder

A couple of years ago, I would have shied away from this option.  The tools were clunky and very generic.  But now, we have tools that can really provide a lot of help and a lot of power.  This allows you to build a site that is uniquely you without incurring big costs and without jeopardizing relationships.  I try to steer most folks toward this option because it really dovetails most positives well.

We have a great online website builder.  We provide many options, templates, and pricing plans.  We also have a nice product tour that will show you just how it works.  I hope that helps.

The first thing you will need is your FTP login information.  FTP just stands for File Transfer Protocol.  It's just how files are transferred over the internet.  You don't need to know any more than that.  You may not know what your FTP login is.  Most of the time, you can find this if you login to your web host.  You will probably find that under your hosting information.  If not, give them a call and ask what your ftp info will be.  It is usually tied to your hosting login somehow.  Okay, once you have your FTP login it's time to get a FTP client.  The FTP client program will allow you to connect to the FTP server on your web hosting account.  Let me suggest some great, free FTP clients:

SmartFTP - I love this program and use it constantly.  It's free and easy to use.  It has a familiar file and folder look.  I highly recommend this FTP client.

FileZilla - A great program with a great name.  I know many people using this FTP program.  It's easy to use, but powerful.

Now, all you have to do is enter your site name and your FTP login information into one of these programs.  This will connect you to where you can upload your files.  If you are on a shared web host, then it should connect you straight into your web server file structure.  Just remember, if you are on windows, you will need an index.html file.  If you are on linux, you will need an index.php file if you are utilizing a php environment.  That's about it.

Many folks are now getting into the internet "gold strike" or "real estate boom" of domain names.  Folks usually try to get lucrative domain names to buy and sell.  You may have already come across folks trying to sell you services or "insider knowledge" in this market.  What are you to think of this type of practice?

If you have green in your eyes when it comes to domain investing, you are probably going to be disappointed.  Yes, if you would have thought of this option in, say, 1985 - you would probably be a millionaire.  But now the game is very very different.  That's because a lot of people are in the domain investing game.  Many top notch .com domains are already gone.  And it's much like old real estate markets.  Unless something catastrophic happens, getting deals is all the numbers game.  You have to do lots of research, lots of buying, lots of selling, and lots of deal-making.  In other words, it's a lot of work that requires dedication and resources.  Sorry to burst your bubble.

Now, let's think of domain investing a little differently.  Most people seem to go into the domaineering or domaining arena looking to flip domain names.  I think that's an accurate term.  They want to simply be the middle man with little to no work.  But you can also appreciate the value of a domain.  People will pay for good Google page rank, alexa rank, and traffic in a certain niche.  Yeah, I know, now you are thinking "But that takes work!" Stop whining, get real, and stop thinking get rich quick.  It's usually a pipe dream anyway.  How could you do this without burning up a ton of time?  Well, now it's time to get creative.  How about you farm out everything?  That includes design, implementation, etc.  Get a good domain name and build it from there.  Location, location, location.  Now you have a good domain name that you have rehabbed.  I know of several folks who do this full time.  Yes, it does require work, but they seem to think their freedom is worth it!

Get a plan and then register a domain name, get web hosting, and you are off.  Know of any other good nuances to the domaineering idea?  Let us know.

Spam Karma - Hands down one of the best plugins for Wordpress. One of the first things you will notice about Wordpress is comment spam. Comment spam racks up quickly. And this little plugin packs a wallop on that nasty stuff.

FireStats - A nice stats plugin that gives you a bird's eye view of what's going on for your blog. You need to know how people to your blog, where they go, and how they exit. This is a nice way for you to see that information right in your blog.

Sitemaps - If you don't know the value of sitemaps, you need to look into it. This dandy of a plugin generates a sitemap for you and then pings search engines for you. Very, very nice plugin.

ShareThis - Again, if you don't know the value of social network, boy - have you got some learning to do! But, don't fret, it's all good for your blog. This gem gives your users an easy way to submit your content to those social network.

Subscribe to Comments - A great way to keep people coming back to your blog is through comments. An even better way to keep them coming back is to enable way to subscribe to them. Now they can get an email notification when someone else comments.

Secure Form Mailer - Ever need a secure, easy way for folks to contact you? How about an easy to customize form? Dagon has created a plugin that does both. It's super easy to use and very powerful. Did I mention that it will email you the results of the form - mmmm good.

Adsense Deluxe - So, you want to put ads on your blog?  Well, let me point you to this great plugin.  It will give you an easy way to insert Google Adsense, Yahoo Ads, etc. into your blog posts, sidebars, etc.

Related Entries - Wow, yet another wonderful plugin.  You want to keep your readers on your blog as long as possible.  This plugin offers up related posts to your readers.  They came there for a reason - give some others that may interest them.

Oh, I have more up my sleeve, but they can wait.  This should get you off to a nice blog experience.

The first thing you will want to consider, is getting the Maintenance Mode plugin. This plugin posts a message to users that your site is under maintenance. This is really helpful in times like this. Now, before you do a thing, back up your blog in its entirety. This includes the database and the content. If you have no idea how to backup your database, you're in luck. Here is a nice guide to help you back up your database via PhpMyAdmin.

Now, go grab the latest version of Wordpress. Unzip the files and upload them to your server. Once it is done, you will have to click on the upgrade link to update your database. If anything goes wrong, you have a nice full backup! Also, once you are done and it is working, make sure you turn Maintenance Mode off.

The official upgrade instructions tell you to turn off plugins and so forth. I don't like that method and troubleshoot it after the fact if something goes wrong. You may prefer to disable them before. That's your call.