Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet---Better, Faster, Easier - Softcover

Frauenfelder, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312363338 ISBN 13: 9780312363338

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007

Synopsis

In Rule the Web, you'll learn how to:

* Browse recklessly, free from viruses, ads, and spyware

* Turn your browser into a secure and powerful anywhere office

* Raze your old home page and build a modern Web masterpiece

* Get the news so fast it'll leave skidmarks on your inbox

* Fire your broker and let the Internet make you rich

* Claim your fifteen megabytes of fame with a blog or podcast

You use the Web to shop, do your banking, have fun, find facts, connect with family, share your thoughts with the world, and more. But aren't you curious about what else the Web can do for you? Or if there are better, faster, or easier ways to do what you're already doing? Let the world's foremost technology writer, Mark Frauenfelder, help you unlock the Internet's potential―and open up a richer, nimbler, and more useful trove of resources and services, including:

EXPRESS YOURSELF, SAFELY. Create and share blogs, podcasts, and online video with friends, family, and millions of potential audience members, while protecting yourself from identity theft and fraud.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER. Tackle even the most complex online tasks with ease, from whipping up a gorgeous Web site to doing all your work faster and more efficiently within your browser, from word processing to investing to planning a party.

THE RIGHT WAY, EVERY TIME. Master state-of-the-art techniques for doing everything from selling your house to shopping for electronics, with hundreds of carefully researched tips and tricks.

TIPS FROM THE INSIDERS. Mark has asked dozens of the best bloggers around to share their favorite tips on getting the most out of the Web.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark Frauenfelder is the founding editor of the world's most popular blog, BoingBoing.net, as well as the editor-in-chief of the hit technology magazine Make. Formerly an editor at Wired and a technology columnist for Playboy, he is frequently interviewed for television, radio, and print, including MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and Business Week.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One Creating and Sharing I think my favorite thing about the Internet is the way it lets anyone with a computer and a $20-a-month connection create and distribute their words, sounds, images, and movies to a potential audience of a billion people. This kind of broadcasting power would have cost millions in equipment fees and licenses twenty years ago. (Thank goodness the Web happened below the government’s radar, or you’d probably need a license to blog now.) Today, the barriers to entry have been all but obliterated. You no longer need money to have your voice heard by a large audience; you just need to be interesting. In this section, you’ll learn how to cheaply and easily set up your own Web site, blog, podcast, video podcast (a.k.a. vodcast), and wiki (don’t worry, I’ll explain all these terms in the book), along with tips for getting the most out of them. You’ll also learn how to meet like-minded people through social networking services, and how to upload and download files that you want to share with other people. Web Sites How Do I Set Up My Own Web Site? Design and publish your own Web site for free and in minutes with Google Page Creator Web sites used to be hard to make. After registering a domain name (such as ruletheweb.net) and paying a service provider to host your Web site, you had to learn HTML (HyperText Markup Language, used to create Web pages) and then figure out how to upload your pages and images to your host. Today, you can design and publish simple Web sites quickly and easily. One way to do this is by getting a MySpace.com account, but the tools are limited and the results are pretty ugly. Also, your visitors need to register at MySpace in order to see your page. I greatly prefer Google Page Creator. The pages it produces are much more elegant looking, and are viewable by anyone. >Here’s how to create a Web page with Google Page Creator Visit pages.google.com and log in (you’ll need to sign up if you don’t already have an account with Google). If this is your first visit to Google Page Creator, a page that looks like the one on page 3 will greet you. Start entering text wherever you see a “Click here to enter your pages...” placeholder. See page 4 for an example. To add a link to text, highlight the text and click the “Link” button. You can link to other Web pages (including other pages you’ve made using Google Page Creator), email addresses, or downloadable files. Add photos by clicking the “Image” button and then choosing them from your hard drive or from the Web. Use the formatting buttons on the left to change the font size and styles. You can change the overall style of your page by clicking “Change Look” and “Change Layout.” The “Add Gadget” link lets you spice up your page with a calendar, local weather conditions, a clock, a stock chart, and other widgets. Once you’re satisfied with the result, click “Publish.” It is now available for the entire world to see at yourusername.googlepages.com/home (where yourusername is your Google user name.) It took me all of six minutes to create the image at the bottom of page 4. What’s a Domain Name? Domain names are human-readable Internet addresses Every computer connected on the Internet has a unique address assigned to it, called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. For example, 66.74.73.191 is the IP address for the computer I’m on right now. This number lets the network know where my computer is. (You can look up the IP address of your computer by visiting cqcounter.com/whois.) IP addresses are akin to postal addresses: each one is unique, and that’s why someone in Newport, Rhode Island, can scribble an address on a postcard and be assured it will arrive at its destination in Portland, Oregon. The computers that store and serve Web pages—called hosts, because they house the files that make up Web sites—also have IP addresses associated with them. If you want, you can visit Web sites by entering the IP addresses of the host machines. For instance, 204.11.50.136 is boingboing.net’s IP address. Enter it in your browser and it will load right up. But who can remember IP addresses? That’s where the domain name system comes in. Around the world there is a network of computers called Domain Name Servers. These computers contain databases with the IP addresses of every registered Web site in existence. Whenever you enter the name of a Web site into your computer, say boingboing.net, your computer sends a request to a Domain Name Server to translate the name into the IP number so your Web browser can load the Web site. When you register a domain name and sign up for a hosting service, the hosting service gives you an IP address, which you must provide to the domain name registrar so the domain name and IP address can be linked together. Getting your domain name registered is just the first step in setting up a Web site. You will also need a Web host to serve your Web pages to your eager audience. There are hundreds of hosts out there, and you can find reviews of many affordable ones at CNet (reviews.cnet.com/Basic_hosting/7026-6541_7-0.html). My first choice for hosting is Laughing Squid (laughingsquid.net). Based in San Francisco, Laughing Squid specializes in small customers, and its rates start at just $6 a month. Once you register a domain name and sign up with a host, your host will provide instructions on how to put your Web site on the host’s server. How Do I Buy a Good Domain Name as Soon as It Becomes Available? Use a “drop catcher” to snap up a domain name as soon as its registration expires You don’t actually own a domain name, you just rent the right to use it. Domain names must be re-registered regularly or the domain will stop working. That means that any Web sites or email accounts using that domain will stop working, too. You typically have seventy-five days after the expiration date to renew your domain. If you fail to renew it within the grace period, someone else can register the name and put up whatever kind of Web site he or she wants. You’ll lose all access to it. Every day, about 20,000 domains are lost due to non-payment. I lost a domain that way. In 1995, I registered the name boingboing.com. But I failed to renew my registration, and as soon as it expired, a design firm called Boing! Boing! snagged it. I suppose I could have tried to get it back by taking the firm to court, but I wasn’t interested enough to pay a lawyer to find out. Instead, I grabbed boingboing.net, which I now dutifully re-register every year. Today, most registrars will allow you to set your domain to auto-renew with the credit card on file. Has someone “stolen” your domain name? Or is there a domain name registered to someone else that you want for yourself? If you’re willing to pay more, you can hire an online “drop catcher” to pounce on a domain name as soon as it expires. These guys exploit the three-hour “drop” period (between 11 am and 2 pm Pacific time) on the seventy-fifth day after a domain expires. At some point during the three-hour drop period, the domain will be removed from the master database at ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the domain name system) and made available for registration to the first person that grabs it. If it’s a name that a lot of people want, then it’s almost a sure bet that the domain will go to a person who has hired a drop catcher such as pool.com or snapnames.com. Both services charge $60 to backorder a domain name, but if you’re after a domain that had a lot of traffic going to its Web site, or one that has a memorable name, chances are good that you aren’t the only one trying to snatch it up. So even if the drop catcher service you used to grab the domain is successful, if that service has been retained by anyone else in addition to you, you’ll have to bid against the other person to get the domain. The bidding process for each company is different, but they’re engineered in such a way to extract as much money from you as possible. Be prepared to pay at least a few hundred dollars to get the domain. How Many People Visit My Web Site? Use a free counter to find out how many people visit your site and where they came from Trust me: once you build your Web site, you’ll become incredibly curious about how many people are visiting it, and how they found out about it in the first place. All you have to do is install a counter on your blog. Counters are programs that keep a log of the number of visitors that come to your site, when they visited, what site they linked from, how long they stayed, which links they clicked on, what browser and operating system they used to read your blog, and even what country they’re from. Most good counters store daily, weekly, and monthly statistics so you can see how quickly your popularity is growing. There are dozens of companies out there offering free counters. I like StatCounter (statcounter.com) because it doesn’t have ads and it looks unobtrusive on a Web page. StatCounter also gives you the option of hiding your stats from your readers, but I’ve always enjoyed making Boing Boing’s stats public to share and compare with other bloggers. Another option: If you’re already using Feedburner (feedburner.com) to manage your blog’s RSS feeds, you might be interested in Feedburner’s Web page stats tracking capability. How Do I Increase My Web Site’s Popularity? K.I.S.S. it, Digg it, and Optimize it You’ve probably heard the acronym K.I.S.S., for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Here, it stands for “Keep It Scintillating, Stupid.” You can promote all you want, but if your content stinks, nobody will visit more than once. You need consistently killer content and you need to update it regularly. The sites that get tons of traffic tend to be ones that post new material throughout the day. Even if you ...

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0312363338
• ISBN 13: 9780312363338
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416