Publishing Your Community Marriage Resource Website on the Internet

Okay, you�ve modified the OCMRC sample website with some of your
own data and you are ready to publish your website on to the internet.

Here�s how to proceed.

1) Choose a domain name.  A domain name is the "address" that people
will type in to find your website on the internet - such as www.OCMarriage.org.
Actually in Orange County, we chose four different website addresses, all of
which point to the same website address: www.OCMarriage.org,
www.OCMarriage.com, www.OrangeCountyMarriage.org, and
www.OrangeCountyMarriage.com.

Although it is not a requirement, we expect that many community marriage
resource centers will choose to use a domain name using a similar
naming convention  -  the name (or abbreviation) of the community,
followed by the word "marriage", and then the suffix .org or .com.
For example, a good name for such a center in Reno, Nevada would
probably be www.RenoMarriage.org.

2) Register the domain name.   There are a number of services that
can handle the registration.  You can find them by doing an internet
search on keywords such as "domain name" and "registration".
(We have used www.dotregistrar.com - which charges $15.99 for
1 domain name registration, but when I did the search on the keywords
mentioned above I came across a company called www.cheap-domain
registration.com which offers the service for $8.75).

3) Choose a web hosting company.  To find one, do an internet search
using keywords such as "website hosting" or "web hosting", and then
read through what each of the companies offer.  Actually, as I  looked at
all the options that came up when I did that, I realized that you may want
to do this even before you register your domain name,  since some
of the hosting services have "free" (i.e. "included") domain name registration.
The company that the OCMRC uses is called Your-Site, which can
be found at www.Your-Site.com.  We pay for our website every quarter,
in advance, and pay $18 per quarter, which comes to $6 per month.

For additional information, a website at www.100best-web-hosting.com/top_100.htm
provides reviews for what they consider to be the top 100 website hosting companies.

4) After choosing a web hosting company, you will need to transfer your
domain name to that web hosting company.  Instructions for how to do
that should be found on either (or both) the website where you registered
your domain name and the website for the web hosting company you are using.

5) Download your website (publish it) to the internet.  To do this, open your
website file in CuteSITE Builder.  From the top menu, select "File" and then
"Configure Web Site".  You will be a greeted by a window that says
"Welcome to the New FTP Site Wizard".  You will then be guided step-by-step
through the process.  At any time during this process you will be able to get
additional information by pressing the "Help" spot on the lower left corner of
that window.  Note that you will only have to go through this process the first
time you publish your website to the internet.  After the first time, you will be
able to publish your changes by selecting "File" from the top menu bar, and
then "Publish Web Site".

Return to Orange County Community Organizing page.