Websites and Things

Whew! I spent the whole afternoon trying to figure out websites, domain names, blogs, masking and stuff. I wish I knew what I was doing.

I've been on message boards and forums for 7 years. I have blogged for almost 5 years, or is it 6? I have Facebook and Twitter accounts. I even know how to use Photobucket. But this figuring out domain names and web-hosting is nuts! I have a whole new appreciation for people who know how to do it.

When I enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrion, I was given a free website. It's wonderful! I love the information that's on there and it's laid out quite nice. But the domain name is long because the school has to accommodate so many websites, so they suggest we purchase a domain name and forward-mask it to the existing IIN website.

I put off doing that for a long time because the thought of it overwhelmed me. I had no idea what that meant or how to do it. But in just a couple of months I will want to know what my domain name will be (a shorter, more personal one) so that I can have it printed on the business cards they give us!

Last week I purchased a domain name. (http://www.kathyfannon.com/ which will take you here, since I got that masking thing figured out!) Then I discovered that I am not able to edit my IIN site quite the way I want to. I wanted to change the banner color and some other things.

No problem, I thought. I decided to just use the domain name to set up my own website with the look I want. Whoops...that doesn't work. I need to have web-hosting to do that. So I was back to masking to the IIN site.

But then I thought that if I can mask to the IIN site, maybe I could mask to my blog. Ta-daa! It works! Not exactly the way I'd like it to, as the landing page ends up being my blog instead of something more welcoming or exciting. I added extra pages, badges for Facebook and Twitter, pictures and for now it will have to be a good set up.

I'm disappointed that I purchased 5 years' worth of my domain name when I didn't really need to, but it will help keep continuity with all of my web-based activity.

So dig around and see what I've done. Let me know what you think...I'm open to comments and suggestions.

And who knows...when I'm fully rich I may be able to make that web-hosting thing work!