Daniel Hughes

Hey Ross thanks for the reply hopefully this thread will be pretty useful for someone else in the future if they can find it. Ive put a few tags do you have anymore to suggest? Cant really think what someone is searching to do the same

So I have answered my original question – This answer is a solution for creating an environment where you can freely develop your website or websites without it showing live online. I chose this method so that I can freely develop and get everything to a certain standard before i register the site with the search engines (Called indexing by developers) and as mentioned in the first answer by Valentine)

Once you have completed the development you can change the domain name servers to point to your hosting provider and get it indexing. This isnt a guide for that step but just getting you safely offline and developing through a live internet connection locally through your computer.

1. Buy your domain name with whoever you choose https://www.weneedhelp.com

2. Familiarise yourself with the cPanel – (This is provided by the domain name supplier and you will use the same login details you used to create the account in order to purchase the domain name)

3. In the cPanel find the section called nameserver records or similiar – Its important to find this and mentally log that it exists. You will come back to this when you want your website to be shown to the world. Or maybe just a few people if your SEO isnt very good ??

4. Leave the name servers of your domain name provider set to their default.

4. Once you have decided where your hosting is going to be setup (I recommend a separate provider who offers the fastest hosting for wordpress but do your own research for what ever country you live in) Open an account there and install wordpress for your domain. You will be asked to create a username and password. This is what you will use later to access the back end of the website which I have discussed in th final step of this guide. Make a note or save it what ever you do. Once this is done and wordpress is installed ask the hosting provider to give you the IP address for your website which as of now is a bare bones wordpress installation on a server in the middle of nowehere accessible by no one completely un edited

4. Once you have the IP address you are now going to tell your computer how to access this website. It will be a secret. Only you and your computer will know

5. This is for windows – On the blank screen of your main desktop page right click in the empty space – Click new and then go to shortcut. In the dialouge box click browse. Now click OS C drive windows system32 and then scroll down and find notepad click this and the notepad shortcut is created on the desktop homepage

6. The notepad needs to be opened in administrator mode. To do this right click on the shortcut you just created and click run as administrator.

7. Now go to file open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc when you get to the end you will most likely have a blank page if you do change the dialouge box in the bottom right corner to all files. Once the files list is populated select the file called host

8. Dont worry about anything written in this file. Go to the last entry, click your mouse cursor at the end of the last piece of text and click enter so your at the start of the next blank line. Do not enter a hashtag like every line above (this means ignore) now type your ip address given by your hosting supplier then one space and your domain name without www. and then again with www.

for example lets say your hosting supplier gave you the ip address 123.123.12.12 and your domain name is godhelpus.com

on the blank line you started enter:

123.123.12.12 godhelpus.com https://www.godhelpus.com

save the file

9. To test this do the following: Close your webbrowser and re open to ensure it clears caching etc

type godhelpus.com

you should be able to see something – Depending on whats installed on the hosting server

This is exactly how your website will appear to someone using the same webbrowser on a similiar device with similiar software once you make it live.

This is the front end

To login to the back end where you can edit the website just add /wp-admin after your domain name

example – godhelpus.com/wp-admin

by the way that add on gets you to the back in web development part of every website on the net and its the same process for any further websites you create

the username and password was set when you installed wordpress with your host type these credentials in that box and that ets you in to the web development part

Ross thanks for those alternative methods.

Im going to try the version my hosting provider has suggested.

Has anyone used the local host file on their computer to view their website changes?

Here is what Site Ground have to say:

https://www.siteground.com/kb/how_to_use_the_hosts_file/

What I dont understand is where does that I.P address come from which they mention?

It seems that if you do this, and dont have any name servers pointing at your domain, none of the search engines will find you until you alter the domain names to point at your domain

and in the mean time you just use the local host pointed at your domain at such and such an ip address

You didnt understand the question Valentine.

I will try and be clearer.

How can i build a website without having it go live with search engines?

WPyogi It doesnt sound like you can help me.

Does anyone have any helpful advice they can share with regards to adding some HTML code in order to make a review widget appear?

(Interface Pro) is the theme.

If WordPress does not have HTML files, and I want to add HTML code in order to make the widget appear then I assume that I need to add it to one of the pages which says PHP?

During my rant I forgot to say if anyone has a similair problem,

I installed a HTML Widget to grab a shortcode and put the widget in the themes side bar.

Far from great but its there.

D

I’m still struggling.

The thing which keeps ringing around my head is the constant thing I hear about how easy Wp is.

Wp is not easy if you want any level of non widget non plugin customization!

Still a great platform but definitely a learning curve for someone with zero HTML, PHP, CSS, My Sql, Cpanel and all them other things I Know nothing about.

Rant over!

Hi Alchymyth,

Ill try your suggested and see if that helps,

D

I have updated the HEAD section of my header.php file from the theme with a link to the kits license and have also updated what I beleive to be the themes main style css sheet.

However myfonts says the following:

Include a reference to the Kit. Locate the CSS file in the Kit’s main folder. You should place a reference to this file in the head section of your website’s HTML code. Make sure that the reference appears on all HTML pages of your site.

I’m not sure if I have completed the referencing to HTML.

Does anyone have any knowledge of this part? What and where can I find my sites main HTML?

Thanks, Dan

So moving on I have found a number of things I didn’t previously know:

The article I referred to above mentions two things which I think are of real importance. (And i’m guessing that I won’t be the last person to be experiencing these problems so using the “How to” article in my first post hopefully we can unravel the mystery and help other people in the future.)

Step 4 says: Using an FTP client such as FileZilla, go to your WordPress directory and locate the folder wp-content/themes/your-current-theme/

This can be found in the control panel which is supplied/accessed by whichever company you chose to host your wp website. Go to file manager, public_html, wp-content, themes, your theme whatever you chose or uploaded then header.php

Step 12 says: Open your theme’s main style sheet and add the font-family tag with your font’s name wherever you want the new font to appear.

Your main style sheet is found again in your control panel, file manager, html_public, wp content, wp themes, your theme, assets, css, style.css

So I now beleive I have found the main style sheet and have identified various tags in there where I beleive I can somehow link to my web font kit.

Can anyone add something to this to point me in the right direction?