I am fairly new to Pinegrow (coming directly from Adobe Muse) and I have been searching for an answer to the question of how to actually launch my Pinegrow site. Adobe Muse had an actual ‘publish’ button, but Pinegrow doesn’t. I need to replace my Muse website with the new Pinegrow one, but I need some step by step instructions as to how to do it. I am planning on using GoDaddy to host my new site. I am not tech-savvy and get easily lost in the tech jargon, so please make it simple. I am an artist and get confused if it doesn’t involve paint and a canvas 
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Don’t use GoDaddy if you have any choice in the matter. They suck. (just my opinion.) I use Hostgator myself, but there are other options that are better than GoDaddy.
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Once you have purchased your hosting package, you’ll have to connect your domain (unless your domain is the same as your host.) This is done through the DNS settings panel of your domain provider. Typically, the simplest way to connect your domain to your web host is to get the nameservers from your webhost, and then enter them as custom nameservers with your domain provider. Most domain providers have instructions on how to connect your domain to a host with custom nameservers.
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When you purchase your hosting package, your webhost will supply you with the address of your webserver, and you’ll have chosen a user name and password. To get your website “online”, you have to upload the files generated by Pinegrow into the root folder of your webserver. This is typically done using an FTP (file transfer protocol) program like Filezilla, but can also be done through whatever file management software the webhost uses. For companies like Hostgator, this would be C-Panel. I believe GoDaddy has their own proprietary file transfer software.
If you use a program like Filezilla, you basically setup a new connection entering in the address of the webserver that was provided by the host, along with your name and password. The program will “connect” to the server, and display the folder structure. Then it’s just a matter of navigating to the project folder where your Pinegrow website is saved, and uploading the HTML files and the various asset folders (CSS, JS, Images, etc.) At that point, your site should now be viewable online.
The next time you want to update your site, you’d follow the same steps, select the same files and folders, and when you go to copy them, Filezilla will ask if you want to overwrite existing files with the same name, and give you a bunch of options like, “overwrite if source file is newer”, that sort of thing, so you don’t have to go and reupload files that haven’t changed.
It sounds a lot more complicated than it is.
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Thank you! This actually makes sense to me. I would love to hear more though about why you don’t like GoDaddy. Are they hard to work with? Does their support stink? etc?
Just google “GoDaddy sucks” and you’ll see what I mean. Their UI is horrendous. Looks like it was designed by a five year old to be used by a three year old. And it’s always changing. They force you to do needless verifications on things. Trying to find things, like how to transfer ANYTHING away from GoDaddy, is like finding hen’s teeth. I just find them very hard to work with. Their domains are inexpensive though. Companies like web .com and 1and1 .com try and bang you for as much as $40 for a one year domain renewal unless you complain, and then they’ll lower it to a more reasonably $20.00
I actually have a domain reseller account with GoDaddy, and I wish I’d never gotten it. But now that I have over a hundred domains, I’m not going to go through the hassle of transferring them all to a new provider.
There phone support isn’t terrible. That the only good thing I will say about them.
Agreed. GoDaddy is not the kind that people need nowdays. They used to be a great shared hosting provider but, those days are long gone. Nowadays, people aren’t looking for the shared hosting but, instead they look for the cloud hosting and the industry which once relied on shared hosting few years back has shifted to the cloud hosting now. So, going with shared hosting might not be the right option.
There are many cloud hosting provider available in the market as the likes of DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Google cloud hosting etc. You can even opt for the managed hosting provider as the likes of Cloudways, Siteground, etc. as they also have build some reputation to their name.
When you upload your website to your domain you want to put into the “public_html” folder.
This is the internet accessible folder of your website. If you have domains that are hosted within an existing website, most shared accounts are this way, then you will either access your FTP via the main account and drill down until you find the correct website folder or in some cases you have a separate login for each domain.
I mostly use Reseller Accounts which allow you to setup as many domains as you want within the available storage space you are allotted and each website has it’s own separate account with username and password.
I prefer to only use CPanel control panels for webhosting accounts versus custom or other types of control panels. The reason is that they have a standard layout and features where other types of control panels vary widely with features and they tend to not use any standard feature set that you can rely on being there from month to month, year to year. CPanel control panels you just know what to expect. There is usually an extra fee for CPanel versus the “Free” options or custom panels out there.
Do not host your website with the same company you register the domain with. This gives too much control over your content and domain to one company and if it goes down for whatever reason you can’t just easily switch to another host on the fly.
1and1, Godaddy, Namecheap, hostgator, bluehost are some hosting providers you want to avoid due to all the reason the godaddy sucks websites give. Is same with all of these. Your mileage will vary with Hostgator and Bluehost but in general they are well known to avoid for anything more than a hobby site you don’t care that much about.
With hosting the more you are willing to spend the better experience you will generally get. If possible get a VPS if that is out of your price range your only option is shared hosting and you do not want to go less than reseller hosting if shared hosting is your only option. Otherwise you will experience site cut off with visitors due to lack of bandwidth, this means you can only have a small amount of visitors to your website at one time. All of the listed hosting providers above will cut your site off for having too many visitors to your site within a month’s time. If you plan to do any promotion via social media of your websites avoid these hosting providers and get the highest level hosting you can.
VPS is best if not then reseller hosting. Otherwise you are stuck in hobbyist level hosting and will not be able to do a whole lot other than basic static websites.
We’ve been using Hostgator for over ten years with anywhere from 75-100 domains/websites at any given time in our business account, and have never had a problem.
Key… “Business Account”
Are these high, mid, low traffic sites? Millions, thousands or hundreds of visitors a week? Day?
Lots of file storage used per domain? Ever host content that they do not like? ( Hostgator has been known to go in and remove or edit site content or shut down sites entirely until content is removed )
It depends on how much demand you place on their server(s) and the level of hosting you have with them. The often demand you upgrade hosting or in quite a few cases I personally talked face to face with people where Hostgator just shut them off and told them to move to other hosting. Not because of illegal or controversial content but because the sites received too much traffic. Million(s) a day.
This is actually quite easy to achieve through Social Media and proper SEO as well as PPC and PPV. Youtube videos, influencers, also can achieve high demand on servers. Shared hosting just can’t hande that.
Few hundred visitors a week, no big deal. Instant jump from 100’s to hundreds of thousands because of a mention by an influencer, facebook ad etc… Hostgator has been known to shut sites down.
Glad you have not experienced that, many have.
All of my clients are fairly small, non-e-commerce businesses whose websites are basically just for generating local leads. None of them would ever get even a thousand visitors a day (most get a few dozen to a few hundred.)
I’m aware of the issues that arise with shared hosting when a site starts to get abnormally high traffic. I’ve already investigated going to cloud hosting in the event we require additional bandwidth or traffic allowances.