HTTP, FTP, FTP SERVER,PUBLISH, & FLICKR – MY Definitions

Even before I started to blog, officially, I kept running in words that I had seen before, but never took the time to learn what they meant. Blog, being one of them. Now I know that blog is short for web log.

Anther “word” you see often, is “http“. This is short for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. Okay, protocol is, as we know it, the proper way to act. So…http is the correct manner of entering “codes” so that when you send data, it is sent and received correctly by another person. With http, you are sending information over the internet. Does that make sense? I think I just reconfused myself. But then again, sometimes that’s not hard to do.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol. There’s that protocol word again. But this time we are talking about “files”. So, this time we are sending, for lack of a better word, “pages” of information to a “server”, or as they say, a FTP Server. The pages are saved on the “server”, just as you would save your documents on your computer.

FTP Server: How I understand this, it’s like cooking a meal. You cook the meal and give it to someone else to take to take into the other room. The delivery person then may bring something back to you (probably dirty dishes). Then you can deal with whatever is brought back to you. So, when I signed up for Bluehost, my webhost, they became my FTP Server. I believe my blog goes first to them when I hit “publish” and then they send it out to the internet. Say, someone makes a comment on my blog. They will send that information back to me. So, Bluehost is my middleman.

Web Hosting $6.95 Per Month / Free Domain

Publish: This one is pretty easy. When you “publish” a blog, you are sending your “post” (what you wrote) out to the internet for people to read, and maybe comment on. Just remember, don’t publish anything you don’t want repeated. Leave the skeletons in the closet. Do keep in mind though, you can edit what you published. In WordPress, which I use, I click on the “manage” button, then click on the “posts” button. I find the post I want to edit, click “edit”, make my changes, and hit “save”. Check your site and see if you have it the way you want it. It’s pretty easy.

Flickr: Wasn’t there a horse named Flickr? No, I guess that was Flicka. Now this is something new. With Flickr, you can add photos of yourself, or whatever (within reason) to your blog or other websites. They look like little thumbnails, so if you really want to see what someone looks like, get out your magnifying glass. I think the younger generation really likes this “addon”. I’m sure you can do a lot more with Flickr, but at this time, learning about it, isn’t on the top of my priority list.

Addon: An “addon” as I understand it, is something additional you can add to your blog , like a shopping cart. Or maybe a shopping cart is a “plugin” Now we have words that just run together- “Addon”, “Plugin”. What’s that all about? I’m getting used to it though, as it appears to be the wave of the future.