Volume 1 Issue 33 11-24-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I33_112406.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.

THANKSGIVING ISSUE - 2006

Table of Contents for this issue.....

1. Authors Comments


2. Tim Knox Article

Author's Comments

Thanks to the automatic message transmission of Aweber.com, when you receive this email, Linda and I will be on Lake Medina west of San Antonio, TX staying at a friend’s lake house. We got a kind offer we could not refuse.

We spent Thanksgiving in San Antonio with Justin, Mary, and Allison (son, his wife, and their daughter). Our entire family gathered there for Thanksgiving.

We went to Lake Medina late Thursday to stay till Saturday morning. We will drive back to San Antonio on Saturday for Allison’s first birthday party. Exciting times!

Tim Knox Article

Tim called me and interviewed me about Boomers and my thoughts on the subject. Here is the article that he wrote from that interview.

If you want to listen to the interview, the instructions are at the end of this article.

It’s A Baby Booming Time For Business

by Tim Knox Copyright © 2006

The first wave of Baby Boomers turned 60 this year and as many approach the traditional retirement age of 65 they are finding that (a) they are still vibrant and don' t want to stop working; and/or (b) their life expectancy has been extended and they will be dead broke long before they are dead and gone.

As a result Baby Boomers are not slowing down now that they're approaching what once would have been considered their "golden years." If you were a man you expected to retire at 65 and die at 75; and if you were smart you banked enough dough to see you comfortably through that stretch. We figured we'd get at least 10 good leisurely years before the grim reaper shows up without having to worry about money. Turns out, we were wrong.

Leave it to modern medicine and Mother Nature to throw a monkey wrench in our plans. People are living longer, which is one of those good news/bad news scenarios. It's good that you're living longer, but it stinks that you have no idea how you're going to finance all that extra life. Who wants to live forever on a diet of crackers and cat food? Certainly not me and I expect, not you. And do me a favor: if you see me thirty years from now passing out buggies at Wal-Mart, please, just kill me where I stand. You'll be doing me and all Wal-Mart shoppers a huge service.

Personally, I think Viagra is the reason men are now living longer. Let's be honest; if a man thinks there's still a chance of getting lucky when he's in his eighties he'll hold on for dear life. And women are living longer because they know old men couldn't survive without them. We'd never find our car keys or our pants or our reading glasses or our way home from the drug store.

Being your average, white male in good health, I can now expect to live into my eighties if I can avoid an unexpected heart attack, getting creamed by a runaway truck, or the wrath of my lovely wife (who I believe is actually killing me a little every day).

And by the time I get to eighty years old someone will have discovered a pill that extends my life into the hundred and ten range. Personally I don't think I want to live to be a hundred and ten. I'm crotchety enough now in my forties. Imagine what a pain in the backside I'll be fifty years from now.

All kidding aside, older Americans are finding that they have the time, energy, desire and, sometimes, the need to start their own business. I talked about the insurgence of older entrepreneurs in this column two years ago and as I predicted then, the trend toward elder entrepreneurship continues today.

• A report from Barclays Bank showed that older entrepreneurs are responsible for 50 percent more business start-ups than 10 years ago. This amounted to around 60,000 business start-ups in 2005 alone. The report further showed that only 27 percent run the business as the only source of household income, with 51 percent supplementing their pension.


• Other key findings showed that third age start-ups account for 15 percent of all new businesses, and third age entrepreneurs are three times more likely to be male than female.


• Americans over 60 are the fastest growing segment of Internet users and many are starting online businesses.

I talked to "Boomer Expert" John Howe, 63, of Dallas, TX, (Author’s Note: I told Tim that Kingsville and Dallas are only 430 miles apart, but by Texas standards, he didn’t miss it too far. His reply was he was glad he got the right state - LOL) who has started an organization designed to assist Baby Boomers who want to learn more about entrepreneurship and making their older years more fulfilling and profitable. Howe publishes the weekly electronic magazine for Boomers found at Boomer-Ezine.com. I asked: How are boomer entrepreneurs different from younger entrepreneurs?

"Boomers have the benefit of the lessons that many bumps and scars of life taught them," Howe said. "They are more conservative than the younger group. Patience is a trait that one learns with age. When we are young, we tend to shoot from the hip a lot. A little age teaches you to take aim and fire.

"Boomers also have more money to invest in their venture than the younger group, but the fact that this money is from retirement savings makes a Boomer conservative. The Boomer will study the opportunity and do a lot more homework before jumping in."

Howe makes a good point. Boomers are more careful with their money because they have less time to rebuild their fortune than someone who goes belly up at 25. I asked Howe why he thought so many Boomers were starting businesses. Was it out of desperation and need or because they enjoy the challenge?

Howe responded, "I believe it is a mix of all of these. It also depends on the person. A major concern is that modern medicine will make us live longer and we will outlive our savings. When we started saving 30 years ago, many planned savings for living a shorter time that we are now projected to live."

And why are so many boomers now looking at entrepreneurship as a way to supplement their retirement income?

"Some, like myself, cannot think about not having a challenge to wake up to everyday," said Howe. "Sitting around without a definite direction is not my idea of retirement. I am also not doing this for free so it is also profit motivated. We Boomers made a lot of money over the course of our lives, but many lived for the moment and did not plan for retirement like they should have, or they suffered in the stock market downturn and lost a considerable amount of their savings."

In the end, Howe believes, the decision by Baby Boomers to start a business comes down to energy and economics. "If the desire and finances are there, there is no reason someone over 60 should not consider becoming an entrepreneur."

If you're a Booomer interested in starting your own business you can contact John Howe at Boomer-Ezine.com or contact me at TimKnox.com.

****End of Article ****

Visit the Tim Knox website at http://www.timknox.com/show.php. Scroll down to the archives to find this article. If you want to listen to the interview, you will find the links at the bottom of the article summary on the Tim Knox site. Tim interviews me in the last half of the program.

I recommend that you download the .mp3 file to your computer and then listen to it from there. To do so, right click the audio link on the Tim’s site and select “Save Target As” on the dropdown box. Save the file to your download folder on your hard drive. When the file has downloaded, double click on the file, and it will start playing using your default media player.

That wraps up our issue for this week. Linda and I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving. We are thankful for our wonderful family and the good life that God has given us.

Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm


Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

Volume 1 Issue 32 11-17-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I32_111706.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Table of Contents for this issue.....

1. Authors Comments
2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments
3. Changing Web Hosts
4. What is DNS and how does it work?

Author's Comments

I am still working intensely on the hunting car. For fun, I did take a couple of hours and post a few pages in my “play” website http://www.quail-hunter.com/. I am going to add a little at a time to it during the hunting season this year. Right now, my additions are pictures of the rebuilding of the hunting car so if you are curious, go to the site and see how a hunting car is built from a VW bus.

I AM PLANNING TO PUBLISH A SHORT ISSUE OF BOOMER EZINE ON NOVEMBER 24. Tim Knox interviewed me for his radio show and then wrote a column from the interview. I will publish it in the Thanksgiving issue.

No video this week. The hunting car rebuild is absorbing my extra time.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

No input from readers this week! Surely you have questions. I know that I do. Send them in and let’s see if I can find the answer.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Changing Web Hosts

Last week, I told you that we were changing web hosts since our previous host was getting out of the business. I sat down at the computer and did most of the work on Saturday afternoon.

To change hosts, you must find a new web host which I did at http://www.hostmonster.com/. Once you get your user name and password, you log on the control panel and set up your domain names. Hostmonster allows unlimited domain names for the flat rate of $4.95 per month (two year contract). I set up 31 domain names in the process.

Why so many names? We usually register domain names that are similar to the main domain name so someone cannot register the similar domain and take advantage of our traffic when the viewer enters our domain name incorrectly. As an example, if the surfer enters boomerezine.com instead of boomer-ezine.com, we want the viewer to come to our site, not someone else’s. We have registered boomerezine.com and it will automatically forward to the correct site, boomer-ezine.com. Try it.

Hostmonster requires that you go to your registrar and change the DNS (domain name servers) for your domain to the Hostmonster domain name servers which are NS1.HOSTMONSTER.COM and NS1.HOSTMONSTER.COM. (See next article about DNS). This will tell anyone of the Internet where to go to find your web site.

We use a company called GKG.net for our domain registrations. I went there and selected all the domain names for which I wanted to change the DNS information and in one mass change, I changed them all to point to the Hostmonster domain name servers.

Setting up these domain names and redirects is simple. Hostmonster uses Apache Server so the control panel is familiar. Click the icon for Add-On Domains and enter the domain name and folder name you will use for storing the domain information. Enter the password for the domain and that is all. Once the domain is set up, you can specify if you want to redirect it.

This change of web hosts was easy since I only had one page sites. If the sites had been of many pages with data bases, this would have been a real problem. If you are going to build a large site, research the web host before you start to see if they will be in the business for the long haul.

What is DNS and how does it work?

DNS stands for domain name system. This is a fascinating system that enables the Internet to work. The main job of the DNS is to take the alpha domain name that you enter into your browser and translate it into the numeric IP (internet protocol) address that computers understand.

The site where you register your domain holds the main DNS record for your domain. This record points to where your website is hosted. When we first set up our domains on GKG.net, the DNS record pointed to GKG since the domains were parked on GKG. When we created websites using web hosts outside of GKG, we changed the DNS server record on GKG to point to the DNS server of the hosting website. We have some sites on Hostmonster.com and some on Hostexcellence.com. If you look at our domain registration records on GKG, the DNS server records will either say Primary - NS1.HOSTMONSTER.COM, Secondary – NS2.HOSTMONSTER.COM, or Primary - NS1.HOSTEXCELLENCE.COM, Secondary – NS2.HOSTEXCELLENCE.COM.

The site where you are going to host your site will tell you the names of its name servers so you can change the record on your domain registration site to point to the web host name servers.

DNS servers are specified as primary and secondary. If for some reason, the primary name server does not respond, the browser will automatically query the secondary name server.

When someone enters http://www.boomer-ezine.com into the browser, it goes onto the Internet and looks for a DNS server to resolve the alpha name to the proper IP address. There are certain companies or organizations that are responsible for certain types of web addresses. Network Solutions, Inc. is responsible for all .COM addresses so the DNS server at Network Solutions (or a similar root server) would be accessed to get the proper IP address. When the URL was matched to the IP address, the returned IP address is 66.116.252.10. Your browser would then use this IP address to load the home page of Boomer eZine.

If you enter http://66.116.252.10 into your browser address window, you will also get Boomer eZine. You can use the IP address of a site to access it directly as well as the domain name.

Just think of the logistics of this system. There are billions of IP addresses used on the Internet. The DNS is basically a large, distributed database used to translate alpha domain names into the numeric IP address that the Internet can use to locate a particular computer on the Internet.

The database is distributed since certain servers are the master servers for certain types of domain names. The United Kingdom is in charge of all .uk domains, Russia is in charge of all .ru domains, and so on. Yet all of these servers are tied together to maintain a naming and lookup system so no domain name is duplicated on the Internet.

I recommend that you read the article about DNS on the How Stuff Works website at http://www.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm. This article does a good job explaining in more detail how this amazing database works.

Just remember that every time you enter a domain name or an email address, the DNS servers are working for you to resolve the alpha name to an IP address and give you the webpage you want. It all is done is milliseconds between your browser and multiple DNS servers and you don’t ever realize that it has happened. The webpage you wanted appears and that is all you really care about. ….. Amazing!

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm

Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.
Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

Volume 1 Issue 31 11-10-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I31_111006.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Table of Contents for this issue.....

1. Authors Comments
2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments
3. Skype
4. Changing Web Hosts

Author's Comments

Linda has told me that some of the issues are too long and have too many articles. Well, I am going to make up for that with this issue.

Things at my day job have gotten really busy. I now am the Chief Technical Officer as well as the Chief Operating Officer, and the Comptroller of Kodiak which has two locations 200 miles apart. Other than that I don’t have much to do.

Also, I am spending a lot of time after work on my hunting car. With all this happening, I am cutting back on the size of the eZine for a week or two.

Today, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Tim Knox for his radio show. Tim interviewed me about Boomer entrepreneurs and the Boomer market. For those of you who do not know of Tim, he is an online entrepreneur who is my mentor. Tim is a brilliant, creative person who is an author, lecturer, and speaker. Get to know Tim at http://www.timknox.com/.

It was fun to visit with Tim on the phone while he recorded our conversation. He will edit it and put it on the air. I will find out when the show will be broadcast, and I will send an email with the details.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

Question: Do you have to create the space for Google Adsense ads in your web page design?

No, you do not have to create the space. When you insert the code to include Google Adsense on your site, the Google code will create the space for the ads. If you go to this issue on the Boomer eZine website, you will see Google Adsense ads at the top of the page. This is automatically inserted in this position by Google.

When you design your web page, you need to be aware where the ads will be inserted, but you do not have to actually allocate the space.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Skype

How many of you have heard of Skype? It is a VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) service that allows you to call between computers over the Internet and talk with the person at that computer. All you need is a computer with Internet access that is equipped for sound, a microphone, and speakers. You can use a headset and boom microphone if you have one.

To really be effective, your computer should be connected to the Internet constantly, but you still can use Skype if you have a 33.6 Kbps modem or faster. If you are doing anything else over the modem (web surfing, file sharing, or email) you may experience disruptions in the voice communications. You will have to arrange with the party to whom you want to talk to call you at an appointed time when you will be dialed in and online.

I use Skype at the office very successfully. My company does business on an International basis and it allows me to talk anywhere in the world for no charge. We have a sales rep in Chile that uses Skype and when she calls, it is crystal clear. Skype also allows for conference calling, and we use it for team meetings over the Internet.

Skype is loaded when you boot your computer and sits in your system tray. When someone calls you, a ringing sound will come from your speakers and a window will appear with the caller’s name. You click a green button on the window and start speaking into the microphone to answer your caller. It is like magic! When you finish the call, you click a red button on the Skype window and the call terminates.

If you have friends with whom you communicate using email and you would like to call them and talk with them, download Skype and get them to do the same and you can talk all you want – no charge. All you do is set up their Skype name in your Skype contact list. When you want to call them, click the name and start the call.

This is a handy tool. It is easy to download and set up on your computer. Skype has many other features, but you can explore them yourself. Go to http://www.skype.com/ to investigate Skype and if you want to try it, you can download it and be started in less than ten minutes.

Changing Web Hosts

I received an email on November 1 informing me that the web host site that hosted my small sites was shutting down effective November 30. Multi-Domain Hosting.com has done a good job for me, but Jason has decided to get out of the hosting business.

This means that I will have to move some 32 domains from this site and set them up on another site. This is not as daunting a task as it may sound. Many of these are “forwarding” domain names that forward to another domain. These are very easy to set up. The other domains that are not “forwarding domains” are one page “place holder” domains. I will just upload these pages from my computer to the new host – fairly simple to do.

The first challenge was to find a host that would host unlimited numbers of domains for a reasonable price. The web host I chose is Hostmonster.com. This host will host unlimited domains and throw in a free domain for $5.95 per month (two year contract). This is more expensive than the $2.95 for Multi-Domain Hosting.com, but is the cheapest provider with I could find. This host is well rated in the hosting reviews.

I have set up an account on Hostmonster.com and I am getting ready to transfer the accounts.

I did get a free domain out of the deal. I chose http://www.quail-hunter.com/. I will consider making a fun site about my quail hunting outings and stories about my dogs.

I will write more about this move in the next issue.

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
www.boomer-ezine.com
www.boomer-guru.com
www.boomer-entrepreneur.com
www.boomer-marketplace.com
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm

Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

Volume 1 Issue 30 11-3-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I30_110306.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Table of Contents for this issue.....

Authors Comments

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

Setting up Your First Website and Email

FTP – File Transfer Protocol (Video)

Author's Comments

Lot’s going on at the company this week. The highlight was the completion of the test of a new shipping container for shipping temperature sensitive pharmaceutical products. This container must maintain the internal temperature in the range of a refrigerator (2° - 8° C, 36° – 46° F) for 120 hours (5 days). This must be done without any external power to the container. The container kept the temperature under the high limit of 8°C for 190 ½ hours. This is just 1 ½ hours short of 8 days. Our R & D is showing great results.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

A good question was asked about copyrights. “When you copyright your piece and use a pen name that is not currently your legal name, do you use that name after the "copyright" mention or your legal name?”

This is a great question and took some research, but Google prevailed and I found the answer at http://www.ivanhoffman.com/pennames.html. In the article, Mr. Hoffman who practices intellectual property law in California states that a work can be copyrighted in the pen name of the author. He has some other interesting information about copyrights so take a look.

Another question concerned using a web based email address for your business address. Web based email is hotmail, yahoo mail, gmail, etc. This does not present a professional appearance since it says “I do not own my own Internet real estate”. You really need an address that is your-name@your-domain-name.com.

You say to yourself, “I don’t have a domain name or website so how can I have my own email address?” My suggestion is to set one up. You say, “I don’t know how.” My suggestion is to let me guide you though the process. You say, “I don’t have a domain name yet, and I don’t know what I want to use.” My suggestion is to pick a domain name that represents you and set it up. It does not have to be the domain name that you will ultimately use for marketing your products. In our case, we use John Howe, Inc. http://www.jhowe.com/ as our base site. All the email addresses from our other sites forward to the jhowe.com email address. You can establish a one page website and have your own email address associated with it. It is yours forever and is your identity forever (as long as your pay your domain registration).

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Setting up Your First Website and Email

I will make you a deal, if you use Hostexcellence.com for your website hosting, I will lead you through setting up a website and establishing your own email address. I will create a set of videos to show you how. Just use my affiliate link with Hostexcellence so I can receive small compensation for my efforts, and I will make the time to do this.

The reason I am suggesting Hostexcellence is that I have used it for several years, and I know how to do things on it quickly and efficiently. If you have a favorite web host that you are considering, I am sorry but I do not have the time to learn the quirks of several web hosts to help everyone.

Hostexcellence has a program called Express Excellence which costs $2.95 per month for a two year contract (no set up fee). If you want to test the water, it costs $5.95 per month for three months plus $25 set up fee. There are prices in between these for other lengths of service. My advice is if you have been sitting around procrastinating about jumping into having your own website, take the plunge and sign up for the two year plan. Take the leap of faith and don’t look back.

You can register your domain name wherever you want. This should cost under $10.00 per year. Hostexcellence is too expensive at $15.00 per year. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN NAME WITH THE SAME COMPANY THAT HOSTS YOUR WEBSITE.

Also, try to stay with the “.com” extension. It is still the most respected of the domain name extensions.

In the future, when you establish your other web site(s), you can upgrade to the next hosting plan (Business Excellence) which is what we use. This will host up to eight unique domain names. You can keep your base domain that you started with in your Express Excellence account and add seven additional domains to it as you build your business.

If you are ready to jump, send me an email at john (at) boomer-ezine.com and let me know that want to participate in the project. Also, go to Hostexcellence using the following link to establish my affiliate link on the Hostexcellence site.

https://www.hostexcellence.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=jvwh

Now is the time to establish your own .com email address. TAKE ACTION!

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

This is the Internet protocol that is used to transfer large files and volumes of data over the Internet. It is most commonly used to upload web pages from personal computers to the web server where the website is hosted.

I use FTP in my business to transfer large CAD (computer assisted design) files between the company drafting computer and a vendor (smaller files can be sent as email attachments, but the large CAD files often exceed the size limit on email attachments). We design an item using our design software. When we want a vendor to bid on making the item, we develop an RFQ (request for quote) and email the RFQ and ask for the vendor’s FTP information. The vendor will give us the FTP access information and we will transfer the file from our computer to his computer using FTP. The vendor can then open the file with his CAD software, study the item to be manufactured, and send us a quote for making the part. All this is done electronically – no “blueprints”.

There are two ways to use FTP. You can learn the 36 or so FTP commands and become an FTP wizard using the brute force method or you can use a program that handles the FTP automatically. I recommend the latter.

Get an FTP program for your home computer for this communication. You can find various FTP programs using Google. Some of them are free for personal and non-profit use. Most of them have a free trial period so you can play with them and see how they work. I personally use CuteFTP which costs $39.99. This program acts like and works like Windows Explorer with a drag and drop interface.

Now let’s talk about uploading web pages. When you establish a website with a web host, you will be given FTP access to your website. This consists of a user name and password. To start an FTP connection, load your FTP program and give it the name of the website or the IP address to which you want to establish the FTP connection and click Connect. If you have not already set up your user name and password, you will be asked for it.

When the connection is established, the screen will show a split screen with all the files on your home computer on the left and the files on the website on the right. You can click on any file on either your home computer or your website and rename or delete any of them. If you want to upload a file from your computer to the website, you highlight it and hold the left mouse button down as you drag it from the home computer side of the screen to the website side of the screen. The file will be sent via FTP to the website and will appear on the website side of the screen indicating that it was transferred over the Internet to the website. That is how it is done. Too easy!

I was telling you about starting your own website earlier. This is how you create your first webpage and put it up. You do not even have to have an HTML editor. Did you know that you can create an HTML page with MS Word? If you want to create that one page website, create a nice looking page in Word and when you get ready to save it, click “Save As” and specify for it to be saved as a Web Page (*htm, *html). This can be your home page to establish your “turf” on the Net. Now you can add a personal email address to go with your home page.

I have created a short video showing the workings of FTP using CuteFTP and accessing one of my websites. It shows how easy it is to use FTP to upload a webpage from my home computer to the website.

Click here to play the video.

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Videos/V1I30Video/Click-to-Play.html

The Sample Home Page that we uploaded in the video can be viewed at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Sample_Home_Page.htm.

Scout around and check out what is available for FTP programs. A free one that sounds like it operates similarly to CuteFTP is SmartFTP. You might take a look at it. You can download CuteFTP and try it for 30 days for no charge. Thirty days will give you plenty of time to upload your home page to establish your website.

That wraps up our issue for this week. Start planning your new website. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
www.boomer-ezine.com
www.boomer-guru.com
www.boomer-entrepreneur.com
Boomer Marketplace
Boomer eZine Blog
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
Boomer’s Amazon Store


Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.