AMG Sites.co.uk
Welcome to AMGSites. This Website is about setting up a website and will guide you along the way if you are a beginner. There are tutorials about HTML, CSS and PHP so you can learn and understand what the code is and how it works. There is one tutorial on how to set up a WordPress Website. If you want to take your WordPress site to the next level then there is a tutorial on how to set up a WordPress multisite. There is a tutorial about setting up a subdomain as well for a test site, shop or blog. The domain this website uses is also set to use subdomains as test and experimental websites. One of them is beta.amgsites.co.uk and it is for testing beta releases of WordPress so I can see any changes that might have been made to the code or layout of the admin panels. The beta releases are also useful for developers of plugins and themes so they can have their plugins and themes updated and ready for the next version to be released to the public. The current version is 6.4.3 and most themes and plugins have been updated to be compatible with the latest WordPress release. If you are interested in how my journey began with servers in 2011 then head over to the About page. As a beginner, you might be confused about servers and not knowing what you need. After reading the Tutorial and guides about self-hosting. You might want to consider buying a server and yourself host but if you find that too expensive then you might want to rent a server from a hosting provider called a Virtual Private Server or Dedicated Server. Either way, the tutorials and guides will hopefully help you better understand more about a server before you decide to buy or rent a server.
Self-hosted
All of my websites run on a server that I own and is in my living room under my desk. The server is a Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 – MT. The problem I found with this server was you cannot use RAM from another manufacturer because it will not work and you have to use Dell’s brand. Apart from that I never had any other problems. The drivers and operating system are easy to install. The server is easy to keep clean with a side panel that comes off. Any dust that builds up inside is removed and the outside of the server is kept clean. The vents are checked regularly for any build-up of car hair because I have a cat who likes to roam around the back or climb up on top of the server like cats do. I you have a cat then you will understand and know what it is like. I also use an ORICO 4-Bay Tool-free Aluminium Hard Drive RAID Enclosure for extra storage of data. The drives are currently 1GB hard drives but will be replaced with Solid State drives shortly for better performance. You can see my computer underneath the right desk in the left image. I have also owned an HP Proliant MicrServer Gen8 and a Fujitsu Primergy MX130 S1 Server.
Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 – MT
HP Proliant MicrServer Gen8
FuJitsu Primergy MX130 S1 Server
Open Source
AMGSites work by using free open-source WordPress. If you click on the left image below you will see something that looks like HTML. I know some people think you can copy all the content of a website by right-clicking on a page and pasting it onto a text editor like Visual Studio Code. There is a problem there that you will encounter such as broken links and missing information that goes on in the background. What you are seeing is the client side of what my server is serving you with. You will see some of the cascading code or CSS used to control the layout of the page. Do not worry if you do not understand the code because it’s what your browser is using to display the website. The only problem with that is you will be missing a lot of content that goes in the background on the server that you will be unaware of. You will be missing the SQL Database, Plugins and Themes used to run the website. Without those your website will only be an HTML website and will not run properly and a lot of things like buttons will not work like the login page. The database stores credentials like emails, usernames and passwords. The database also stores information for some of the plugins and text you read on the webpage like you are reading now. You will also be missing the main WordPress folder and files that are PHP and the server has other programmes to run PHP with a redirect program. So copying the content will be useless to you or anyone else.
Database
Below are two images from the data of this website and you can see databases for other websites I use. The SQL is made of tables and bits of code or information. Passwords are encrypted so you will not see a user’s password. For example, a user password that might be this mypassword1234 will be seen as @£$%£$&*&dff$$&TTJJkdos657fdfk**%%@@##. That is to protect the password from accidental praying eyes like a person who has access to the database. The software used for this website is MariaDB with HeidiSQL as the interface. There are other options available like MySQL and PHPMyAdmin. You can also use Xampp or Wamp but I prefer to use MariaDB with HeidiSQL. The two images below are screenshots of the databases on my server. The image on the left shows the databases with part of the names blurred out to protect the websites and the image on the right shows some of the information in one of the tables that this website uses for the posts. WordPress uses that to compile the website pages.
If you enjoy reading the content on this website then you might also like to have a look at my other websites with information about my Gaming hobby and Photography hobby. There is plenty to read on those websites so head over to Adrianmcmastergaming.com to find out more and learn more about computers by heading over to What is a computer or What is the World Wide Web and any of the other tutorial pages. You might want to learn about photography by heading over to my McMasterphotography.co.uk website to find out more and learn more about What is Photography or What is a DSLR (Digital SLR) Camera. You can also learn how to use a camera by going to the Aperture, Shutter Speed and Camera Settings pages. This website is always being updated with new content and features so always come back and have a look because you never know what might have changed.
