supernewbie questions on creating a website
Finally biting the bullet and trying to create a website. Very basic stuff, text and a few pictures. No clue how to begin. Someone warned me off of Frontpage, because it limits you in some ways, apparently (and I have a natural dislike for anything by Microsoft). Dreamweaver was offered as a better alternative, but apparently you need to take classes to learn to use it. After reading parts of the short-media, it looks like some folks here just use HTML code. So, some really basic questions:
1) Are there other web design software programs worth considering besides Frontpage and Dreamweaver?
2) Opinons on which program would be best?
3) Are there any online sources for learning Dreamweaver, if I went with that program?
4) What other questions should I be asking?!?
Thanks, Taz
1) Are there other web design software programs worth considering besides Frontpage and Dreamweaver?
2) Opinons on which program would be best?
3) Are there any online sources for learning Dreamweaver, if I went with that program?
4) What other questions should I be asking?!?
Thanks, Taz
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Comments
My thought is to start with basics before diving into which program you want-
1. Who is your website host or ISP hosting you? What are your resources?
2. What do you really want to do with the site? What is its main mission? I'm asking this because you also said nothing about forums, video, gaming firends(?) etc. Are you gaming, publishing ... this can really help- and help you not get overwhelmed.
3. Do you know what FTP, HTTP, XML, HTML are. Begin learning these and other fundamental tools and skills if you do not know them and are really serious about this.
Others may have some other ground-up ideas, but these things come to my mind as I revisit how to get there. While some tools are great if you're going to be a web-site master, they may be just too much confusion and $$$ for someone who really just wanted to post a few pictures.
pixel2life.com is a great resource for many things from using dreamweaver to just coding in general, along with photoshop, flash, and many other programs and languages as well! I always post a link to it in threads like this, and no I have no affiliation with them I just use it myself.
Of course you could still use frontpage for the basics! It's not a totally useless program, my mother does use it and she claims it's not as bad as it used to be, she does all the web work for her school plus other things as well. If I had to use Frontpage; I would create the site as best I could in it, test it out in all the browsers I can think of to make sure the site is fully compadible with Opera, Mozilla/Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc... Of course doing this is a must in any program anyways. Fixing the problems afterwards.
Q has a good point though, what do you know already? If you're just starting out, learning HTML is a must. From there get to know DHTML, Javascripting, CSS.... find websites that have things you like and scavenge parts and peices from them and change it up. For example I used to do this, IE take the code they use to make the scroll bars look different, change it up to fit my own site and eventually I came to remember the code by heart. This goes for anything, how an image can be changed out as a slideshow using javascript, and so on.
htmlgoodies.com is another good resource, at least it was for me years ago when I first began learning HTML and such.
csszengarden.com is a great site on CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, it's not a tutorial really. In fact it may be tough to understand at first but it really is simple. You look at the site, then look at the other sites that is built with the same EXACT CONTENT, but yet each site looks so different but uses the same HTML file but uses a different CSS file. Just for a note, CSS is a separate file that is linked to in your HTML file for various things, mostly appearance. You'd be well off to know HTML and CSS first, there are many resources on the two, books even at Amazon.com. Just look at the reviews a book gets of course, some are better than others as you may well know.
Someone told me that if I used Frontpage, then I couldn't switch to something else later on because Microsoft does something to make their pages non-transferrable, or something like that. I didn't really understand what he said, but it does sound like a dirty stunt Bill Gates would try. Is there any truth to this at all?
So, here's what I want to do:
One page with my eye exercises. All text. Just want to share them with people, since they work so well.
One page with a blog on genetic engineering, since that was my field for so long, and all my lamebrain farmer friends oppose it without understanding the first thing about it. This would be all text.
Several pages with my religious philosophy, which is, well, different. All text. This section might eventually turn into a book, but it would still be all text.
Several pages with pictures of my plants, and associated commentary about cultural practices, farming techniques, pest notes, etc. This is the only section that would combine pictures with text.
As you can see, my needs are pretty simple, at least I think so. I think I might want a counter for each section, if that's possible, but nothing else. Oh, it might be nice to put each section on a different background, if that isn't too difficult to accomplish.
Regarding my resources, I have to decide if I want to use my Cox cable freebie website, which would give me 70 MB of storage space but only 300 MB of traffic permitted per month, and no support whatsoever from Cox (jerks). Plus, I'd have to figure out how to link my seven Cox cable emails to the website. The alternative would be to use a web hosting service, but I don't know anything about them. A techie at Cox suggested NetHere, which is apparently a local San Diego company (local to me). They may have some sort of resources for me, maybe some tech help, but I don't know for sure yet.
So, that's it, guys. I found a similar newbie question on short-media and checked out some of the websites you listed, but they were ridiculously over my head.
I guess my main conerns now are:
1) What about that business about Frontpage that I mentioned above?
2) Would it be possible to create pages so that users of Internet Explorer would NOT be able to view them? (I really do hate Microsoft).
3) Any advice on whether a real hosting service would be significantly better than a cobbled-together website on Cox cable?
4) If Qeldroma is right, and shoujld learn HTML, where's a good place to learn it? Real basic stuff.
Well, thanks, guys. Taz
I'll do these two since I've had both Cox and Frontpage-
You won't be able to merge the accounts on Cox. And you are correct- it is still 10MB per address. You didn't even get the comensurate increase you got with your mailbox size :shakehead
BUT, pick your host carefully. Nothing is really free and many freebie hosting sites open up ports that you have no idea what they're really being used for. I'll let someone else make that recommendation. But if you're doing more than 10MB, steer clear of Cox.
I have to agree with RWB and his Mom on this one- Frontpage is perhaps the easiest and most robust of the tools you can get for what you are doing (at least I think) ... if pricey and Microsoft. It's pretty easy to use and I actually like the synchronization features on it.
Well, now that people know the scope, you should have some decent input. With that, Adieu and best to you on this adventure!
Well first off, you're steering the wrong direction with a website. You might hate Internet Explorer but if you want to make your site incompadible with it, then you loose something like 80-95% of your viewers. Though generally the simpler the site, the more compadible it is. The biggest gripe on Internet Explorer and compadibility issues is usually with CSS. I geneally have to make two or more different CSS files for the different browsers being used, and a script in the site that will bring up the correct file according to the browser being used so that the site may display correctly. Though not all the time.
BTW we don't need the bashing, I am no Microsoft fan by any means... but that kind of talk leads others to join in with more bashing pro's and con's and the thread gets locked after that point.
A fellow on these boards by the name of Primesuspect can help you with your webhosting, he isn't expencive by any means IMHO, he hosts many sites already including many members on these forums as well as this site too.
That includes my site that I keep putting on hold
A couple good free place's to learn HTML would be on the following links...
http://pixel2life.com/
http://htmlgoodies.com/
Pixel2life.com is my favorite site, it has so many links to other sites I don't need to really link to any others. While htmlgoodies.com I still link to becuase it is the site I first began learning HTML on, and it was so simple. You can learn it within a day really.
Yea you definitely want your site to look good with all browsers: Opera, Netscape, Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, etc. If you are making a business it is vital. In order to apeal to the customers you have to make something that will not only show the work you are willing to do, you want it to say THIS IS WHAT I CAN DO. If you can give them that they are much more likely to be interested. When it comes to Internet Explorer being stupid because the people at microsoft wanting to rush it (IMHO) you either have to redo things a little bit to make it's derranged represtation of your site representable in everything, or use psuedo code to fake Internet Explorer out with its proportions. But once you do that additional psuedo code is required because Opera usually freaks out at it. Please no one get mad at my radical opions. I just get fustrated at internet explorer.
PS: Make your site on a mozilla based browser it will be much more compatible and you will have an easier time when working on the compatibillity issues with Internet Explorer