View Full Version : Wanna build a Website?
Hi guys,
I really want to build my first website but dont know much about it at all?
What software, books etc do you guys recommend? and also who should I consider to host this little project? Do I need any extra software to upload website or does ISP provide that?
As I said I am a complete novice in this dept, so any advice would be fan-daby-dosey....
Cheers :) :) :)
Well, i've always used Frontpage XP for web design, sure its microsoft, but its fairly cheap and easy to use, and u can switch easily between the WYSIWYG interface and raw html code, as well as previewing the site. Dreamweaver is also an option, but its alot more expensive, of course, notepad is the free option :) but there are a number of free wysiwyg editors on the web, but i aint found any as complete as front page.
The Pimp
26-09-2002, 00:51
Hosts are an easy one. Pay the money and use Cyberware. You will not regret it. Unlike the vast majority of others who only rent server space in Docklands on a huge cluster (which tends to have a lot of problems), they have their own servers based in their own building, with both Unix & Win32 options, connected to a dedicated pipe (which is very fast!!!). Bloody good backup as well included in the price.
As Darren says the best hosting you pay money for. I use blueyonder hosting that comes free with my internet connection. Which is the cheapest option. And it is fine for my needs, although not amazingly reliable.
I take it you're going to be using HTML! The most basic and cheap way is actually write the html code yourself in text editor.
I use Dreamweaver (http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/) and swear by it, really a very good program and it has ftp transfer built in which allows you to upload your website to your host via an ftp address. If not you’ll need an ftp transfer program like cuteftp or such like.
But I do know a few people that use mircoscrap frontpage, and don't have any problems. Same concept you design using tables and or layers and the program writes the html for you. You can either view / write the code, or have it in design view showing how it will actually look, which is great when you’re learning. On the whole they're great although dreamweaver tends to add in a lot of unnecessary code as I would imagine frontpage does. But it doesn’t really make too many odds. Once you familiarise yourself with html you’ll be able to spot it and take it out, and regardless it won’t really affect the way the page looks. These make it much easier to makes frames as well.
There will be loads of stuff on the web about designing sites, and using HTML. But it might be worth getting yourself a basic HTML book, to familiarise yourself with the basics of html, its actually pretty easy. And then my advice would be purchasing one of the above web-design programs. You might also want to buy a book about the program as well, you’ll be able to get all this on amazon.
please remember, there are people out there who do not use microsoft products (me for one), if you use a microsoft html editor, it will add blinking microsoft html extensions to your code and I will not see your website as you want me to see it. I hate it when I see on a website "best viewed etc", as far as I'm concerned you should be able to point any browser at any website and get the same screenview etc. :(
What extentions are you refering too, and what browser do you use?
You normally design a website to cross platform and cross browser compatible.
Although I have to admit that explorer is the best browser on the market at the moment in my expreience.
I know this is selling myself but I run my own ISP in the UK, I do hosting, ADSL and 0800 dialup. Let me know if you would like a quote.
Thanks for all the advice guys, What I need and want (I think) is a domain name (name of my website??) but if I buy a domain name does that automatically give webspace to upload to? or are these 2 separate things? and emails to be forwarded to my inbox for freeserve, am I right or totally wrong?
Cheers :)
You can get a domain name for about $10 a year with "webforwarding" which will forward anyone who goes to your domain to your freeserve webspace. You usually have to pay a small amount for email forwarding also.
html is a "standard" , if when I point my browser (mozilla) at a website and get odd things on screen or better yet nothing on screen ,you can bet that if I reboot into windoze and point ie at same website, there on bottom of screen is "best viewed at 800x600 with internet explorer whatever". microsoft in their wisdom wrote their own extension to html and it these that cause me and others like me problems.
:( :( :( :(
DaveMark
29-09-2002, 22:21
i use dreamweaver , flash and fireworks .. and u cant beat them ... if you want a good book to lern from try the dremweaver bible
AlastairM
30-09-2002, 00:01
if when I point my browser (mozilla)
Cool, someone else who uses mozilla :D
microsoft in their wisdom wrote their own extension to html and it these that cause me and others like me problems.
Not strictly true, very, very little of HTML was re-written by MS, your probably thinking about the different DOM implementations which were as much Netscape fault as microsofts.
The main reason that mozilla is barfing on the pages is that they're not written properly in the first place, usually because they were done in a wysiwyg editor with the designer really knowing what they were doing.
Anyway, my advice to kryten is:
If you just want to play about building a few pages get yourself a copy of frontpage, or preferably dreamweaver MX and go experiment. A book or two from either the 'for dummies' or SAMS 'teach yourself' series should help you out a bit if you get stuck. I'd also suggest trying to learn to handcode html as you go, its not really that difficult and it will really help you understand whats happening on the page.
You might find sitepoint (http://www.sitepoint.com/) and sitepoint forums (http://www.sitepointforums.com/)
useful. They are pretty big but sign yourself up and introduce yourself in the introductions forum and you'll soon get comfortable.
I don't mind answering any questions you got once you've got started, just send me a PM.
cheers
alastair
Rim Block
01-10-2002, 18:14
As you mentioned, there are two things to consider;
The Website (code etc)
The Hosting
How you want to do it depends on personal preference but here is a cheap and easy(ish) way to do it.
Hosting;
Do it yourself. Put aside a machine or space on your machine for hosting the website. The machine will require a web server running on it and I would suggest Apache. Now you want a domain name, how abou tusing a service like DNS2GO which provide a static routing to a dynamic IP address if your ISP allocates IP addresses dynamicly. This service can also be used for fixed IP addresses. When you sighup for this service, you can get a domain name like MyDomain.dns2go.com. Tell people to point at that address and it will get routed to your machine whatever it's IP address. Your machine needs to have a small program running with which the dns2go servers keep your IP in sync.
Ok so you have a domain and web server software, what about all those hack attacks at port 80 (http). Change the port that your web server runs on (ie to 8080) and use the dns2go app to redirect all http requests to your dns2go onto port 8080 of your machines ip address. Any attacks on port 80 direct on your machine will be blocked by your firewall (you do have one don't you). What happens if your server goes down though ??. Well the dns2go type services allow you to redirect users to another web page if they cannot connect to your machine. Redirect them to your ISP web space with a web page saying that the server is currently off line and to check back later.
Website...
How about trying PHPNuke. It is an out of the box web site which looks good, can be customised via menus etc and has some reasonable themes etc for it. Just grab the package, a copy of PHP and a copy of MySql (all free).
Install PHP and setup Apache to use it when .php files are run. Install MySQL and setup your PHPNuke admin user. Install PHP Nuke. If all goes well then PHPNuke will store your settings and forum chats / logins etc in your database.
Sounds hard but probably took me a day to get it all setup from scratch. There are php guides on the net and you can download plugins for the PHPNuke system to give more features.
Cost is free, you have a system that you can change at will / on the fly without needing to upload files to a web server. If you are down then you are covered by the web page on your ISP's servers.
There are other software packages that do the same (apache / IIS), various dns2go type services, various php based website systems, have alook around as these were just what I choose.
Downside of this method is that your web server needs to be on 24*7 else no-one can view your site. Just use an old machine and put it in the corner somewhere. Oh and the speed browsing your server will be dependant on your own ADSL bandwidth usage so if you are heavly into P2P type stuff then people may find your site very slow.
Rims
I got the book "Teach yourself HTML in 24 hrs" and used Notepad to code all the text. I learnt all the basics and the code is assembled without any additional tags some programs (FrontPage) add in. I then went onto PHP,Java,JavaScript and MySQL (all learn in 24hrs books).
Personally I found them easy to use and learnt a lot from them. :)
Yeah I would advice you try and learn yourself, personally I would say its easier to work within a design program like dreamweaver as its an easier way to learn how to do it, and invariably you can make it look better.
But you should also check the html and see what does what. I normally go and remove all the crap that dreamwever puts in, and sometimes you have to correct minor faults yourself, but I still use the design interface to actually contruct the page!
As far as reg'ing a domain, all I will say is - you pay for what you get. From my extensive experience with cheap providers like uk2.net, all I will say is stay away from them (with particular focus on uk2).
Some do deals with domains and hosting together, but as long as they provide webfowarding you can host your site anywhere. Depends on what you are donig it for. If its just a homapge for you or something then spend as little as possible. If its for a business, its worth paying out, because you'll get the cust/service, if things go wrong!
DarkEntity
01-10-2002, 19:11
i gotta agree, i dont like microsoft web editors either, id much rather use dreamweaver
whats so bad about frontpage? its alot cheaper than dreamweaver. And besides, if you know your html, then it does an excellent job of being able to switch back and forth to check out how your sites looking, or when your feeling lazy you can do it yourself. As for the extra frontpage stuff implemented, dreamweaver does that too.
The main difference i guess, its the price, FrontpageXP being £100 and DreamweaverMX being a painfull £350! :eek:
That isnt expensive, you just go and buy a site licence for Delphi 6 Enterprise version, now thats expensive... :D
it might be expensive to some people, just think, if you bought frontpage instead of dreamweaver, then you save £250 to spend on whatever you want. Like another copy of frontpage or on your computer :)
The Pimp
02-10-2002, 12:05
& instead of paying £XXX for Shockwave/Flash, just download Swish 1.54 (and pay them $40 or so) and you can them make your SWF files in under 2 minutes with no need to learn Macromedia's complicated package :D
Lee Oakes
02-10-2002, 22:07
As Darren correctly says use Cyberware. ;)
U'll be more than impressed i guarantee. Customer service and service are both really fast.
Or you could get a copy of Ultraedit for about 30 quid, plus a copy of Teach Yourself HTML in 2 minutes and save yourself 70 quid on frontpage or 320 quid on Dreamweaver and REALLY learn HTML. Which you should do anyway even if you're using a WYSIYG editor. :)
Thanks guys,
I think I now have enuff info to venture into the big wide world and buy me some books, maybe looking at FP or Dreamweaver first to get going and learn HTML alongside (should take me about 30yrs or so!! ;) )
Thanks again, feel free to keep posting info etc if you have it, never can have enough knowledge :) :)
There are loads of freeware/shareware html editors similar to frontpage, search for 'html' on www.tucows.com (http://www.tucows.com) and you'l find loads. :)
AlastairM
03-10-2002, 22:14
www.chami.com (http://www.chami.com)
download html-kit, the built in html validator will help keep you right
cheers
alastair
Mr_Nemesis
20-10-2002, 02:52
For writing a decent website, personally I wouldn't use anything other than a text editor. WYSIWYG interfaces (esp. FrontPage) have a really really bad habit of terribly munging anything you try to get them to do, with the result that your page won't work properly, and is often bloated.
In windows, I use the excellent NoteTab (notetab.com (http://www.notetab.com)), which is a very powerful text editor and comes with a whole truckload of HTML shortcut type things. sure, if you have no idea of how HTML works, it's not a good idea, but if you hav eno idea of how HTML works chanes are your website is going to look like @$$ whatever you use ;)
You can download the free version of NoteTab (NoteTab Light) which includes virtually every function you'll need.
In Linux, you can use any of it's wonderful text editors (vi or gedit for general stuff, Nedit is excellent for PHP and Perl), or the quite funky Bluefish (here (http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/)).
As far as hosting goes, I only have experience with the excellent Positive Internet (http://positive-internet.com) who provide fully managed linux/apache servers or varying spec, but they are expensive. If you have a reasonable connection, I'd host the site myself (but again, setting up a webserver at home is more than most people want to have to deal with).
As far as uploading goes, before I switched to Linux, I used the great SmartFTP (http://www.smartftp.com) which gave me all the functions I could ever wish for... it's pants compared to the ones in *nix though :D
Leechget (http://www.leechget.de) is also pretty funky.
openoffice comes with a freeware ms frontpage opponent if you really cant handle raw html?
www.openoffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org)
For the record, it also comes with alot of other programs such as a word and excel etc. To be honest, I havn't looked back since installing this despite having ms office XP, It really is that good, and its completely freeware :D, it does use up alot of memory however..
Mr_Nemesis
20-10-2002, 03:59
Crapola, how could I have forgotten about OpenOffice.org?
Mind you, like Splaty says, it does drink a helluva lot of memory on Windows (the Linux version is alot more lean), and it is in essence a WYSIWYG editor, although thankfully more standards compliant than most.
Still no excude not to learn HTML though IMO, but it can be handy for stuff like nested tables, which just make my balls ache (although NoteTab does a damned good job of them).
BTW, if you think you're up to what is a very easy language to learn, I'd recommend getting yourself a good book on PHP at the same time you learn HTML. It can make your pages far far smaller (good if you're on a poor host or running the site from home), and lets you do all kinds of funky stuff. I'm just learning it for the company now, and combined with MySQL it'll let you do some unimaginably cool **** .
Well I am a lazy git, and use a program called Cool Page, which is so easy its unreal. Once you have done your web page, you can upload it through a ftp or what I used for my first site was Geocities, and they use this uploader thing, which you just select all the files you want to upload from your desktop. You can get Cool Page at www.tucows.com (http://www.tucows.com)
I also use Anim-FX, which does cracker Flash pages, brillant for cool intros and such like, also this is on tucows.
Have fun
Rab
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