Website Development for Dummies

[Guest]

Doug: I have these 1st Page WS ftp Cute
I have at least 2 sites that I've started, they have a first page and pics but it's so hard to make any progress, I keep giving up. I can look at them and I don't know what to do next. Help!

[Guest]

Sounds like a plan. I need website development for Dummies.

[Doug Nelson]

Sounds like all you need is a plan. Making one page and getting it up where everyone can see it is the hard part. From that point on it's just making more pages and linking them.

Look at some other sites, then sit down with some paper and make a chart of your proposed site. Make it multi-leveled, with one page at top, a few more on a 2nd row, more on a 3rd row, etc.

Then decide the function of each of these pages, and which should link to which. Write a name on each, and draw little lines to indicated links.

Then make the pages on your page. Once they're made, put in the links you decided on (usually by highlighting text in your editor and using its 'link' function, though every editor has a different way to invoke this).

Then show it to one friend, get comments, make changes, show it to another, etc., until its ready for the world

[Blacknight]

Here is a link for freeware and shareware to FTP your creation to your server.

Here is a link for general website information - how to create or improve.

I taught myself about websites, from the internet, largely. You guys already know the hardest part, really...how to make the graphics. Photoshop (and Imageready) have made it almost easy now.

I looked at the source code for pages I liked. Downloaded it and put it into website making programs and messed with it to see what it did. That coupled with reading articles and how-to's out there on the web slowly got me to where I wanted to be. If I can do it, you can too. It just takes a little time and effort.

[Aric]

When I first got started on building a site, I got stuck as well. Then I hired a company to build me a site. it was very flash intensive and looked great. The only problem was getting the company to make changes to it in the future. And when I want a change i want it now now now! So that situation just did not work for me.

So finally I bought a web design software... Dreamweaver. The site I have now I did by myself.

And the good part is that I actually have made money from my site. I have gotten 6 jobs in the last week from people finding me online.

[sohagler]

Seeing as how I've been in a bit of web design frenzy this week, I figured this would be a place where I could vent and ramble about it...

I've been working on various formats and scripts and such for a couple of sites (my own and a friend's) in the last week. I've been working in ImageReady and Photoshop, as well as Flash, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver, but I think I've pretty much decided to give up a lot of the fanciness in favor of something simple. Browsing online, I found a really nice source of information about style sheets here.

Right now, I'm following that site's lead and trying new approach to the whole thing - using CSS to handle everything including the layout. I'm still a bit confused about some of the style tags and properties, but I'm going to keep trudging along. Switching from tables and javascript naviation to all CSS decreased the size of one template to about 25% it's original file size.

So, even though I'm on the verge of pulling out all my hair trying to figure this out, I'm going to keep on going. That's my new mantra - "Keep on going!"



frinklemur.com - a work in the beginning stage of progress

[foreigner]

Detailed plan is a must for every web site no matter how small or big it is.
For quick HTML or CSS reference or to learn something, the best place is

http://www.w3schools.com/

if you need any script go to

http://www.hotscripts.com/

they are usually free, make sure to give a credit to author, just follow instructions
if you have any questions, ask, maybe someone can help, don't pull your hair out

[Stephen Ryan]

Learning to make web pages

I've taken several classes in web development and I would like to offer my 2 cents on getting past the technical hurdle of making a web page.

Dreamweaver, in my opinion, is the easiest web tool to use. Unfortunately, it is not intuitive to learn. I would like to put a plug in for the online tutorials at www.Lynda.com for learning Dreamweaver.

I am not associated with them in any way; just a very happy customer. This is also a great place to go for learning Flash, Director, Fireworks, and yes: Photoshop! Admittedly there is not training there specifically for restoring old photographs.

Also, for web dev newbies, you can use your right mouse button (on the PC) to click on any web page and select "View Source". This displays the html for how the page was created. You can learn a lot by reverse-engineering any number of web pages.

[Scott Rudy]

I built my first site about 2 years ago and I used MS-FrontPage, it's not to hard to learn and does a nice job, the only draw-back is that when you use some features it defaults to proprietary MS-FrontPage extensions. If you are using a free hosting server this can be a problem as the free service most likely will not allow for the MS-FrontPage extensions to work, you have to upgrade your subscription to the hosting service to get the workable extensions for a fee.

Dreamweaver doesn't use proprietary extensions in their HTML editor, therefore you wouldn't be limited when using a free hosting service. Dreamweaver although costs quite a bit more than MS-FrontPage though. Myself, learning FrontPage first, I found Dreamweaver to be somewhat difficult to use and learn. I have never purchased Dreamweaver but worked with the demo until the time ran out.

If using FrontPage you can get around using the proprietary extensions by going online and finding the functions that you want to use that are written in basic HTML or Java and pasting them into your pages, you can find them for free on the web. (view counters and such)

If you have windows you should have a limited virsion of FrontPage, this allows you to write HTML and build web sites without purchasing a full HTML editor.

Here's a little tip, when you are on a web site and you see something that you may be interested in and want to know how to write the HTML tags and code. You can go up to the top of your screen to the tool bar and to the right, one of the icons is an edit icon.

While in the web site click on the edit "it should say edit with FrontPage" and this will bring up a HTML editing window. You will get a message saying something like "this requires a password" just click cancel. The password window will go away but the HTML editing page will remain, at the bottom left of your screen there should be a tab that says "HTML", click on that and the web page that you are on will be displayed in HTML code, this will help in learning HTML as you can see what was used to make what happen on the web page.

I learned a lot by doing this, I had signed up with some affiates and they supply the HTML code to paste into your web pages but not always is the coding correct. I had to go in and correct it myself sometimes and I learned how to do this by looking at other web sites HTML tags and code.

Good luck, like anything it just takes a little practice and remember that the best web sites and pages are not always the flashiest. Keep them simple, clean, readable and easy to navigate.