Advice on building a website (first-timer)

fred_easey · 26 Mar 2007 at 11:53

Hi,

I've (possibly foolishly) agreed to my missus build a website for our forthcoming wedding. Will be fairly simple, directions of how to get there, contact numbers etc. Would also be good to set up a bit that lets people contribute donations to our honeymoon fund.

Question: What is the best way to go about this? I can get hold of Frontpage or Dreamweaver fairly easily through my work.

Should I use one of those, or try and just hand-craft the whole thing in HTML / PHP? (my programming experience is pretty limited, I use SQL / SAS / VB at work, but have very limited experience of HTML and PHP).

(I have about 20mb of webspace that came bundled with my broadband that I can use to host it btw).

Fred

masslac · 26 Mar 2007 at 12:11

Just use HTML in notepad tbh.

If ever you need any more space, hit me up on MSN and I'll have an FTP account set up for you.

Mark M · 26 Mar 2007 at 12:14

Dont use notepad you will be on for months with it.

Go for Dreamweaver if you just want something basic which is easy to build.

Shoseki · 26 Mar 2007 at 12:15

Just take beautiful photos, then you can include them in a web page like :

<html>
<head>
<title>Our beautiful wedding photos!</title>
</head>

<body>
Us at the altar
<img src="weddingPhoto1.jpg" /> 
Us in our mini-cooper driving away
<img src="weddingPhoto2.jpg" /> 
Us on our honeymoon
<img src="weddingPhoto3.jpg" /> 
Us adopting a small phillipino boy.
<img src="weddingPhoto4.jpg" /> 
</body>
</html>

etc etc

masslac · 26 Mar 2007 at 12:17

Mark M said:
Dont use notepad you will be on for months with it.

Hardly.

Plus *shock horror* he might actually learn how things work, too.

TheCrow · 26 Mar 2007 at 13:24

1st web site then DEFF use notepad or the likes insted of Dreamweaver!

Downalod Notpad2 makes things a bit better, but still teaches you what you really need to know.

fred_easey · 26 Mar 2007 at 14:27

Ok NotPad2 it is then by a 2-1 majority decision.

So how do I get started, should I just read through the links to website design on the free software sticky?

tom_e · 26 Mar 2007 at 14:56

id recommend checking out http://w3schools.com/ and http://htmldog.com/ should both give you some basic info on how to get started

fred_easey · 26 Mar 2007 at 15:06

Cheers

jcb33 · 26 Mar 2007 at 15:13

Mark M said:
Dont use notepad you will be on for months with it.

Go for Dreamweaver if you just want something basic which is easy to build.

No, I say use notepad, I never had used it before, and in 2 days I created a site, its not hard, kust use w3schools to help you out!

SiriusB · 27 Mar 2007 at 03:51

W3C Schools are great for in-depth resources but I personally think it is not so great for actually learning anything.

A fantastic website I found recently is http://www.how-to-build-websites.com/

Scroll down the page a bit and there a some very good beginners web site how-tos. HTML itself is the easy bit, the harder part is styling your page with CSS. However the tutorials on that page cover CSS.

For the site you are planning to build you need nothing more than a simple text editor and the pages can be tested locally [you can just double-click on the html file and it will open in your browser, wack F5 whenever you make a change to see it straight away]. Once you are happy you can upload it to your web space.

If 20mb is too little I have plenty to spare. There look how nice we are, two offers for web space

Before you even start coding you really should think about the overall design. It is much easier to create a page to a design rather than making it up as you go along!

Have fun

Mattus · 27 Mar 2007 at 05:15

Also, if your webspace is provided by your ISP then there's a strong chance that it won't support PHP.

WotDa · 27 Mar 2007 at 08:29

Mattus said:
Also, if your webspace is provided by your ISP then there's a strong chance that it won't support PHP.

Another perk of mainstream ISP's.

I've got a LAMP setup on my free space, only downside is limited space (50mb) and you can only have a subdomain of their url mysite.myisp.org.

Notepad 2 is pretty cool, cheers, it pwns notepad.

Moredhel · 27 Mar 2007 at 08:44

SiriusB said:
W3C Schools are great for in-depth resources but I personally think it is not so great for actually learning anything.

I guess that may depend on what you're doing, but I found it invaluable when I was teaching myself Xpath / XSL

masslac · 27 Mar 2007 at 11:16

Mattus said:
Also, if your webspace is provided by your ISP then there's a strong chance that it won't support PHP.

This is partly why I offered the guy some hosting.

SiriusB · 27 Mar 2007 at 14:49

Moredhel said:
I guess that may depend on what you're doing, but I found it invaluable when I was teaching myself Xpath / XSL

Well for HTML and CSS I found far better places to learn, but W3C is amazing for reference and I refer to it quite often. I also like the sandbox examples they have where you can mess around with the code and see the changes right away. Personally I use the Web Developer extension for Firefox for this purpose.