Noob Trying to Build a Website, Help

panthro

panthro

panthro

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Joined
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Wokingham
I'm currently on gardening leave from my company and am looking for new work, but in the meantime I want to create a website that people in my industry (supply chain management) can use on a daily basis to get information.

Firstly, I have never built a website. Is it as simple as finding a domain name I want and buying it from a company like godaddy to get myself started? I presume that you'd want them to host it to take out the element of maintenance?

Is it possible to source data from other websites and pull them all together on one website? This is essentially what I want to do i.e. FOREX, spot rates, industry relevant news, jobs etc. It would be like a dashboard that you can customise and link back to the original site.

Would it be better to build the website myself in HTML or use a builder i.e. Godaddy etc?
 
Quite a complicated project for a first timer!

You can source data from other websites/providers if the have an API you can query for data. If not you could possibly scrape(steal) data but wont be reliable.

You basically register a domain, buy some hosting space and then publish your code/website to it.

Unlikely you can build something like this with a "builder", unsure.
 
Building a website is pretty simple, web scraping is a different matter and can get quite complicated depending on the data you are pulling.

Firstly, I would go to https://www.freecodecamp.com/ A couple of long days there will give you a good understanding on the basics and as you keep working you're knowledge will get better and better. I'm not sure it includes web scraping but there are lots of info online for it, or you may be better off employing someone from somewhere like Freelancer. You give them the site, what info you want and ask for a script that you can use to pull that info.

You're going to need to understand databases to store the info you pull.

As above, it's a complicated project especially for a first timer.
 
Not convinced web scraping is that useful/reliable. API's are better, though can have cost implications.

A static dashboard may be fairly straightforward but then allowing customisation opens up a whole new level of complication. :)
 
chroniclard said:
Not convinced web scraping is that useful/reliable. API's are better, though can have cost implications.

A static dashboard may be fairly straightforward but then allowing customisation opens up a whole new level of complication. :)
Click to expand...

API's are better, but you've still got to pull, store and display that info. Not all sites have API's and web scraping, if done correctly and tested can be very accurate.
 
chroniclard said:
What happens with scraping if the source site changes?
Click to expand...

Same as if API data changes due to product/site changes or updates, you have to go back and revisit the code.

But then, you really should be checking all incoming data at regular intervals anyway.

I used to use API and python web scraping to pull data from online Bingo sites as part of our competitor analysis. Both worked well until the data changed, then I'd have to go back and examine the code again, luckily it only happened with one API and 2 web scraping sources over a 2 year period.
 
There are also ethical issues involved in web scraping.

Some places may not take kindly to you scraping/aggregating their content.
 
I was wondering how ethical it would be to link from other websites. I suppose if you provide clearly where the data comes from and link back to the original site then it's not like you're plagarising.
 
I guess it depends on if you're going to commercialise it. I wouldn't be overly impressed if someone was scraping one of my sites to display on theirs if they were earning from it.

Most of the stuff you've described in the OP would likely have APIs available the lower quality/slower ones may even be free.

As for domains/hosting avoid godaddy. Use someone like namesco for the domain and someone like vidahost for the hosting (or get the domain from vidahost as well I have no experience with that them on that basis but their hosting is solid).

I would be surprised if you'll get away with a website builder for this. You could most likely use a template and heavily customise it but I suspect it may be worth starting from scratch.

You're jumping in at the deep end :). Best way to learn IMO.

Get it down on paper what you want to do. Rough sketch out of the design. Then google the **** out of it "How do I do X in html". While copy pasting from stackoverflow can work it's pointless unless you take the time to learn how what you've copy pasted works.
 
panthro said:
I was wondering how ethical it would be to link from other websites. I suppose if you provide clearly where the data comes from and link back to the original site then it's not like you're plagarising.
Click to expand...

If you're linking to the original article on the source website, I would say none at all.

I would imagine "plagiarism" accusations would only come into play if you were directly lifting content to display on your site, depriving the original content author of ad/page revenue.

From what I understand, you might want to look in to sites that offer RSS feeds. Think of it like a content API for that site - when a new article is posted, the RSS feed is updated with information and a link to it. It's specifically designed for people to quickly scan articles that may be of interest.
 
IMO you have the best project to learn with. Something you want to build yourself. With some features and goals. W3c is free and a decent source for basic HTML. CSS tricks to learn some CSS. These are just 2 resources there's many many more. Once you have the basics of these 2 you can start to build your website.

Don't get to hung up on the design at first. Keep everything simple.

Google bootstrap 3 next and spend a few hours reading the documentation. It's actually very good. BTW bootstrap is a front-end framework. Google front-end framework if you don't know what one is. Now rebuild your initial design/prototype in Bootstrap.

Once you have achieved what you want to do with how the front-end of the website, looks and feels.

Come back............ The clever stuff starts and your learn php, .net aspx, mysql or SQL.

To master all of these takes years and 1000s of lines of bad code and mistakes. So your just needs to scratch the surface of each layers of a website.

We maybe able to point you to the resources you need if you tell us more about the project.
 
One more thing. A good pencil and a nice a4 pad. Every website I build starts sketched out in pencil. It will save you many hours writing markup and code.
 
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