Tips for building a website

[flibbage0]

I want a build a website and have spent many hours researching about the different methods.

I'm now in a right muddle.

I know that you can make a website using Dreamweaver which is a WYSIWYG editor.

I also know that I need an FTP client such as Filezilla

Graphics program is also needed such as GIMP

However, I've come across new things such as Notepad++ Can I make a proper website with this?

I've also come across wordpress but have no idea how to use it or even if I need it

 

[Lysander]

Geocities.

 

[Ahleckz]

Angelfire.

 

[Vita]

Notepad++ is for coding a website in HTML/CSS, can't remember if I used any PHP when I used the application but I'm sure you can use PHP too.

It's a good application but most people that I know use dreamweaver.

 

[flibbage0]

Notepad++ is for coding a website in HTML/CSS, can't remember if I used any PHP when I used the application but I'm sure you can use PHP too.

It's a good application but most people that I know use dreamweaver.

Thanks

What on earth is PHP, I'm a complete noob when it comes to web design.

Do you think notepad++ is a good starting point, (I know a bit of HTML)

 

[dirtychinchilla]

I love Notepad++, I wouldn't use anything else, but if you're just starting out Dreamweaver can be helpful. Personally, I wouldn't use it forever. Dreamweaver's code is often weird, as well, so I wouldn't treat that as being gospel, if you create the site in DW and then have a look at the code it can be quite odd...

If I were you I would just start by making some basic stuff and following tutorials until you're comfortable.

 

[K.C. Leblanc]

I want a build a website and have spent many hours researching about the different methods.

I'm now in a right muddle.

I know that you can make a website using Dreamweaver which is a WYSIWYG editor.

I also know that I need an FTP client such as Filezilla

Graphics program is also needed such as GIMP

However, I've come across new things such as Notepad++ Can I make a proper website with this?

I've also come across wordpress but have no idea how to use it or even if I need it

To use Notepad++ you need to know HTML and CSS code. It doesn't do anything for you. You can even use windows notepad to make a web site.

This sites good for learning HTML.

http://www.w3schools.com/

Wordpress is a content managment system. It's a way you can make a web site that's easy to make changes to. Instead of having to use Dreamweaver or Notepad++ you just log into the web site and then add/remove/alter pages using a simple menu system. If someone who isn't technical needs to make changes to the site this is very useful.

Some details here. http://www.opensourcecms.com/scripts/details.php?scriptid=88&name=WordPress

Bare in mind if you want to use Wordpress you need to plan for this when you purchase your web hosting. Ideally look for a host that will actually provide wordpress.

 

[joeyjojo]

I want a build a website and have spent many hours researching about the different methods.

You should probably keep researching, and this should be in HTML, Graphics & Programming. There's lots of help there.

Read some tutorials and build it up with notepad++ if you want to do it properly. Dreamweaver and the programs for the coding illiterate are quick but it's hard to get things perfect and they tend to throw in loads of unnecessary code.

 

[flibbage0]

Cool so you can make a professional looking website in Notepad++ then?

 

[DefiantAsh]

Dreamweavers design view is annoying, I prefer just to use Coda (for mac) and then Notepad++ (for windows) whenever I'm coding.

It's easier just to view your content/website in a browser and refresh it when you save rather than using the design view of Dreamweaver.

Learning to code outright rather than using a constant visual aid like Dreamweaver is often better.

All in my own opinion that is

 

[PermaBanned]

What kind of website do you want? Been a few years since i looked into it, but the general consensus is that WYSIWYG editors are both completely rubbish and cheating.

HTML and CSS isn't really that hard to learn, i mean if you know BB code then that's half the battle already. The tricky bit is the design. Come up with a plan before hand, maybe sketch it out. Seems like the trend is to lean towards simpler designs. It might be an idea to come up with a colour pallet and stick with it, there's a ton of generators you can use (just google it) where you either pick it yourself or give it an image and it will do it for you.

Learning resources? Try to stay away from W3Schools. I've used The New Boston for Java before, very good. I think he has some HTML/CSS videos so i would check those out.

 

[flibbage0]

What kind of website do you want? Been a few years since i looked into it, but the general consensus is that WYSIWYG editors are both completely rubbish and cheating.

HTML and CSS isn't really that hard to learn, i mean if you know BB code then that's half the battle already. The tricky bit is the design. Come up with a plan before hand, maybe sketch it out. Seems like the trend is to lean towards simpler designs. It might be an idea to come up with a colour pallet and stick with it, there's a ton of generators you can use (just google it) where you either pick it yourself or give it an image and it will do it for you.

Learning resources? Try to stay away from W3Schools. I've used The New Boston for Java before, very good. I think he has some HTML/CSS videos so i would check those out.

Why, I thought they were really good

 

[PermaBanned]

http://w3fools.com/

 

[UncleRuckus]

Cool so you can make a professional looking website in Notepad++ then?

Yes you can, however you will do doing it all from scratch.

If you just need a website sign up to wordpress where they will provide many free skins to style it.

 

[shifty_uk]

Cool so you can make a professional looking website in Notepad++ then?

This kind of comment always makes me laugh

Try to understand what a website actually is before diving into anything else.

 

[jsmoke]

You can make a website in Notepad(++) yes. If you want more functionality though you would need to learn a server side scripting language like php, asp, ror, although you do have js and ajax for client side.

So yes just open up notepad, and add a doctype declaration, add a css link between the htmlhead tags. So,

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en">

<head> 
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="theme.css" />
<title>Your title</title>
</head>

<body>

Your text and pictures in here.

</body>
</html>

 

[Evoss]

Do you think notepad++ is a good starting point, (I know a bit of HTML)

Notepad++ is probably the best way to learn. Its using raw code and you have to get it right. Dreamweaver just throws in a load of useless code which isn't needed as if you did the same in Notepad++ and you don't really learn the code beneath the interface.

 

[ps3ud0]

Probably best to do some tutorials if you want to code before jumping head first into your website idea otherwise youll just likely to get swamped

ps3ud0

 

[jsmoke]

To add to my example create a file called theme as "save as" theme.css.

In the theme.css add this,

body
{
background-color:yellow;
p{font-family:"Times New Roman", Times, serif;}
}

So you you see you can change all the styles from just one css file instead of having to do it all individually for each element in the html.

 

[jsmoke]

Next lesson.

The layout of most webpages goes.

Header(banner stuff in here)
Left side bar(if needed)
Main body
Right side bar(if needed)
Footer

You can create these areas using the div tag(and adding the needed dimensions/properties of the div in the css), you can also use the table, th, td, tr tags, but mostly you'll find the the table tags are not used anymore, although you can mix both table tags and div tags.

So to build a basic 4 sectioned layout with header, left side, body and footer you could use this, (put this could between the body tags above),

<div id="header"></div>
<div id="left_nav"></div>
<div id="body"></div>
<div id="footer">

and in the css file add this,

#header { 	height: 50px; 	background-color: #666; 	margin-bottom: 10px; }  #left_nav { 	float: left; 	width: 25%; 	height: 150px; 	background-color: #999; 	margin-bottom: 10px; }  #body { 	float: left; 	margin-left: 5%; 	width: 65%; 	height: 150px; 	background-color: #999; 	margin-bottom: 10px; }  #footer { 	clear: both; 	height: 50px; 	background-color: #666; 	margin-bottom: 10px; }

So you can see each div had an "ID" and the properties like height, position, etc of this div are set in the css.