wanting to create a website

Andr3w

Andr3w

Andr3w

Soldato
Joined
6 Oct 2004
Posts
20,265
Location
England
Hey, im wanting to create a website as practise as im doing it next year in my course at college, then possibly at uni depending on how i find it.

Then only problem is i dont know what to make it on :o
Anyone got any ideas of what to make it on? Cheers

Also whats best, front page or dreamweaver?

edit: i actually think i might make it about "me"...and start learning how to draw pictures on the pc using photshop etc?
Whats the best program for drawing pictures such as those on deviantart?
 
learn (x)html and css markup using www.htmldog.com and write it on notepad ++ and use your browser to view it as you change it. :)

Create a few templates and just have a play.

edit: oh and about the drawing pictures, i've wanted to do the same thing so I bought a £30 wacom graphics tablet and it's great to have a play with on photoshop not that I can draw, you can also use vector programmes which can come out with good results, basically just find loads of nooks and styles you like and just practise trying to create something that looks good. :)
 
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For your web page , use Dreamweaver.

For images , use Photoshop

For Buttons / Animations etc , Photoshop or Macromedia Flash

EDIT ; This is what i have used. BUT Randomtom is far more knowledgable than me so follow his advice

Good Luck

Cheers,

Mark
 
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mrdbristol said:
EDIT ; This is what i have used. BUT Randomtom is far more knowledgable
Click to expand...
lol :p

I'm just telling him the way I learnt, and I think that hand doing the css and html is better than dreamweaver adding monstrosities of mark up sometimes when it's not needed, such the same with frontpage, although they do add a nice wysiwyg editor: although theoretically with notepad and your browser you get the same thing as you can just keep refreshing the page you're making.

:)
 
Thanks guys ill give it ago, that html site seems quite good thanks

more input always welcome


edit: ehauhehehe, i used to fart around with websites when iwas like 13 just messing on frontpage and uploading to geocities, ive just learnt more about html in the last 10minutes than in the last 17years of my life lol
 
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I felt exactly the same when I started reading that too :p.

I used to use frontpage loads and created a bunch of freewebs sites but now I'm just messing about with some templates with navigation in columns and all over the place just trying different things, once you know the basics it's quite fun seeing your own creation come out of all those numbers and things.

oh and this is quite useful for the navigation to your site: linky mclink so yeh, get drawing on photoshop some cool headers for your site! :cool:


edit: if you want to see how other people use css and stuff download this: Firefox Web developers toolbar which is quite useful if you see some nice designs. :)
 
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counterstrike source \o/

nah it's 'cascading style sheets' basically you just style each part of your html whether it be the headers, the main body, the footer. Whatever you're using has attributes like colours, fonts, borders, everything that makes the page look nice and stylish, you can define your headers or any div with these and background images, whatever, so that's useful when you come to creating some photoshop masterpieces including your own stylish headers, stripey backgrounds or whatever you want basically.
 
RandomTom said:
lol :p

I'm just telling him the way I learnt, and I think that hand doing the css and html is better than dreamweaver adding monstrosities of mark up sometimes when it's not needed, such the same with frontpage, although they do add a nice wysiwyg editor: although theoretically with notepad and your browser you get the same thing as you can just keep refreshing the page you're making.

:)
Click to expand...

I quite agree , I "learnt" the wrong way round.
Dreamweaver/Frontpage then HTML.

Cheers,

Mark
 
Do some of the Tutorials here - http://www.tizag.com/

Maybe you could learn some php to and make a web databse, I seem to remember you where into guitars ? maybe you could make a searchable guitar database or something :)
 
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could do, first im going to mab put a like an about me sectionm, then some art work (including some photos of my guitar that are edited)
 
This is how I learnt.

Learn basic (x)HTML and CSS. using Notepad ++

and then when you want to create your site, if there is anything you can't do. Create that element in a design view program like Dreamweaver, then switch to code view and you can see the sort of thing you have to do, and just write the code you need based on that (don't just copy and paste as the design view will add a lot of un-needed code)
 
mrdbristol said:
For Buttons / Animations etc , Photoshop or Macromedia Flash
Click to expand...

Don't use Flash for buttons. It's inaccessible. Search engines also struggle indexing the site when the navigation array is made out of flash.

If you want your navigation items to have a bit of imagery in them, stick to using background images on your menu items. Usually <li> and <a>, with textual hyperlinks to each page.

Keep flash for non vital presentation.
 
i think what i may do to help me, is download a free HTML/CSS website layout, and have a fidle around with it and edit it to how i want it.

Then i can slowly change it and learn whats what etc
 
Andr3w said:
i think what i may do to help me, is download a free HTML/CSS website layout, and have a fidle around with it and edit it to how i want it.

Then i can slowly change it and learn whats what etc
Click to expand...
yeh definitely, but make sure you understand the class names they've given the template, they might give #content a really obscure name like #maincenter.text - keep it simple.

For the pages I have produced I've just used a blank css file I made and just altered the colours and stuff from there, I can't be bothered typing out all the different things I change each time lol. :)
 
Would you be able to email me the blank one you made so i can have a fanny around with it :)?

email is in trust
 
Whatever you do, don't get into using frontpage or dreamweaver- they produce very bad code and are rarely XHTML and CSS compliant. On another note, don't use notepad++- it's crap. What you want is Notepad2- it doesn't even need installing :)

For tutorials, i'd check out w3schools as it has both CSS and XHTML on it :cool:

For a blank CSS, there wouldn't really be much point without a blank htm file to go with it and even then, it's easier of you write it as you underdstand the class names and ids. For example:

HTML:

Code: 
<!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">
<head>

	<title>Site Title</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" />
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

</head>

<body>

<div id="container">

	<div id="nav">
		<ul class="navlist">
		   <li>Nav 1</li>
		   <li>Nav 2</li>
		 </ul>
	</div>

	<div id="contents">
		 <p>Blah</p>
	</div>

</div>

</body>

</html>

CSS:

Code: 
#container
{
width: 750px;
min-width: 750px;
max-width: 750px;

height: auto;
min-height: 600px;

text-align: center;

font-family: verdana, sans-serif;
font-size: 14px;
color: #444;
}

#nav
{
font-size: 12px;
}

.navlist
{
list-style-type: circle;
}

#contents
{
color: #000;
}

It's only very basic but it gives you an idea of the syntax I guess- most are self explanitory :)
 
Trigger said:
Whatever you do, don't get into using frontpage or dreamweaver- they produce very bad code and are rarely XHTML and CSS compliant. On another note, don't use notepad++- it's crap. What you want is Notepad2- it doesn't even need installing :)
Click to expand...

When people say don't use Dreamweaver, what they really are getting at is don't use DWs design view, i.e. the WYSIWYG code generator. DW can be a fantastic code editor and site management tool if you use it properly, although it is hugely overpriced.

I'm interested in why you think Notepad++ is crap? I've found it to be an excellent lightweight editor.
 
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