Wanting to make a web site, need advice, please.

Priapus · 2 Oct 2007 at 16:07

Hi guys,

Well, I am wanting to make a web site, so I want to desing it myself and work on it. I need a host, firstly, which I have found. However I am unsure how they upload my web site, in what format ect or program.

So, I need advice on:

1. What program can I use to make, design the web site?
2. What format or file must I have it to upload to their web site?

The host I found is: http://www.hetzner.co.za

Any help at all will be greatlt appreciated!

Many thanks all!

SiriusB · 2 Oct 2007 at 16:27

Usually you upload your webpages using FTP. Your host's help pages should have the information you need on doing this. There a loads of free FTP clients around. Two which spring to mind are Firezilla and FireFTP [which I use].

Webpages are usually in .html, .htm or more recently .xhtml. You will likely be using .html. You can use almost anything that lets you save text files to create a website, even notepad. However you would probably be better off with something that has code highlighting [such as Notepad2 for Windows or gPHPEdit for Linux].

You can also use a more "advanced" program like Frontpage or similar that does the coding for you, you just lay it out how you want, change fonts, add images etc. Only problem with this type of software is that it usually writes bad code that isn't standards complient.

If you want more hands on, then hand-coding it is the way to go. If you want info on XHTML and CSS then visit http://www.w3schools.com/ for all the information you could need, and also some very good tutorials to get you started.

Priapus · 2 Oct 2007 at 16:40

Hi.

Thank you for the great response. I am going to take a look at the website. I do, however have a program called web developer, by Microsoft. I am wondering if that'd be any good really?

To be honest I haven't got the time to sit and ccode it all, however if that's what it's going to take then I suppose I'll have to do it that way.

SiriusB · 2 Oct 2007 at 16:43

To be honest it doesn't take very long to code a website. You're likely to spend more time fiddling with the CSS to make IE work

The first page may take a while to do, but if you code it well you'll have a template you can use for every other page, which means all you have to do is change the content. The CSS you'll only do once for the whole website.

I have never heard of Web Developer so don't know what it is like. It wouldn't surprise me if it was crap

Having said that, if you don't have time to hand code you could always let WD do the leg work, and all you have to do is tidy up the code a bit.

celliott · 2 Oct 2007 at 16:56

I highly reccomend www.oswd.org for templates. This is pretty much the best free template site you will find, and they are all CSS based so are easy to edit. Best thing is they are proper designs, and dont look like the typical overused templates you see all over the place.

Chris.

Priapus · 3 Oct 2007 at 07:11

I'll take alook at that site, seems very helpful

Thank you very much for the help guys!

Much appericated!