Creating a Website...

[CephasWhite]

I would love to make my own website, but I don't know how. Can anybody help me with this?

What would be in there would be some poetry, some music, some drawings of a manga I what to make, etc.

Again, if anybody could help me get started, that would be so great. Thanks.

[Biosyn]

use dreamweaver and photoshop.

[CephasWhite]

Okay...so where would I get Dreamweaver?

[Mr. Rogers]

dreamweaver is an expensive program, so unless you're going to get seriously into web design, i wouldn't get it. do you know any HTML or CSS?

[Biosyn]

would any person in his right mind pay for something he can get for free?

besides, if you don't know much about html, Dreamweaver is the way to go.

[Sammy Boy]

Hi Cephas VII,

[1] First, places such as Geocities (http://www.geocities.com) offer 20 MBs of webspace for free.

[2] The one I use gives 100 megs and is PHP enabled and gives you a free MySQL database (if you want). It's at:
http://mybesthost.com/members/login.php

However you need to update something in your site once a month for your account to remain active I think. Once there, click the link to sign up.

[3] Next, my suggestion would be to learn some basic HTML. You can also learn some Javascript to spice up your site, but there's no real need to do that to just get a working site.

Two good sites to learn HTML, CSS (stylesheets) (and Javascript) are:

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/

I learnt all my HTML and basic Javascript from the first site.

[4] Finally, you can get a text editor known as Textpad. For personal non-profit use, the licence is free. I think you can grab a copy from http://www.download.com

I hope that helps.

Cheers

[CephasWhite]

dreamweaver is an expensive program, so unless you're going to get seriously into web design, i wouldn't get it. do you know any HTML or CSS?

No, I seriously don't know...

and thanks Magnus.

[Biosyn]

my advice: Sure, knowing html is very important (and I'm being serious here), but if you're just a beginner and want your site to look like it's 1997 outside, I suggest you cough up the cash (or download) for Dreamweaver.

Why? Well because it has a graphic interface and it's split screen allows you see what goes on with the html code in real time.

[Biosyn]

And another thing: you might live with your parents, still go to school and not have a job (not that I really care), but it pays to have a good webhost.

Of course it'll cost you extra money, but those popular free hosts like geocities, angelfire, tripod and etc - are VERY unreliable.

[CephasWhite]

I'm in University right now, so my budget is REALLY tight. I'll have to make my website later. But thanks for the advice everyone.

[Mr. Rogers]

sorry, but i would not recommend learning web design by using a WYSIWYG program (like dreamweaver or using some free site builder tool). I would highly suggest learning to code by hand (using a program notepad or textedit), and then later, when you really understand how the coding works, you can use a program like dreamweaver for conveinance. Learning this way will make you a much better web designer in the long run and you will be able to do anything you want to, because you will really know how everything works.

Start off by learning HTML and then CSS (cascading style sheets). Later on, you can learn things like PHP and JavaScript to add additional functionality to your site.

I would definately recommend http://www.w3schools.com for reference, but I'm not sure that it's the greatest site for learning from scratch. I used: http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/ - This will teach you in short, easy lessons and right at the end, it will let you try what you learned and see the results (a very good way to learn)

Some good books for reference:

HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly Publishing)
Web Design Garage (The Garage Series)

You could use Geocities or something like that at the beginning to get a feel for everything, but you are going to eventually want to get a web hosting service (Geocities and all those free ones aren't exactly the greatest) I've used E-starr.com and Serverplace.net and they are pretty good and well priced.

[shooraijin]

I'm in the code-by-hand camp as well. You learn how the process works. HTML is a markup language, not a page layout language, and Dreamweaver and other graphical HTML design programs generate HTML based on a desired *layout*. If, on the other hand, you enter text and then mark it up, you learn how HTML interacts with the text it intercalates with.

[kazekami]

I agree about the HTML. I had to use Dreamweaver in a class after i already understood how HTML worked. I don't like Dreamweaver. I find it easier just to use notepad. Codeing by hand I feel like I have more control. Though I only know basic HTML right now.

[Debitt]

I too suggest you learn to code by hand first - only use web-site building programs for convinience once you know what you're doing, as was mentioned before.

What I did to learn HTML was actually download simple layouts off of graphics sites and look at the code for them. It's very very helpful, and makes HTML tutorials (like the ones at W3Schools, which I highly reccomend) easier to understand when you can see the correct code in its proper use.

^^ Good luck with the site. <3

[Slater]

don't get Dreamweaver... it's not necessarry. HTML is by far the easiest computer program language out there (if you can call HTML a language), and notepad is best.

Geocities is pretty crappy. Yet again, so are all free webhosting sites. You get what you pay for... There was someone here who was giving away free webspace (I know because he gave me some) and if you can find that offer again, take advantage of it. It's perfect for a beginner IMO (tho you need to know a bit about FTP)