designing your own website

[flashback]

Originally Posted by indesertum

I want to create my own website...as much as I would like to I don't have time during the semester to learn. ?

jj

 

[Ludeykrus]

Originally Posted by The Snob

i taught myself html and css back in the day through looking at source codes. Menubar -> View -> View Source (these days this method might be a bit more challenging as websites nowadays are all supah fancy schmancy; but simpler ones are still easy to figure out this way) There is a LOT you can do in terms of customization on blogger. Wordpress not so much (unless you pay for that upgrade). All you need to know is HTML and more importantly, CSS. Is there something you want to do that requires learning MySQL, etc? For such things I always turn to my web developer friends. I suggest setting up a blogger account, using one of the default templates, and then going to the edit HTML part of the template and play around with the CSS code to teach yourself. The coding, I think, is pretty straight forward. Run into issues and google the specific problem. Lots of good websites with HTML/ CSS tutorials. If you're smart, you'll pick it up pretty fast. I can't imagine anything else more boring than reading a programming book. I remember from ohhh so long ago back in high school and AP computer science. Oh yeah, but definitely get thee photoshop. And if you want the quick and easy pay route, do as thekunk suggested and visit SquareSpace. It looks quite powerful and customizable.
x2 I learned HTML and Javascript back in the day when I was going to be a computer programmer. Quit cold turkey. Now I'm lookin to start a new site, and consulted with my web designer buddy. He learned the way I learn: look at source code and reverse engineer. I still remember HTML well, but apparently you can't do **** today without knowing CSS.

 

[thekunk07]

^yeah, you cannot.

 

[bamaster]

There's very liitle value in learning how to html/css/js/yomama manually these days. The software does it for you, such good tools now. I've been building websites as a career since 1995. That's before internet Explorer and when 28.8k was king! I taught HTML 101, but it was simple to do back then.

That being said, I'd start with some tool-rich web hosting. Something with Wordpress, for example, for starting a blog. That will give you the base understanding of how webpages are linked and images are inserted.

After that, you can graduate to a more robust (like that word? It's high tech!) feature set like Joomla, as suggested earlier.

Do a search for cheap website hosting. Does anyone know if Dreamhost still ahs the 777 coupon going? It used to give $7.77/year hosting.

Good luck!

 

[BreakfastPirate]

Originally Posted by bamaster

There's very liitle value in learning how to html/css/js/yomama manually these days. The software does it for you, such good tools now. I've been building websites as a career since 1995. That's before internet Explorer and when 28.8k was king! I taught HTML 101, but it was simple to do back then.

Maybe I just haven't used modern WYSIWYG tools, but I always felt I had much more control over the design/layout of a website I'm creating when I just code straight HTML/CSS. Using CSS is pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it, and there's really not much you can't do. Nine times out of ten, if I can imagine it I can make it happen on a webpage.

 

[reprehensible]

First, make sure you really have a good reason to do something from scratch. The various CMSs and blogging systems out there are pretty nice.

If you're really serious, you can do fine with two references and one piece of software:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/

And then download Firebug, without which web development would be even more of a pain ********** than it already is. It's good for learning CSS, too ,as you can go into an existing site and tweak CSS live, and see your changes reflected as you enter them.

If you do anything remotely fancy, prepare for a lot of compatibility testing, because IE is a piece of crap.

Or you can use a piece of junk like Dreamweaver. Accommodating that stupid thing has caused me enough hassle that I can't recommend it in good conscience, though.

I strongly recommend either really learning something, or using something friendly like a CMS or blogging system. The middle ground of hacking something up by cut and paste doesn't help anyone. And "WYSIWYG" tools like Dreamweaver are sad muppets that have no place in the modern world.