Good Site That Teaches How To Make Your Own Website

[bow]

I have decided that there are things that I should share with the rest of the world.

To do this, I need (and want) my own website.

There are many websites that try to teach you how to build your own website.

The problem is to find a good teaching website. You don't want to waste days surfing on shit.

Anybody here that wants to recommend a website that teaches you the basics of how to set up your own website ?

[Crushdepth]

If your requirements are simple you could just use a free hosted service like facebook or Blogger where you can have your own 'space' and quite sophisticated publishing tools without having to know any technical detail. If you do want to learn the technical detail, a book is a good place to start. You could start experimenting with a simple HTML site will get you started and get you used to FTP and dealing with web hosting companies etc. Or you could just dive into one of the simpler content management systems like Wordpress, which are much more flexible and powerful. With a good book in hand and a bit of patience you should be able to put a simple site together fairly quickly.

Suggest you register your domain through Google Apps (standard edition) - $10 (for the domain) including private registration and free access to Gmail/Google Docs/etc under your own domain name, all configured automatically for you.

[elcent]

what kind of requirements do you have? Do you need CMS like the nation or bkkpost uses, or a portfolio website? CMS integrates with whatever you want, shopping, community builder and more, the sky is the limit.

If you need cms and don't have to much experience let someone do it for you. About 20000 Baht and you can get a top notch CMS built including design and you'll be able to take it further alone. It's like you piloting the airplane you purchased and you will be able to service upgrades/updates as well. During this process you will learn more and more then.

Let me know when you need help.

[ManilaLover]

Hi there, few years ago I shared information with starting websitemakers via few forums and I created a webdirectory for the members where they also could submit a link to their new websites. Now I don't join this forums anymore but still run an improved directory with links for starting websitemakers: http://webdesign.coolstart.nl/ I don't make any money with this just for fun. All websites and applications mentioned are tested by myself and are safe to use. There is a section 'First steps to webdesign' in the 3rd column. For specific technic questions I suggest the Programming and Design section of answers.yahoo.com.

It depends if you focus on sharing your information or you wanna learn good webdesign. If a: I suggest Moonfruit, Yola or Weebly (all they don't spoil your site with ugly ads or banners) and b: if you wanna go further in webdesign then 110mb is a better starter. You can start free and later upgraded to pro.

However myself I love one.com who offer an all-in-one package for the price of a can of beer per month. (USD 1,45) including your own domain. I'm sure you will love this one, see screenshot. They have a great live chat option for members and non-members but you won't need it because they have the most easy user interface.

[bow]

what kind of requirements do you have? Do you need CMS like the nation or bkkpost uses, or a portfolio website? CMS integrates with whatever you want, shopping, community builder and more, the sky is the limit.

If you need cms and don't have to much experience let someone do it for you. About 20000 Baht and you can get a top notch CMS built including design and you'll be able to take it further alone. It's like you piloting the airplane you purchased and you will be able to service upgrades/updates as well. During this process you will learn more and more then.

Let me know when you need help.

Wow, thank you very much, but I am thinking of giving myself a new hobby, not starting a business.

I plan to spend time, not money.

I have never heard of cms, I am sure it is great, but it seems unlikely that I will ever need something like that.

Thanks for wanting to help me, for free.

[briley]

Macromedia (makers of dreamweaver) have a set of tutorials on using dreamweaver on their web site. You can even download a trial version of dreamweaver to go through the steps with them.

Probably get to it through the adobe website.

[TwentyBaht]

• The "coolstart" website is very good. Would like to thank ManilaLover for authoring and posting this. I am also one who needs to do website work and was following this thread.
  

[katana]

I think most of these have free hosting with templates so you don't have to know HTML coding:

http://www.110mb.com/

http://www.brinkster.com/

http://www.forumer.com/

http://www.freeservers.com/

http://sites.google.com/

http://www.moonfruit.com/

http://www.tripod.lycos.com/

http://www.atspace.com/

http://www.free-webhosts.com/

http://www.web1000.com/

http://www.webs.com/

http://www.webstarts.com/

http://www.weebly.com/

http://www.yola.com/

Just seen some of these are listed in ManilaLover's link.

[ManilaLover]

I think most of these have free hosting with templates so you don't have to know HTML coding:

http://www.110mb.com/

http://www.brinkster.com/

http://www.forumer.com/

http://www.freeservers.com/

http://sites.google.com/

http://www.moonfruit.com/

http://www.tripod.lycos.com/

http://www.atspace.com/

http://www.free-webhosts.com/

http://www.web1000.com/

http://www.webs.com/

http://www.webstarts.com/

http://www.weebly.com/

http://www.yola.com/

Just seen some of these are listed in ManilaLover's link.

note that webs (former freewebs) though very popular hijack your webpages with a large, ugly banner right at the top. with free webhosting you get a subdomain, like www.yourname.yola.com in stead of www.yourname.com

it depends also on how you value the information you like to share, although i have seen little diamonds hosted with a subdomain.

also it depends how creative you are, what's part of the fun for you etc. some free instant web editors give very limited space for creativity.

if you like to play with graphic design but html and other coding is not your cup of jasmintea then http://webpage-maker.com is a great little tool. i created dozens of webpages with this one, it has an build-in ftp (upload) function that works very fine with eg one.com.

you won't win any webdesigner trophy because the codes produced by this socalled wysiwyg editors (what you see is what you get) are not following webdesign standards, but you can design very fine websites with it !

one.com is a very userfriendly hostingprovider that does not give any headaches. they were rewarded as best AND cheapest, really something to consider, you will get your own domainname.

enjoy :-)

[katana]

If you're just starting out with a website for the first time, the free ones are fine for practice and learning.

If you decide you like your site and want to continue it with more options, they often have a paid option to upgrade, get rid of any ads, and convert the subdomain to a main domain.

[nakachalet]

thx everyone

just exactly what i have been looking for, for a long time....

happy new year everyone

[Projectpaperclip]

I concur.... use wordpress.com or blogger.com

I recommend wordpress over blogger. You will end up with a domain names such as http://nakachalet.WordPress.org

In the future if you want to spend the 10 or so dollars per year you can switch it to a real domain name.

Yes it is primarily made for posting information and photos in a chronological way ( blogging ) but it can also make the perfect starting point for many other types of websites.

I haven't played with the Google sites thing... but they have a far less active "community" of users.

Make sure to post your website link once it is up and running!

[siamect]

Hi

If you want to learn the basics and want to spend time, not money and get it right from the beginning then you should avoid all the frameworks and half ready systems, templates and stuff that are specific to a certain webhost. If you don't have the basics then it is really difficult to choose among those...

One place that teaches you the basics is

w3schools.com

Martin

[bow]

Thank you all for your friendly and helpful answers.

I have got lots of reading to do now.

I started on a free host site. I quickly discovered that there are hundreds of tiny things that I need to learn.

For example, it took several days to figure out that the host site doesn't work well with IE8, I must use another web reader, for example google chrome.

[Phuquephace]

Use nvu - its a very good WYSIWYG editor - use Firefox - one of the older ones, say 3.0.4 to check for compatibility

You might as well chuck M$ and go with Linux. Jump in the deep end - have a lot of fun.

[ManilaLover]

• The "coolstart" website is very good. Would like to thank ManilaLover for authoring and posting this. I am also one who needs to do website work and was following this thread.
  

Note: The (dutch) coolstart subdomain site will soon change into http://webnavigator.org/ (now a redirect to the current coolstart version)

If the Thai temperature allows [in my aircon lacking wooden home] I'm working on a new version under my own webnavigator domain, that will offer easier navigation, articles and some extra dressing.

The coolstart subdomain will keep functioning as a redirect for the time being. A forum has been added so the growing number of visitors users can communicate if they want, a friend from Illinois, USA will be standby to answer technical questions for starting webdesigners.

[DotNetNutta]

I've made a little system for the kids that I teach at iSkool.Net. It's deliberately not point and click in the hope that they learn html/css.

You have unlimited clean pages to do what you like with and link them together if you wish into a site. Go to webs>>MyWebs Jeff