How To Start Designing Website Myself

kwiz117 · April 14, 2004

Interesting thread..

I do not agree with the suggestion of migrating to Linux for a guy who is seeking help to do his first website by his own.

Best is to get hold of a basic HTML Book and learn the HTML codes with some basic examples of how to edit them and then how to display them in a web browser. That will help you to grasp the logic of website, domain name and hosting.

Then think of using Microsoft Front Page, where you will be able to understand quickly what it does when you use Front Page tools and how the basic websites are configured.

Using others websites and codes are all short-term, unethical practices and in my books, will make you more confused than helping you.

Once you do your first website and after gaining a proper understanding of how this websites work and the way Domain Names, Hosting etc works, then it is the right time to go ahead and buy a Domain Name and a Hosting Package.

I have included some help and guidelines for first time website developers in my site.

http:\\www.bizfab.com

If you are new, I strongly advice you to spend some time with a Free Website Hosting Provider like Yahoo Geocities until you are ready and more importantly a real need arises.

In Summary, by having your own Domain Name and the Hosting Service will

1. Give you a Unique Web Address like www.(yourname).com [.net, .org etc]

2. You will be able to have an own email name under your Domain Name like (Yourname)@(yourdomainname).com instead of having hotmal.com yahoo.com etc..

3. You will have good amount of Disk Space. For example we offer 400MB of Space.

Domain Name Registrars and the Hosting Service Providers sometimes are same but in many cases different entities.

For example, I can be your hosting Provider, but you can go and register your Domain Name from another Domain Name Registrar.

But in most of the cases, hosting service providers bundle the Domain Names or Sell them at a reduced price with the Hosting Package.

Normally your Domain Name price is for 1 Yr and after that; you are suppose to renew it.

When you purchase the Hosting Account, the Hosting Provider will give you its Server (Name Server) Address and you have to input them in your Domain Name Control Panel. That will basically setup your Domain Name and make it ready for you to upload your website for us to see.

Hope this will help you to start your own website.

kwiz

April 15, 2004

Hey Kwiz, on topic, because I don't understand how it works, if I want to get my domain hosted by you for example, do you buy in bulk and onsell packages, or how does that all work, or do you have a server yourself.

I have heard of virtual servers, and don't know all that much about how it operates.

Lazarus

April 15, 2004

Hey Kwiz, on topic, because I don't understand how it works, if I want to get my domain hosted by you for example, do you buy in bulk and onsell packages, or how does that all work, or do you have a server yourself.

I have heard of virtual servers, and don't know all that much about how it operates.

Lazarus

April 15, 2004

Hey Kwiz, on topic, because I don't understand how it works, if I want to get my domain hosted by you for example, do you buy in bulk and onsell packages, or how does that all work, or do you have a server yourself.

I have heard of virtual servers, and don't know all that much about how it operates.

Lazarus

organic · April 15, 2004

My 2 baht's worth - whatever you use don't use Front Page, it produces horrifically bloated, over-complicated HTML. Many times I've had to help out friends who were new to website design and FP got them into the most horrific mess.

My own preference is Dreamweaver as a WYSIWYG editor for productivity, then going in afterwards and checking the HTML by hand to slim it down, as a beginner that stage won't be appropriate, but certainly check out the HTML it produces if you're going to be taking it seriously / doing a lot.

Also at an early stage, don't be adding on too many bells & whistles, keep it simple and anyway all the tacky little extras often just make your stuff look messy rather than adding to it.

francois · April 16, 2004

hi'

My 2 baht's worth - whatever you use don't use Front Page, it produces horrifically bloated, over-complicated HTML. Many times I've had to help out friends who were new to website design and FP got them into the most horrific mess.
My own preference is Dreamweaver as a WYSIWYG editor for productivity, then going in afterwards and checking the HTML by hand to slim it down, as a beginner that stage won't be appropriate, but certainly check out the HTML it produces if you're going to be taking it seriously / doing a lot.

Also at an early stage, don't be adding on too many bells & whistles, keep it simple and anyway all the tacky little extras often just make your stuff look messy rather than adding to it.

very well said

nothing better than a real good wysiwyg to begin

and for sure not frontpage, although the 2003 version is a bit improved ... but still, what a code

cheers

francois

francois · April 17, 2004

hi'

I do not agree with the suggestion of migrating to Linux for a guy who is seeking help to do his first website by his own.

that's why I said ... {sorry for this, if did not take with humour} ... "dude" to stop the "delirium" about linux ... like, install your own server ...

I do agree with kwizz117, it's a non-sens to say to someone who hardly know a thing about html to get into linux

might be the best way to make him/her quit for good

seriously, learn yourself like most of us did before, you'll always find someone on the way to give you a trick or something to help you out

you see in fact, sometime ago when talking about linux, you would have get a good bashing ...

what I see now, is more that what I thought first, use it!

but, anyway, it is not a solution for beginner, and all linux user know this ... don't we?

and useless to try to setup a talking on using linux, this would be out of board ...

cheers

francois

ps; sorry if some feelings had been hurt on the way

April 17, 2004

I'm still devastated Frank. BTW it's "nonsense".

francois · April 17, 2004

I'm still devastated Frank.

BTW it's "nonsense"

yop!

cheers IT

francois

kwiz117 · April 19, 2004

Hey Kwiz, on topic, because I don't understand how it works, if I want to get my domain hosted by you for example, do you buy in bulk and onsell packages, or how does that all work, or do you have a server yourself.
I have heard of virtual servers, and don't know all that much about how it operates.

Lazarus

Hi

Sorry..late reply..not that I ran away..

No, we do not have any servers. That's the way this hosting business works. Many Hosting providers do not have any real hosting servers. All they do is buy in bulk and then split it to various packages and re-sell.

It's all virtual and good business for very little investment.

If you need, you can also get a dedicated server. Normally that cost around 5-10 times up compared to a shared server.

Good if you run a large scale e-commerce site, large companies to consider as an outsourcing option etc.

kwiz

ubergnome · May 15, 2004

A bit late to this thread, but if anyone's still interested...

I put my first page up on Geocities. That's an easy way to start and free.

I just put my first site together - well actually it's still in development but mostly laid out - using FrontPage, which is fine as a pre-visualization aid, but not really a serious tool, as it lays down heaps of sloppy, redundant and out of sequence code, which you then go thru and clean up. Well, this is one way to learn HTML, but it's not a solution. Personally, I don't want to get into it, I just like doing the visual thing.

If anyone with experience wants to take a look at MY site and offer some advice, feel free. I'm actually on the hunt for someone to re-built my beast.

asinah · May 15, 2004

Get a domain with thaiinternic.com for 600 Baht and they offer webhosting for a couple of hundred Bahts.

Make sure you STAAAAYYYYY away from those Windows boxes and make sure you host your site on a Linux box or a SUN box.

Try to use cutehtml or some other kind of html text editors. All those other editors give you a lot of codes and comments that make your page to big.

If you have the money to spend and are acutally selling 3rd party products make sure you get yourself a Dedicated server and then you can become a player and make some real money.

Just my few cents

Upcountry · January 16, 2005

You can start as I did.

Open a text editor (www.editplus.com) or Notepad.

Type a "<", and "H", at "T", an "M", and a "L", etc.... ;-)

Start by finding a simple book about HTML or search the web for HTML Tutorials.

You don't need a web server to start. After you create a basic "hello world" HTML page for instance, just double clicking the file should make it open in your web browser. Firefox is great because it'll open as a tab in an existing open window (on XP anyway).

Once you understand basic HTML and then stylesheets, etc., you can start to think about programming stuff like JavaScript. There are some nice tools reviewed by Post Database for simpler web page management. When you see a website you like, use your browser's "view source" menu selection to get a sense of how the page was coded. Sometimes you can get the stylesheet, by capturing the "relative" path from the page and putting it together in the URL field. Save it and look at it. Save the page as "web page complete". This gives you even more to work with for ideas.

If you really start getting the hang of things and want to go further, start reasearching Perl and MySQL and PHP, etc. As you go down this direction you'll want to start looking into a web hosting service that supports this sort of thing, or look into setting up Apache and so on on your PC. Macs are great for having a lot of this built in (the web server anyway, as well as Perl which is a terrific tool (more fun then a cross-word puzzle!) ).

CGI is a whole new ballgame. Data goes from one "page" to another". You end up mixing "modes", data and presentation. Database tools like MySQL may be intimidating at first, but if you've gotten this far you may be up for at least more simple database programming.

And so it goes...

Crushdepth · January 17, 2005

I'd suggest using a content management system (a program for constructing a website that handles all the layout for you automatically) instead of trying to learn to build your pages from scratch. You don't need to know how to program or understand much html up front, you can set up a good looking site straight away and pick up html etc. as you go.

There's plenty around, but I like XOOPS. It has a big friendly user community that will help you solve your problems.

It even comes with documentation these days:

* A visual introduction to XOOPS

* Installation guide

* Operations guide

* Other documentation.

Download XOOPS

I'd recommend using paid web hosting. Takes away a lot of headaches, and its pretty cheap really.