How to build a website

[Inch High PI]

Right folks, firstly I am not by any means a computer expert although I am not an utter computer biff.

What I want to try and do is to try and build a website but I have absolutely no idea where to start and how much its likely to cost. Ultimately it is for my uncles joinery business, but it will just start off as a wee project to keep myself occupied during the winter months.

There are lots of websites out there offering advice on how to do it, but its knowing which ones are pukka/any good.

Any advice will be very much appreciated, replies on this forum or by PM greatly appreciated. Cheers.

 

[Ex-Bay]

There's an interesting bit of construction software from Serif.
Might be worth a look.

Hope this helps.

 

[MingMong]

Some of the earlier versions of Microsoft Office suite came with a copy of Frontpage which is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website creating tool. I'm sure that if you do a google search then you will be able to find plenty of different WYSIWYG editors.

As well as that you need some space to host your website. You may have some already as part of your ISP's members package if not there are plenty of places that offer free web hosting, although they may insist that you have a small advert or link to them somewhere on your pages. You will probably need some FTP software in order to upload your site to your host. Again, there should be plenty of free versions arouns that you can use.

 

[Cooheed]

Fasthosts do a good package from domain registration to providing all sorts of templates to build a simple website. Fast and easy.

 

[CodeMonkey]

Depends on how complex you want the site, there are free CMS(Content management Systems) that use a database to create the pages dynamically.

Or for bog standard website, there used to be a good package called HoTMetaL but i'm not sure if that is around anymore.

At a push you could use Microsoft Word to create the pages for you.

 

[Realist78]

I'm using streamline.net at the moment, they have lots of templates, you just input whatever info you need to and upload it, they are are also cheap hosts (less than 30 quid for 2 years) and with a good tech helpline.

 

[monobrow]

There's an interesting bit of construction software from Serif.

No!

Some of the earlier versions of Microsoft Office suite came with a copy of Frontpage which is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website creating tool.

No!

At a push you could use Microsoft Word to create the pages for you.

You've gone mad....

If you want a little project to learn something and produce something at the end. Get yourself to www.w3schools.com and go through their HTML package. All you need is notepad and a bit of time. WYSIWYG it most definately isn't, but when you edit a page, save it, open with IE or firefox you can see the results instantly. Keep the window open, edit file, save again, refresh IE or firefox and the changes are updated. Using something like Serif or Frontpage is cheating yourself. HTML is a peice of p*ss to learn.

 

[MingMong]

A bit confrontational this afternoon aren't we Mono?

All 3 coments that you have said 'No!' to are valid suggestions, even if they are not YOUR prefered choice. The OP said he wanted to create a web page, whic he could do with all the suggestions given so far. He didn't say anywhere that he wanted to learn HTML.

 

[monobrow]

Apologies. They are valid suggestions that will end up in a webpage.. but the option to write your own code shouldn't be cast to one side. It's not that hard!

 

[MAINJAFAD]

There are many ways to write web pages, from writing them from scratch on Windows Notepad (haven't done it myself, but have used Notepad to edit source code for pages written with other packages, as Mono says, It is not that hard), Microsoft Powerpoint and Word can be used to create web pages, but they do tend to add a shed load of code which is not required, Frontpage is just as bad. My favourivte package was Adobe Pagemill, Simple to use, and the code was easy to edit with Notepad (which I had to do when running a Families club website on a Station intranet 5 odd years ago). Then you have the all singing, all dancing packages like Dreamweaver. As for the rest, some ISP's give you webspace and a FTP system to up load it, other require you to purchse a FTP programme that will allow access to your server. At the end of the day, its what your willing to learn to make the product you want, and your imagination in making it.

 

[Rikster]

homestead.com is good and easy to use

 

[grumpyoldb]

Netscape6 is a free internet browser, and contains a fairly easy to use webpage composer.
I used it to build my first website after I had given up on other web design progs. It's a free download from here...............

http://browser.netscape.com/release

Make sure you get vers 6 as the later releases did not give the composer option.

Good luck with your project.

 

[Talk Wrench]

You could try Mr site. www.mrsite.com

They do a package called the "take away" website.

It costs about 35 quid a year and is dead simple to use.



TW

 

[sonofhacker]

I'm with Ming on this one. Microsoft Frontpage is probably the easiest program to use for beginners.

Then all you need to do is to buy a page on a Domain site and put your HTML code (Found on a seperate tab in Frontpage, updates when you do) into it.

Et Voila!

 

[TrenchardsLoveSock]

If you want a little project to learn something and produce something at the end. Get yourself to www.w3schools.com and go through their HTML package. All you need is notepad and a bit of time. WYSIWYG it most definately isn't, but when you edit a page, save it, open with IE or firefox you can see the results instantly. Keep the window open, edit file, save again, refresh IE or firefox and the changes are updated. Using something like Serif or Frontpage is cheating yourself. HTML is a peice of p*ss to learn.

You're not wrong, but you want to bin Notepad and get a free HTML editor. I used to use HTMLTool which was simple and brilliant. You still had to write the source yourself, but it would highlight the code with different colours to make it a lot easier to read.

It also had an automatic indent feature for that professional look, helped with handling CSS and it had some debugging features.

It was a good bit of kit 5 years ago and I've no doubt that there are better ones out there now.

 

[The Masked Geek]

Get yourself MS Visual Studio Web Developer Express. Free and easy to use but powerful enough to make professional sites if you need to.

 

[sonofhacker]

Actually MG has a good point there... Visual Basic for Vista would be a hell of a lot more professional