Thread: Building web page where to start

Sorry to be rude, but do you design your own letterhead, or brochures?

If you haven't any graphic experience, it will be hard to get an original web page together "in a nice way", but with very basic equipment you'll get a simple message across.

Having said that, there are HEAPS of sites out there that provide templates to do just what you want to do and will give a reasonable result, search "free web templates" and you'll see what I mean. You won't need any software, and can use a free hosting service as well.

Once you get the hang of it, it's not much harder than posting to this BB, and it will give you some knowledge to go forward from.

cheers,

P

An idea is a really good place to start

Seriously (yes, I CAN be serious ... but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting).
Many versions of M/S Office came with FrontPage - a WYSYWYG web page editor. WYSYWYG is 'what you see is what you get'. The program does all the u-beaut coding and you drive it just like a word processor. Velly easy. There are others and some have a bad name for creating excess code (Frontpage will do that), but they make the experience very easy and for the novice web page designer, easy is better than efficient. The neatest way is to use a text editor such as Notepad but you need to speak html code to use that and it's not necessary when you're starting - hell, I work in html code but use a program that creates the code for me.

There are a heap of free web page editors out there - some are really good, most are horrid. It's the old story, if it's hard work you're doing it wrong or using the wrong tool. Be prepared to download quite a few before you find one that doesn't have you throwing your glass of red at the screen.

Now, the page itself.

DO NOT plan a mega-site. You'll never get it working.

Start with ONE page. That's right, one page only.

Then, when it's up on the internet, start the second.

Why? Because there is a lot of work in a web page. It's not only the text you have to get right, there is a high graphics input as well and it can be quite complicated getting it right. You may have to edit images to make them work for you. Ever found a page where you couldn't read the text because it clashes with the background image? Don't let it happen to you (and it will, I guarantee it). Once you have your page working on your computer, upload it to the net ... and hope to hell that it works on the net. Often it won't and the reasons for that will drive you potty as you correct and reload. Not all browsers are alike so you'll find that it might work in IE but not in Firefox. Then there are all the different screen resolutions used these days. It was easy back when everyone was 800x600, but that's not the case now and it can do horrendous things to your formatting - formatting is flexible in webpage design so what looks right on your screen could easily be a disaster on someone elses.

So start with one page. Keep the graphics content as low as possible - not everyone has the fastest broadband available to NASA.

Then do the second page. Get it working, get the link on the first page working, then move on to the third page.

Don't set up a page that needs constant updating - it won't happen. In fact, if you create a front page promising that five more will follow, the chances of you creating those five pages in a timely manner (ie, within human memory) are remote. That's the fact of it mate and I'm sure you've stumbled across web sites where half the links go nowhere. My own site has no content that requires updating but after less than eight months is so out of date it's embarrassing.

Don't link to anything that doesn't already exist.

Don't link to outside sites because the owner of that site WILL shift it or delete it and you'll wind up with a dead link on your site - they won't tell you they've done it either.

It's like sanding a piece of timber. It looks horrid until it's perfect, it takes far more effort than you ever believed possible let alone planned for and it feels so darned good when you get it finished and see it fired up on your screen for the first time.

Scared yet? I can start telling some hometruths if you like

Richard

I hate Frontbum, err Frontpage, with a vengence. But I have to concede that for a beginner who just wants to get a web page up, it's hard to beat. Buy yourself a copy of Frontpage for Dummies and go for it.

Originally Posted by silentC

I hate Frontbum, err Frontpage, with a vengence. But I have to concede that for a beginner who just wants to get a web page up, it's hard to beat. Buy yourself a copy of Frontpage for Dummies and go for it.

Snap!

Richard

If it is purely images to display, rather than any other content, then Photoshop does a nice job of creating thumbnail pages that link to full size image pages. I use it on my image pages on the Occipital website - Dreamweaver (a decent web authoring program with a WYSIWYG editor) to create the front pages that link to them. There a plenty of templates in PS to get the page to look as you want.

Hi.

If you are on a budget, and don't really want to mess with Frontpage, try NVU. It's based off the Mozilla code, and it's actually not a bad editor for web pages. There are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

http://www.nvu.com/index.php

Regards,

woodbe.

i all ready had figured that i should stay way from front page, so is NVU an alternative.

I was not planing on learning HTML but using a generator this is obviously the best way to start out.

The plan is to build the site bit by bit ie home page then each section then when complete and working maybe the bank balance may allow for a pro to build a new one based upon the information in the one i created.

You could try here.

http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/new...oda-8-0-a.html

I got a free copy of xara webstyle, so ill give it a run and see how i go. also looked at other suggestions look good will give them ago later