Building a Website

[huggies15]

Hi All,
This probably isnt the place for this, but i couldnt see a better sub-topic.
Anyway, im trying to build a website for my housemates dads company. All it needs to be is like a start page with company logo and links to gallery, projects, etc. and then these to have some pictures and text in, nothing fancy at all. Now im not a computer tard, but have never done this before. i have made powerpoint presentation whihc basicaly function how i want this to, but thats not a web site is it.
Basically what im asking is where do i start? i know i gotta get domain name and hosting, but what program(s) do i use to build it? i dont know any programming languages, so as little java or html as possible would be good, and even better would be a program (like powerpoint) where u just drag and drop thing in place and form hyperlinks etc. It would also be great if this was free (as in no cost), or at very little cost. Im running both ubuntu and xp, so thats not a problem, and would like it that the website would run on all browsers...
Im assuming then i would just upload via ftp my site and it would all work?!
Any advice would be gratefully received,
Cheers,
Steve

[joshdudeha]

If the site you're building is as simple as you say it is. Then I really recommend you learn HTML, and even CSS. They are so easy, and you can have a site running in an hour.
But you can use a WYSIWYG editor, like Dreamweaver.
I use a text editor, and an image editor.

If you want help, pm me.

[madsquabbles]

The best possible thing to do is to learn how to write the HTML/CSS from scratch in a text editor. If you want to take this route there are a ton of resources on the net, one of the best for beginners being W3 Schools (http://www.w3schools.com). This place has fantastic hands on learning for beginners.

However, if you would rather take a WYSIWYG approach, there's always Dreamweaver, or you could use something like Yahoo! or Geocities. They both provide WYSIWYG editors. However, the severe downfall to using WYSIWYG editors, is the website will 99% of the time not be cross-browser compatible (aka look the same in IE6, IE7, FireFox, Safari, etc).

Hope this helps a bit! :D

[smartboyathome]

You could always go with a CMS like Drupal. I am going to use it on my parents' company's server once I figure out what I messed up in it to make it start making weird noises. :-/

[huggies15]

ok, thanks for the links... im gonna try learning this html stuff, it looks easier than i thought - having never even looked at this stuff i thought it would be much harder.
once ive written the site, do i just upload it to the hosting and itll work? i know this all seems stupid, but i really have no idea.

also this CMS stuff, i have read something about joomla! but dont really understand how that works...

[ubuntu27]

Why are people recommending Dreamweaver when we are running Ubuntu Linux?


Hello huggies15.

You might want to try Kompozer (http://kompozer.net/), a Web Authoring System that is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)


Homepage: http://kompozer.net/

Download: Apt-get (apt://kompozer)

[Mehall]

Joomla! is the answer.

Joomla!! (the first "!" is part of the name :P)

[madsquabbles]

Why are people recommending Dreamweaver when we are running Ubuntu Linux?

Because he said he's running XP as well.

But, yes, you can always try a CMS like Joomla!.

[joshdudeha]

Because he said he's running XP as well.

But, yes, you can always try a CMS like Joomla!.

I was going to say that, aha.
Also, there aren't really many (great_) editors on ubuntu.
Bluefish is quite good.
But yeah, editor ftw :D

[smartboyathome]

Isn't Joomla! the CMS with the many security holes? ;)

[Mehall]

Isn't Joomla! the CMS with the many security holes? ;)

Not had any problem with it myself.

Think of it more like Firefox: 98% of all security flaws coem from using bad add-ons.

If you use a well-coded theme, you're solid, generally.

if you have a bit of cash to splash, using a RocketTheme (http://rockettheme.com) theme is well worth the investment, and the few free ones they have are solid too, but require you to leave links back to them on it.

[huggies15]

Ok, so following the basic tutorial part of w3schools.com i've managed to write a "this site is under construction page" to upload for the time being. now this is gonna soudn stupid, but its in notepad, so what do i save it as?! xxxx.html, or xxxx.txt or what? im assuming html right?!

[Mehall]

Ok, so following the basic tutorial part of w3schools.com i've managed to write a "this site is under construction page" to upload for the time being. now this is gonna soudn stupid, but its in notepad, so what do i save it as?! xxxx.html, or xxxx.txt or what? im assuming html right?!

when using notepad?

choose "All Files" from the drop down box, and save it as xxx.html

if you don't change the drop-box, it'll save it as xxx.html.txt

[huggies15]

sorry i meant notepad++, it gave millions of options, i saved as .html, and it works!
thanks so much for the help, ill probably have more questions later on how to make it look good and everything but for the moment this will do.
Cheers everyone,
Steve

[Mehall]

sorry i meant notepad++, it gave millions of options, i saved as .html, and it works!
thanks so much for the help, ill probably have more questions later on how to make it look good and everything but for the moment this will do.
Cheers everyone,
Steve

Feel free to ask. I'm by no means an expert, but I know enough to get by.

[Naiki Muliaina]

Last time i used HTML i fell in love with them style sheet thingys \\:D/ . Where you could change a link on one page and it updated all of them sorta thing. They made life soooo much easier ^^

[smartboyathome]

Last time i used HTML i fell in love with them style sheet thingys \\:D/ . Where you could change a link on one page and it updated all of them sorta thing. They made life soooo much easier ^^

You mean CSS. That is the preferred method now for setting page styles.

[Naiki Muliaina]

You mean CSS. That is the preferred method now for setting page styles.

Possibly, whatever they were i loved them ^^