 sj |
||
|
||
Tech: Your own website?
|
|
|
Subject: Tech: Your own website? From: Crane Driver Date: 19 May 07 - 06:17 PM It all started when someone wanted to book us for their club, and asked for our website - they wanted to advertise us to bring more people to the club. As we are playing for the door money, this is obviously a Good Thing. Sadly, we had no website. I've used computers for some time, for word processing and so on, and I've picked up a bit of HTML here on Mudcat, but I'd no idea how to begin going about setting up a wesite. Then I saw a box in a computer shop. It said 'Mr Site - Takeaway Website in a Box'. I thought it was worth a try. I was mightily impressed, as it did just what it said. So, for anyone who's thinking that they need a website, but don't know where to start, I'm recommending this. I have no financial stake in the company, I just used it, and want to share what I found with anyone in the same position. You don't even need the box. You can go to http://www.mrsite.com and purchase a site on-line. The price in the UK is 40 pounds. (They seem to be set up mainly for the UK, Canada, Australia and Continental Europe). What do you get for the money? For a start, they will register and set up your domain name - whateveryouwant.com - provided, of couse, that no-one else has got it already. If you can't get the name you want dot com, you might get it dot net, or something else. They will host the site for a year (after that, it costs just UKP2.50 a month to keep it going). Most importantly, they provide all the tools you need on-line to create your own site. Our site is at http://www.cranedrivinmusic.com. I built this in about a week of evenings, without having to write any code at all. All the special features, the MP3 player, the shopping cart, the photo galleries, the guestbook, everything, were already created, we just had to say where we wanted them and add our own content. And it's so easy to go back in and correct any little thing. Have a look at the Mr Site site - there are sample sites there to give you an idea what's possible. I really do think this is the answer to getting on line with an impressive site, cheaply and easily, without either having to become a programming expert or employ a costly professional. I hope this information is of use to somebody. Andrew |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 19 May 07 - 08:57 PM Andrew Many of those 'no programming' setups may seem ok. However, they can be full of 'bloat' - which will mean extremely slow loading for the poor sucker on dialup - and that reading such sites quickly burns up the small downloading allowances that 'cheap broadband' packages give. Apart from the classic bloat that Microsoft Word used to give when you used it to 'convert' a Word Document into HTML, one of the biggest sources of bloat is enormous use of 'graphical bling'. A quick scan of your site home page reveals reasonable tight HTML coding. I can't comment on your graphics - as I didn't measure the size of your files. The site did seem to load pretty quickly on my dialup. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 19 May 07 - 09:05 PM Personal Opinion
If lacking the knowledge to create HTML on NOTEPAD - (much more Java Scripting)
You probably lack the knowledge to present a cohesive "web-prescence" in today's world.
Perhaps, you might enroll in an "adult education course at the senior-center for six weeks."
Sincerely, |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 19 May 07 - 09:21 PM My personal opinion about garg's personal opinion... I did think that way for a bit - but it IS possible to develop a reasonable website using some modern 'packages' - the biggest trap still is over use of graphics - and/or graphics files sizes very large - as well as putting too much graphics on the one page. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 19 May 07 - 09:30 PM Oh - and another nasty - trying to use too many fonts - more than a few gets very tiring/distracting - as well as too much use of 'cute' fonts that are not legible to most people. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: GUEST Date: 19 May 07 - 10:00 PM OK - TroopingSkulls - let us toss in a "musical intertude" Imagine that everytime you accessed MC "Dixie" played. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: pattyClink Date: 19 May 07 - 10:11 PM Crane, thank you for the info, and the site looks very good and loads fast. I have a simple handmade site that works okay, but for me to add special stuff like shopping--no way. So I appreciate the headsup. Pay no attention to the snarling creatures if they annoy you. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 20 May 07 - 01:22 AM Listen Garg - my sites were all handcrafted - i started with notepad, then moved to EditPlus cause it had some useful 'tricks for the lazy1' like matching braces, and colouring HTML constructs to assist in getting them correct. Crane Driver, I think your site is ok - especially for a 'beginner in this weird stuff'... :-) keep at it and you will be just as much an expert as any of the critics :-) 1 Lazy people are not necessarily stupid - indeed highly creative people abhor wasting their time with mindless repetition and excess physical labour - thus the term 'Creatively Lazy' - without which we wouldn't have even bothered inventing the wheel... |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: Maryrrf Date: 20 May 07 - 01:23 AM The website is fine and who cares if it isn't done with HTML? Lots of people use packages today - nothing wrong with it! |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 20 May 07 - 01:38 AM "who cares if it isn't done with HTML" It is actually... behind the scenes... just not 'hand hacked code', but robotically generated. Any old techie remember the name of that first commercial "Cobol Code Generator" they flogged in the early 'PC' days while the Tandy Machines were still around? |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: Crane Driver Date: 20 May 07 - 04:51 AM Actually, another silly outburst from Gargle doesn't worry me a bit - it's quite amusing when his medication fails - he's probaly adjusting the dosages himself. Like Robin, I see no reason to re-invent the wheel - I'd rather spend my time playing music than coding a website in HTML.I can use HTML, and in fact I did use it on the Songbook pages of the website - the package allows you to get in and adjust the code if you need to. The only problem I encountered, in fact, was that 'carriage return' inserted a <P> tag instead of <BR>, which is fine if you're writing paragaphs of text which you want to set off with a double line break. However, this isn't appropriate for song lyrics, and I had to get in there and replace the <P> tags with <BR> ones to get the page to look right. Of course those who are happy to code their own site will go ahead and do so (probably have done). If my thread here encourages someone who was reluctant or not confident enough to give it a go, I don't see that as a Bad Thing. I can imagine Gargle's ancestors sitting in their cave casting scorn on those who used this new-fangled wheel thing instead of carrying everything on their own backs, but that's why he's an evolutionary dead-end. Cheers all, Andrew |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: hesperis Date: 20 May 07 - 05:15 PM Often if you're using one of those packages, hitting shift+carriage return will insert a br instead of a p. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: Crane Driver Date: 20 May 07 - 06:41 PM Actually, you're right - I looked deeper into the manual, and 'shift+carriage return' will indeed do it. So I could have saved myself much bother. Just goes to show what we always used to say at work - "If all else fails, read the instructions"! Robin - I checked the site on a dial-up as well as a broadband connection before launching it. It worked fine. The largest photo file is 157kb - most are under 100. The problems you highlight with websites - over-use of graphics, too many fonts etc., are mainly caused by faults in the BKS system (that's 'Between Keyboard & Seat') and will affect hand-coded sites as well as packaged ones. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should do it. To return to friend Gargle's post, I absolutely do not accept that there need be any connection between the technical skills and knowledge needed to create a functional site and the artistic ability needed to make one that engages the viewer. They MAY co-exist, but far too many sites appear to be put together by people who have the 'knowledge to create HTML on NOTEPAD' but totally lack the ability 'to prescent(sic) a cohesive "web-presence" in today's world'. These packages should help to redress the balance, and allow those with the artistic skills to get on with designing good, attractive sites without having to worry about making links work or uploading HTML pages to a server. But anyone who still wants to 'do it by hand' can of course ignore these packages. This thread is for the rest of us. Andrew |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 20 May 07 - 06:43 PM And there is usually some way of entering a non-breaking space instead of a normal space too. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: Tootler Date: 20 May 07 - 07:30 PM I liked the site. It was clear, you knew what it was about and it was and easy to navigate. I downloaded the home page and checked the size it came to 64KB of which 60KB was the picture. Very reasonable. It looks as if the package does not create bloated HTML. In fact I looked at the page source and it was quite compact. One package I tried needed 2MB for a home page no more complex than this one. I pinched some of the images from the package and hand coded my site after that. Even if you use a package, it is worth learning some HTML so that you can make the site look like how you want it, not how some package designer thinks it should look. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: Girl Friday Date: 21 May 07 - 05:34 AM I was directed to Bravenet.com. an American service. It's free, if you don't mind a bit of advertising. The address is: http://www.bravenet.com/and they have a setup wizard which you can use all the time - dead easy. bravenet |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: treewind Date: 21 May 07 - 06:08 AM Hmmm... bravenet is in my downloaded list of sites to block, meaning they supply some of the adverts that appear on other web sites. "if you don't mind a bit of advertising" is all very well, but there are plenty of decent ISPs that give you proper advert-free web space and domain hosting at no extra cost if you only want one domain and the sort of traffic levels that most "home webmasters" need. I'm on Plus Net and though they've had a few problems lately, I get ADSL at a price that's a good as any and three domains (I think it's five now, actually) and plenty of web space. I've always done my HTML and CSS by hand. I do a bit of PHP too, which makes it very easy to maintain identical navigation menus on a set of pages without having to resort to frames. Anahata |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Your own website? From: GUEST,Rob the Roadie Date: 24 May 07 - 05:39 AM We get our web site from a very good friend. He charges a nominal fee and updates it regularly for us. We think it great value and get requests from USA and OZ and NZ amongst others as a result. Take a look at it and if you are interested well will zap you his contact. tell him you got in touch through us and he might give you a good deal. He got a First in Web design. www.sky-web.net/taggartandwright/ |
| Share Thread: |