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04 May 02 - 09:27 PM (#704505) Subject: Advice on doing my own website From: Maryrrf I put up my website a while back and got some constructive criticism from mucatters. A friend of mine did it for me and he updates it for me (it needs it now as a matter of fact). But I want to somehow figure out how do do another, possibly from scratch, and I want to be able to go in and do the changing and updating myself. Can anybody recommend a good hosting site or software package. I'm semi computer literate but don't know html or anything like that. |
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04 May 02 - 11:31 PM (#704545) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Tweed Try a geocities site to start with. I think they have an easy edit type thing that requires no html knowledge or as you absorb the mystery you can create your pages in the language. You'll get tired of the popup ads, etc. after a while and mebbe want to buy your own space. I use OLM for my joint. I've had two other freebie sites and moved the site three times over the last couple years. It's a disease....sort of like fishing I reckon. Here's a link to a good HTML tutorial site and if yer gonna do another site on your own, then you need to learn this stuff. Sizzling Jalfrezi, HTML by Example Good luck to ya! Tweed http://tweedsblues.net/ |
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04 May 02 - 11:49 PM (#704550) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: GUEST,.gargoyle Check with your CURRENT provider for internet service (ISP) and e-mail provider. (You get to the mudcat through some sort of "gateway."
Very Likely....you are already paying for 2-3-5 meg of webpage without being cogniscent of the fact.
Stay away from "geocity"....(unless you want to put up bogus practice pages for the "education" of it) their reputation for valid content is lower than the floating turds in a toilet bowl. Most "web-surfers" click...see "geocities" and then cut-out before the wash comes over them.
Sincerely |
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05 May 02 - 12:02 AM (#704554) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: hesperis Where is your site now? If you're putting up a couple of pages and some graphics, but not much else, you can easily have a site up on the 5 MB that you get with your ISP. If you want to be graphics-heavy, or put up music files, then you WILL need more than that. Geocities is fine for the absolute beginner, but it would be better to stay away from that. Yahoo is getting very "corporate" of late. Also, have a look for HTML-Kit, it's a nice utility for creating your own sites with html. You do need to know what the commands are, but a good tutorial and HTML-Kit go well together. If you need further help, just ask. (Or just pay me to help you set up a site and learn html, hehehe! >;) (Semi-joking, as I am looking for work, and love both web development and teaching. But mostly joking... just ask.)) |
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05 May 02 - 08:35 AM (#704675) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Gareth For the UK I find freeserve quite large and efficient. It has the advantage that "rations" of download etc. are calculated on a daily basis. Hot Metal - the earlier versions of which can be found as 'freebies' is a reasonable WYSIWYG, and allows direct editing. You will also need a FTP program, but again there are many freebies around. Gareth |
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05 May 02 - 08:40 AM (#704676) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Clinton Hammond I'm kinda partial to the editor that comes with Netscape Communicator... but that's more a matter of dealing with the devil I know I guess... The need to 'know' HTML is really unnecessary these days... Most web editors do all that stuff in the background just like a word processor... There's no real call to know HTML anymore than you need to know the Word Perfect 'codes', for instance... unless, of course, ya wanna do ANYTHING at Mudcat... |
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05 May 02 - 09:34 AM (#704698) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Jeri I use FrontPage Express, but I still fine-tune the HTML using a text editor. I can't really recommend FrontPage because I haven't tried anything else. (I believe it's free.) It saves a bit of time that would be spent on me trying to figure out what the HTML tags would be for things I don't do very often or have never done. Otherwise, I'd just do everything in the text editor; it's a lot cleaner. I agree with Gargoyle about Geocities. I DO tend to avoid sites that have pop-ups unless there's something really good there. He's also right about the possibility you already have space at your ISP. Many of them feature a small (small only if you plan on putting up a lot large files) amount of web space as part of your membership package. This may be helpful: Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design. |
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05 May 02 - 11:14 AM (#704738) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Clinton Hammond Well, that was an opinionated piece of tripe, the Top 10 Mistakes page... |
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05 May 02 - 11:47 AM (#704752) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Maryrrf Thanks for the advice, all. This is another project on my list! |
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05 May 02 - 12:16 PM (#704762) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Jon Freeman If you already have a site and want to play with HTML and web pages, assuming you have Windows, why not just install Personal Web Server and learn on your own computer? If you were really adventurous, you could even learn about dynamic pages. Editors, I have used Front Page Express and found it useful for getting layouts. Hosts, mine is 38h.com in the UK. I have found them to be very reliable. The package I have costs around £50 per year. The limitations are 40Mb space and 1Gb bandwidth per month. The good side is it includes a free domain name and supports ASP, PHP MS Access, MySQL, etc. - probably stuff that wouldn't concern you (unless you did investigate dynamic pages) but the sort of stuff I need to support the Annexe. Jon Jon |
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05 May 02 - 12:17 PM (#704763) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: hesperis Hmmm... If you look at the updated article, it makes a bit more sense... "8. Non-standard link colors. Continues to be a problem since users rely on the link colors to understand what parts of the site they have visited. I often see users bounce repeatedly among a small set of pages, not knowing that they are going back to the same page again and again. (Also, because non-standard link colors are unpleasantly frequent, users are now getting confused by any underlining of text that is not a link.) Severe " Definitely, do NOT underline text that isn't a link!!! Even I get annoyed and confused by that. But non-standard link colours are ok, as long as it changes when clicked on. Having different colours contributes to the individuality of the web - and as much as I love purple, it doesn't go with EVERYTHING! |
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05 May 02 - 01:09 PM (#704783) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Jon Freeman I've just re-read what I'd said, you of course don't need to install PWS (or any other server) to edit and view web pages on your computer. I seem to be too fixed in the things I am looking to do at the moment. Still, PWS does give more scope for trying things at home. I use it for my test system. Again re-reading, for updating and changing, I use CuteFTP for transeferring files between my computer and my web space. It gives a Windows Explorer like interface and you can just drag and drop files from your web space to your computer or visa-versa. The only web based one I used was the one with my Tripod web space and I found it clumsly. Jon |
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05 May 02 - 01:56 PM (#704797) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: McGrath of Harlow I go for getting everything for free, and so far it's been OK.
The site I use for my song site is tripod/lycos. Here is a link - they say 20MB on their free site, but I've got a lot more than that on mine, and they don't seem to worry. They don't have any restriction on size of individual files also, which can be a nuisance with some people (it can mean you can't put song sound files on, for example).
I find that using FrontPage Express, which you can get for free with Internet Explorer, is quite satisfactory. And it doesn't mean you have to use Internet Explorer either). Using the Mudcat you can pick up all the extra HTML you sometimes might need to get the effects you want. Providing you aren't going for the sort of flashy effects that noone really needs, which would get in the way of people visiting your site anyway.
If you want advice I'm sure you'll get plenty by asking on the Mudcat - a lot of it quite good advice too, because most people here aren't experts on computers, and experts can find it very hard to understand why anybody finds something difficult. |
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05 May 02 - 02:12 PM (#704807) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: GUEST Mmmm, great site Kevin! Nah, you're right, no point in learning HTML *grin* |
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05 May 02 - 03:12 PM (#704826) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Ed Pellow Hi Mary, I can't help you with any ideas on a suitable ISP as I live in the UK. However, I'd agree with those who say don't go with the free sites with adverts. If you want to use a site to sell your gigs, its important to look professional. Free sites with 'pop ups' don't. As far as HTML is concerned: YES you can write webpages without learning HTML, but they won't be great. You can call yourself a 'guitar player' by knowing 3 chord shapes. Learning a bit of music theory is likely to make you a much better guitarist. It's the same with web pages. Understanding what's going on in the background is really important if you want to create good looking pages. You can drive a car without having a clue about how it works, but its not great when the car breaks down. It's the same with web pages. Webpages aren't like word-processor or DTP documents, they don't look the same way to everyone who views them. What looks great on your computer, may well not look great to a reader using a different browser, different OS and different screen size. Learning some HTML basics really helps, and it's pretty straightfoward too. I'll post some links to (what I consider to be) some of the best resources if you are interested. Ed
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06 May 02 - 05:02 AM (#705097) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: GUEST,Peter from Essex I had just forumlated my post as I scrolled down to find that Ed had just said it. My additional thought. Don't worry about the design until you have got the content right.
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06 May 02 - 09:07 PM (#705618) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: RichM Can you easily restrict access to some parts of your website? I'm thinking of posting my band's private information--like discussions of practices, gig fees and other information we don't want non-band visitors to see... |
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06 May 02 - 09:17 PM (#705622) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: hesperis RichM - depends on how you have your site. You can password protect a directory with htaccess (good), or you can protect an individual page with javascript (not that great). Or you can get various free scripts for message boards and stuff - those usually have private areas built-in. I recommend phpbb2, but it requires the host to have php and mysql, and you're not going to get that for free unless you're really lucky. |
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06 May 02 - 09:23 PM (#705626) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Maryrrf Thanks all for the advice. I've been playing around and did manage to do a little "tweaking" of the website although my HTML knowledge is almost nonexistant. Now I'm using Freeservers and it looks like I can upgrade to one of the packages that you pay for (they're not very expensive, some as low as $5.95 per month). That includes Front Page Express. It will also eliminate the banners and pop ups which I agree are annoying and unprofessional. I don't want a "high tech" website with a lot of animation, videos, etc. and I'm pleased with the content of mine - it's simple and I'd like to keep it that way. So I think for now I'll just go with what I have and upgrade it. |
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06 May 02 - 09:30 PM (#705630) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Jon Freeman I may be wrong on this but I think that on the typical free sites, you are unlikely to have that sort of control. You could put the page(s) in question in a folder with a weird name and make sure those pages contain no links directly or indirectly to pages with links that are off your site and not publicising those URLs anywhere. This is not restricting access but making those pages hard to find and I don't know how well it works in practice. One other thought along that type of route, is to ensure every directory has it's own default page if needed. Some sites will give full directory listings if such a page is not present. To give an example of what I mean, using my site, www.jonbanjo/forum (/) is not a web page but a directory. The way I am set up when no page is specified, the system looks for "default.asp" within that directory and depending on its presence either displays that page or produces an error message. Other systems are quite capaple of saying "let's just display the directory of www.jonbanjo.forum/". Jon
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06 May 02 - 10:04 PM (#705648) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: McGrath of Harlow "Don't worry about the design until you have got the content right."
Yes indeed. At least, so far as visual design is concerned. Making sure that the site is structured in a way that makes it easy for vistors to find their way round it, and that it's not too complicated to keep it up to date, that's worth thinking about at an early stage. |
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07 May 02 - 12:06 AM (#705701) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Hesperis, the problem of bouncing around in the same circle and not getting forrarder is prevalent in a number of websites. I found it impossible to get out of the circle in a couple of merchandizing sites and ended up buying elsewhere. Always get some novice to check over the website and see if they can navigate through it. In making changes, sometimes things get overlooked. A friend of mine had his paid website designer update his site with his new Email address on his first page but the designer missed a similar clickie on the second page where he had the pricing. He had been wondering why inquiries had dropped off. Sometimes the content of a particular clicky is removed or revised and "page not found" comes up. I have encountered three such websites today and find them frustrating. And oh, yes, I would like to see geocities go broke. |
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07 May 02 - 12:55 AM (#705715) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: katlaughing RichM, you can do that sort of private thing on Yahoo. I have a small one set up, by invitation. You can choose to send out an email to each member with one message, likewise when one of them posts, etc. It's easy to set up. If I remember they call it a "chat" or "forum"...you choose who gets to see it or if you want it to be open to the public. Mary, I've been pretty happy with Tripod/Lycos, too, but do check with your Internet Service Provider. I know we have free webspace with ours. You pay for it, might as well use it. If you just want something to show prospective gig contacts, you can put up a blurb with sound files at www.iuma.com (link should be to my brother's page). There's some good stuff on html at the Mudcat...don't forget we have practice threads every once in awhile. kat |
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07 May 02 - 01:48 AM (#705733) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: hesperis free.prohosting.com will let you put up perl forums, and you can keep one category private and have another one public. You have to read their *unofficial* faq to find out how to avoid getting internal server errors, but aside from that it's not bad. |
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07 May 02 - 09:33 AM (#705882) Subject: RE: Help: Advice on doing my own website From: Jon Freeman Heperis, perl is a scripting language. There are several perl forums around - are you reffering to a specific forum? Re the comments on flashy hi tech sites, I hate them more than ever now. My connection spreed remains at 28.8K making sites with long downloads a pain but now I tend to be running Linux and a Java version of Netscape which doesn't have the same plug in, etc support as the Windows version... I have to be pretty well convinced that I want to see the content before I load Windows and IE to view a site I can't view on this version of Netscape... I may be wrong but I get the feeling that in this thread there may have been some confusion between hi-tech-flashy-use-the-lastest-most-dazzling... sites and sites with a reasonable degree of complexity. The 2 don't have to go together. Mudcat is a good example of a site that uses more than HTML to achieve what it does but avoids all the gimmics... Jon |