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Website creation - advice please (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Andy Wraithmell
- Start date
madmike
Well-known member
Web sites
Hi Andrew - NO! Sorry!
You can probably find quite a cheap Front Page prog on the internet.
Don't bother with DREAMWEAVER it's very difficult to use and you need a seperate prog to handle images.
Frontpage is the one to get although you could get a very cheap prog to get you started.
madmike
PS. Were be E in Devon? I come from the Bovey Tracey area - which is where my heart still lies!
Hi Andrew - NO! Sorry!
You can probably find quite a cheap Front Page prog on the internet.
Don't bother with DREAMWEAVER it's very difficult to use and you need a seperate prog to handle images.
Frontpage is the one to get although you could get a very cheap prog to get you started.
madmike
PS. Were be E in Devon? I come from the Bovey Tracey area - which is where my heart still lies!
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Gashead
Well-known member
mountain man
Guest
So have I got this right...
You design a website in MS FrontPage (or other appropriate software)
Buy your domain name.
Buy your webspace (making sure it has FrontPage extensions)
Download an FTP (will all FTPs work?)
Upload your wesite from your PC by using the FTP
Yes?
No?
You design a website in MS FrontPage (or other appropriate software)
Buy your domain name.
Buy your webspace (making sure it has FrontPage extensions)
Download an FTP (will all FTPs work?)
Upload your wesite from your PC by using the FTP
Yes?
No?
Keith Reeder
Watch the birdie...
Limeybirder, Birdman and John N - some excellent advice here already, but if you could say exactly what kind of site you want to set up, we might be able to help further.
For example, although I'm a huge fan of the blog/CMS script approach to website creation mentioned above, it's entirely possible to create HTML pages in Microsoft Word or pretty much any other modern word processor - Open Office comes with a web page creator, and the word processors Atlantis and Abiword can certainly do it too.
There are however, innumerable free website design programs - I cut my teeth on Arachnophilia - many of which are WYSIWYG.
Conversely, as has been mentioned, you can use free or paid-for hosted blog services.
Or there are pieces of software - Metateque, Blog and Planarchy to name but three - which allow you to create a template for a blog page/site locally (ie within the software on your PC), type your entry then click a button and the software will load the formatted page onto your webspace via the application's own FTP client.
This is an option which makes life very easy once you've figured out the idiosyncracies of the software - must admit I preferred Metateque for ease of use - and is an option well worth considering.
For example, although I'm a huge fan of the blog/CMS script approach to website creation mentioned above, it's entirely possible to create HTML pages in Microsoft Word or pretty much any other modern word processor - Open Office comes with a web page creator, and the word processors Atlantis and Abiword can certainly do it too.
There are however, innumerable free website design programs - I cut my teeth on Arachnophilia - many of which are WYSIWYG.
Conversely, as has been mentioned, you can use free or paid-for hosted blog services.
Or there are pieces of software - Metateque, Blog and Planarchy to name but three - which allow you to create a template for a blog page/site locally (ie within the software on your PC), type your entry then click a button and the software will load the formatted page onto your webspace via the application's own FTP client.
This is an option which makes life very easy once you've figured out the idiosyncracies of the software - must admit I preferred Metateque for ease of use - and is an option well worth considering.
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Keith Reeder
Watch the birdie...
Hi Tom,tom mckinney said:
yes and no...
You don't need to buy a domain name - if you've got free space from your ISP, just use that and the naming convention that uses.
For example I've got webspace on my Freeserve account, which I use "as is" - www.blyth3qy.freeserve.co.uk - not the most elegant URL, but it works fine.
And FP extensions? They're absolutely not a necessity, and often not the best way to get a specific result either.
Bear in mind that most folk don't use FP as their web authoring software and we manage just fine without these extensions.
mountain man
Guest
Keith Reeder said:
Cheers Keith. So are you saying you can still use FrontPage without FrontPage extensions or that you just wouldn't recommend using FrontPage full stop?
Keith Reeder
Watch the birdie...
Hi Tom,
for most of what you see on websites, FP extensions are superfluous, and you can certainly create perfectly good sites using Frontpage, without using FP extensions.
It really does depend on what you're trying to achieve, but if I was after the sort of interactivity and functionality that extensions provide, I'd buy php/MySQL hosting and do it that way instead - aside from anything else, you can do so much more with php scripts, and once you've the hang of them, they're really easy to install and use.
I'll be honest and say that I'm not a huge fan of Frontpage myself, because it creates "messy" code: but I'm an old-school HTML user who is (or was, until I discovered the php option - php scripts "build" the page automatically withtout the webmaster having to hard-code every page) quite happy to write HTML web pages in Notepad without any of the superfluous stuff FP adds.
For basic WYSIWYG website creation though, you can do a lot worse than the HTML/website editor option in Open Office... - www.blyth3qy.freeserve.co.uk/testpage99.html is a 5 minute effort I've just knocked up to prove the point..!
for most of what you see on websites, FP extensions are superfluous, and you can certainly create perfectly good sites using Frontpage, without using FP extensions.
It really does depend on what you're trying to achieve, but if I was after the sort of interactivity and functionality that extensions provide, I'd buy php/MySQL hosting and do it that way instead - aside from anything else, you can do so much more with php scripts, and once you've the hang of them, they're really easy to install and use.
I'll be honest and say that I'm not a huge fan of Frontpage myself, because it creates "messy" code: but I'm an old-school HTML user who is (or was, until I discovered the php option - php scripts "build" the page automatically withtout the webmaster having to hard-code every page) quite happy to write HTML web pages in Notepad without any of the superfluous stuff FP adds.
For basic WYSIWYG website creation though, you can do a lot worse than the HTML/website editor option in Open Office... - www.blyth3qy.freeserve.co.uk/testpage99.html is a 5 minute effort I've just knocked up to prove the point..!
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mountain man
Guest
Thanks a billion Keith.
madmike
Well-known member
Web sites
Hi Tom,
Almost there!
If you use Yahoo or a similar site you will get a FREE web site and a web site address although it will not be a particularly easy one!
Most free web site suppliers will also allow you to upload your data, but an FTP prog (Leechftp is a free download) is quite useful.
Having got your site set up, you can THEN think about getting a domain name.
You can get one at www.simply.com for about £6.50 for two years, and you then redirect this to your free site. You will also get a number of free E Mail addresses.
You should also be able to access a page that will give you all the info about how many hits you've had etc.
You can put a web counter on the site, but they don't always work
It takes a while to get your head around all the various aspects, but hang on in there and after a while it becomes easy! Trust me!!
Cheers,
madmike
tom mckinney said:
Hi Tom,
Almost there!
If you use Yahoo or a similar site you will get a FREE web site and a web site address although it will not be a particularly easy one!
Most free web site suppliers will also allow you to upload your data, but an FTP prog (Leechftp is a free download) is quite useful.
Having got your site set up, you can THEN think about getting a domain name.
You can get one at www.simply.com for about £6.50 for two years, and you then redirect this to your free site. You will also get a number of free E Mail addresses.
You should also be able to access a page that will give you all the info about how many hits you've had etc.
You can put a web counter on the site, but they don't always work
It takes a while to get your head around all the various aspects, but hang on in there and after a while it becomes easy! Trust me!!
Cheers,
madmike
mountain man
Guest
Cheers Mike.
mountain man
Guest
Keith Reeder
Watch the birdie...
Well I've used the same company's £13.99 pa "Value Host" option for several sites over the last few years and I've been 99.99% satisfied and - if I hadn't already decided I'm going to close my angling website - I'd be moving onto the Value Host Pro option for that site.
June Atkinson
Well-known member
Using FTP File Transfer Protocol
I use FTP to upload our Parish Website.
The beauty of it is that you have the FTP page up, alongside your (minimised a bit) Web folder. You then just drag individual files from one to the other, in either direction, so that it becomes very easy to manage your site, and to delete or up-date your images or text files.
I didn't like Microsoft composer, but have used for the past four years the little-known Claris.
Go for it - the more you do, the more you learn.
The Dreamweaver Web Design Tool has quite a following, but, although I have the books, I've never got round to sussing it all out!!
Janus said:
I use FTP to upload our Parish Website.
The beauty of it is that you have the FTP page up, alongside your (minimised a bit) Web folder. You then just drag individual files from one to the other, in either direction, so that it becomes very easy to manage your site, and to delete or up-date your images or text files.
I didn't like Microsoft composer, but have used for the past four years the little-known Claris.
Go for it - the more you do, the more you learn.
The Dreamweaver Web Design Tool has quite a following, but, although I have the books, I've never got round to sussing it all out!!
Keith Reeder
Watch the birdie...
Mike,
I don't understand the point you're making about the Value Host Pro deal from Supanames: it's definitely not just for "big professional" sites, and at £24 a year - I've never found better in 5 years of actively running websites of all shapes and sizes.
And - believe me - if the intention is to host images on the site, 100mb ain't that much really...
As I say, I've used the Value Host option several times, and always had the worry in the back of my mind that I was getting close to using up the 35mb allocation that comes with it, and actually did just that on my angling site - I had to buy extra space.
As to the 100 email accounts and forwarders: if Birdforum was giving away [email protected] email addresses to users (which is exactly what you can do with forwarders, by creating an domain-specific "alias" for an existing address) then 100 wouldn't be nearly enough - I used up 100 forwarders in a month on another angling site I ran.
Seriously - I reckon the Supanames Value Host Pro package is the best all-round deal out there.
I don't understand the point you're making about the Value Host Pro deal from Supanames: it's definitely not just for "big professional" sites, and at £24 a year - I've never found better in 5 years of actively running websites of all shapes and sizes.
And - believe me - if the intention is to host images on the site, 100mb ain't that much really...
As I say, I've used the Value Host option several times, and always had the worry in the back of my mind that I was getting close to using up the 35mb allocation that comes with it, and actually did just that on my angling site - I had to buy extra space.
As to the 100 email accounts and forwarders: if Birdforum was giving away [email protected] email addresses to users (which is exactly what you can do with forwarders, by creating an domain-specific "alias" for an existing address) then 100 wouldn't be nearly enough - I used up 100 forwarders in a month on another angling site I ran.
Seriously - I reckon the Supanames Value Host Pro package is the best all-round deal out there.
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madmike
Well-known member
web sites
Hi Keith Reeder,
I don't really aim to get into a heavy spiel about this, but why pay £24 when you can get it for free?
I guess everyone has their favorite set up, but most people just want a small site as cheap as possible!
As long as the set up works OK, what's the problem?
Cheers,
madmike
Hi Keith Reeder,
I don't really aim to get into a heavy spiel about this, but why pay £24 when you can get it for free?
I guess everyone has their favorite set up, but most people just want a small site as cheap as possible!
As long as the set up works OK, what's the problem?
Cheers,
madmike
alancairns
Well-known member
tom mckinney said:
Yes. But if you use Frontpage or Dreamweaver (which isn't that hard, really) the programme takes care of the FTP stuff. NVu, which is free and simple does too.
Alan
