As the title states, I am in the process of creating my first website and had a few questions for some of the pro's out there. This website will be more complicated than a simple blog. It will have some common features like a forum, but I would also like users to be able to submit content like videos or music to my site and security is also important.
I have no real education or experience in web languages, and though I would love to learn how to build it from scratch, I am wondering if that is really a waste of time at this point. Websites like Joomla or ASP.net seem pretty user friendly, but will I have the control over my website to add and create features or functions that don't come with those tools? Or is the "best" way to open notepad and hard code everything in.
Would any of you recommend that I outsource this project? I have looked into script lance, and though I will put up the money if I need to, I also don't mind putting in some hours on my own to figure this stuff out. I just don't want to spend 6 months on this and have nothing to show for it except for some cheap broken site due to it being such a huge project to someone with no prior skills.
Right now I have a small notepad file I am working on and I am fumbling through simple design material slowly and painfully.
What do you recommend I do to continue this project?
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No man, don’t use a notepad. After some time you will be really getting bored. I'm hundred percent sure. Because I have experienced that. If you still want this white looking typing area, get rid of notepad and use WordPad. haha.!!!
OK now, being serious. Jacek, there are people who are really working hard to make web developers tasks easier and convenient. So they had developed software called IDE (Integrated Development Environment). There are many more IDEs in this world up to now. Some are freely available and some must to be bought. If you are focusing only on HTML, then you can use the HTML editor, which are light weight IDEs. Well if you take notepad, it is a kind of HTML editor too, but not so much user-friendly. I mean not to make your work easy, to make everything manually all by yourself.
I guess that you are moving into scripting too. So my recommendation is to get a WYSIWYG editor.
WYSIWYG == what you see is what you get
Try to get the utmost benefits from using HTML editor software IDE when you build up a complex web site. It's better to use a WYSIWYG editor compared to a text editor like notepad.
WYSIWYG editor IDEs will provide you an editing interface. So you can noticeably see, how the page is going to be present on a web browser window. These IDEs mostly do not requiring any Programming language knowledge. And almost all IDEs have a drag and drop ability, auto complete facility and many more. When you use an IDE, you will realize that, it is not doing any programming, but like drawing a web site. They are very useful for a beginner computer user to getting start with web development.
There are several IDEs I would like to use to build websites. They offer the maximum accuracy, speed, simplicity and ease of use.
My number one IDE is Adobe Dreamweaver (previous versions are under Macromedia), proprietary IDE.
Second is Aptana Studio, freely available cross platform, an open source IDE and there are many more like Komodo Edit, CoffeeCup HTML Editor,Bluefish, Amaya, SeaMonkey and MS Front Page etc.,.
Special feature among them is, they always are likely to generate a high quality GUI (graphical user interface) with interactive content. When you are in the middle of a confusion to choosing an IDE for your desires, think about the following aspects.
Supported Operating System (Many are cross platform ones, specially the FOSS (Free and Open Source) IDEs.
Supported Web technology
Features
Server side scripting / Client Side scripting
Spell checking / Auto Correct
Templates Customizations
Browser Preview
Form Handling
WYSIWYG
Supported Image formats
So what I presented above are the basic facts, when becoming a web site developer. So that is, choosing a IDE, the most important.
So here I goes to the next important point.
If you are not in touch with creating the whole web page by yourself, you can get a Web template and customize according to your preference. You do not have to build the whole thing by yourself. You can get the 3rd party components, rather than reinventing the wheel.
For example you can get that forum component from https://www.phpbb.com/. For other kinds of stuff like trees, navigation bars, grids, video uploads etc.,Click
If you search for other stuff you need, you will receive all in your hand right in front of you. So have good luck with your web site.
A guide to learning HTM L for beginners.
HTML are initials that stand for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML is the code behind your webpage and is what your browser looks for, to display in a webpage, the way the web designer intended it to look, and there are a series of tags <tags> that tells the browser where to display what.
It is really a series of simple commands that you give to the browser, just like telling your dog to sit, and because it is in plain English it is easy to learn. For example, if you want your text to show in a bold type, you command it <bold> to be bold text </bold>, it really is that easy.
Keep this in mind: HTML documents must be text only.
When you save a HTML document, you must save only the text, nothing else. HTML browsers can only read text. Look at your keyboard. See the letters and numbers and little signs like % and @ and *? There are 128 in all (read upper- and lowercase letters as two). That's text. That's what the browser reads. It simply doesn't understand anything else.
Remember that if you are using Notepad, Word pad, or Simple Text, the document will be saved as text with no extra prompting. Just choose SAVE.
If you are going to start learning to write HTML, it is a good idea to learn to look at other author's of HTML pages. The actual HTML potion of the page behind the pretty page you see in front of you now.
Looking at another's HTML code, helps you learn how things are done and you can copy the style of pages that you like. Please do not just steal and copy the pages, but no one will be upset if you make the style in much the same way. For example, if you were going to build a house, you would look around to see what styles you like before deciding on your own design. Same thing here, look around the web and see what styles you like and apply them to your own ideas.
Here's how you look at an HTML document (known as the "source code")
Try it with this page. Click on VIEW and then choose the SOURCE. It will look like mumbo jumbo right now, but soon it'll be readable and you'll be able to find exactly how a certain HTML presentation was performed.