creating a website

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nell
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creating a website

#1 Post by nell » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:16 am

Hi
Can anyone help?
I've had a web address for about 18 months now but only got as far as receiving emails via this address, never managed to get an actual site posted.
I know the concept of how HTML works, thanks in part to my time on DVP site :) and having followed some instructions, well a walkthrough really, from my web provider. I've also had a play with creating some graphics (if that's the right word for pictures) using gimpshop (except it now seems to have stopped working on me - every time I try and open a new document the program closes down - however, I have a started but not finalised template I can copy and amend and so can keep using the program this way - and yes I have tried re-downloading it). That wasn't too bad although I know that the CSS sheets the web provider gave for the walkthrough doesn't match the colour codes I actually used on my design and so I will need to revisit that bit anyway. However I was completely flummoxed when it got to the 'posting' bit (the walkthrough had stopped by then).
I don't want anything complicated, just a simple coloured heading with a couple of words on it. A band down the left hand side I can put some preferred links to some external sites. A photo somewhere, probably at the bottom and a bit of text in the middle stating what I do (independent social worker), oh and a link for email contact.
No selling, no buying, no shopping baskets, no multiple layers of pages, no fancy moving, fading or winking or otherwise active graphics. Well not at this stage. Just want to get something done.
I don't want it doing for me. I really would rather do it myself and I'm not keen to use a pre-template program. Am I asking too much? Is there anyone who can help me design and post a simple web page as described?

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Re: creating a website

#2 Post by MBH » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:27 am

Hi Nell (nice to hear from you again).

I'm a systems designer by trade that totally missed out on the Internet revolution - so my website is done on a pre-templated site that also hosts it.

So I'm afraid I'm no help to you at all - it all seems to have gotten VERY complex than when I first looked at it and was able to 'code' in 'html' and the screen did what I wanted :(

I need to get my website sorted out.... it's only there as a place to point people to (no selling, etc) but it does have quite a lot of information for the curious [probably TOO MUCH if i were to ask a professional :roll: but it's all mine]

There are VERY good web people on board here, so I'm sure you can be helped. :)

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Re: creating a website

#3 Post by nell » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:55 am

Hi MBH
Yeah, it's nice to see some familiar names again. I've been quite busy working and got into another work related forum (that's not as chatty and friendly as this one). Although work has eased off (too much) still really haven't got time to get back into puzzling even now but like being around old friends here. Co-planning a wedding in September (mine) and a round the world trip for next year (living out the back of a Land Rover).
H

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Re: creating a website

#4 Post by clvrlad » Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:44 pm

hi nell
prob the easiest way to create the website is to use a wysiwyg html editor

it does the programming for you you just place the elements on screen you want

but youll need a FTP client to up load it to the internet
your web hoster will have given you details on the info you need for this...

usually the password needed


but you sound like youve made most of it allready if you have then id suggest usuing an FTP client to upload it and test it....
pref a folder further in the web address so browsers wont pick it up straight away...... say in a test folder just for you to play with till it looks right ;-)

http://filezilla-project.org/ is a good free one...get the client rather than the server....your not hosting the wesite ;-) someone's doing that for you....




for those not in the know....
What
You
See
Is
What
You
Get

File
Transfer
Protocol
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Those who understand binary, and those that don't.
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Re: creating a website

#5 Post by MBH » Mon Apr 20, 2009 3:39 pm

I'm running away to hide in the Jargon Free Zone


:lol: :ugeek: :roll: :? :lol:

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Re: creating a website

#6 Post by LAT » Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:31 pm

My friendly mate here suggests
http://www.net2.com/nvu/
as a good free website authoring program

Don't know if that will help?

And no, I don't know what you're talking about but I knew he would :D

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Re: creating a website

#7 Post by kingsley » Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:57 pm

I'm no expert at IT stuff, but we use a software program at school called something like 'Macromedia Dreamweaver'. We don't use it to actually put pages on the internet, but she told us that there is an option to.

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Re: creating a website

#8 Post by clvrlad » Mon Apr 20, 2009 7:07 pm

thats the kind of program i was on about
you can basically "draw" your website... makes it easier to get started than learning the HTML...

but learning the HTML etc is useful if you want more control and want to understand whats happening...at teh moment im trying to learn flash action script........ well when i can focus on it which i havent for a few months.........
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Re: creating a website

#9 Post by SparkOut » Mon Apr 20, 2009 9:21 pm

Dreamweaver is great, and the tool of choice of most web professionals, but it isn't necessary if you want a basic site. (It's a costly package.)

Xara Web Designer is pretty cheap, and can make nice looking sites easy for non-techies (although techies may well wince at the convoluted markup it produces). They have a good section of video tutorials for it.

There are other packages, commercial and free that can help, but apart from being able to design a site and preview it in a web authoring package, to publish it "live" on the web you will need to have a web hosting package provided by some supplier (probably but not necessarily your ISP) and the username and password and details of the site address to which to upload for publication. You can do this free and easy with offline files (most versions of Windows have ftp built in) - but it's probably easier and quicker to have the editor package upload the site semi-automagically.

It's also a good idea to say something "out loud" on a forum inhabited by friendly people and surely you'll get some help from somewhere. ;) clvrlad's already said a lot of sensible stuff.

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Re: creating a website

#10 Post by nell » Mon Apr 20, 2009 9:49 pm

many thanks clvrlad

most people go boss eyed and mention wysiwyg but I'd really like to understand how it works

it feels like doing a puzzle at the moment, digging for hints and clues and only getting half a walkthrough

my web hoster suggested filezilla but didn't tell me the difference between the two options so I'm now one step closer to solving this particular puzzle !! :) I'm not sure yet quite how the whole FTP thing works but I hope once I start things will fall into place - is it passably obvious from filezilla when you start to use it or do they expect you to know the basics before you start?

I haven't yet worked out how to put links in - the walkthrough I've got only has text in all the areas of the screen and I want links (to external sites) rather than text in the banner on the left

in the meantime any simple explanation of the role and purpose of CSS would be much appreciated - at least then I might know why I have CSS documents !!

hi sparkout

the highly technical bod in Computer World was extolling the virtues of Dreamweaver but then he's young enough to have been web-designing since primary school - concluded it was too expensive for what I wanted, and probably more than I needed

My web address is registered with Telivo and I believe it includes web hosting

what do you mean by 'most versions of Windows have ftp built in'? and when you say 'editor package' what are you referring to

(I feel like I've started the maths course half way through the year - there's bits I understand and bits that I should understand but which don't quite make sense :? but I'm learnin')

and just in case I still need it I'll save your link LAT - cheers

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Re: creating a website

#11 Post by SparkOut » Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:44 pm

nell wrote:in the meantime any simple explanation of the role and purpose of CSS would be much appreciated - at least then I might know why I have CSS documents !!

what do you mean by 'most versions of Windows have ftp built in'? and when you say 'editor package' what are you referring to
css are Cascading Style Sheets. You can tell the different "markup" elements of the HTML how they should look and where they should appear on the page by changing the css relevant to the elements that you want to alter. For example, you may want the whole page to be centred on screen, so in your css document you would set the margin and alignment for the "body" tag. You may want all external links to have no underlining but change colour when you point the mouse over them. So you would change the css document accordingly. It means you can separate the page structure markup and content from the presentation. You could have exactly the same page and by changing just the stylesheet you could make it look completely different without affecting the actual material on the page at all.

If, on Windows you click the start button and go to the "run" option and type "ftp" in the box and hit the return key, you'll get a black console window open, with ftp prompt. You could use this to upload your pages to the web host. (You probably wouldn't want to because it's simpler/better to use either a "full" ftp program that gives you more feedback visually, or let the editor package upload it for you.)

When I say editor package, I mean the web authoring software that you may decide would be good to use after a bit of investigation. Personally I use Dreamweaver, but mainly for the editor which I can use in split screen and preview the results real time. I almost never use the wysiwig part of it except for seeing the results of the longhand code changes. I think a simple website is perfectly possible by just using a text editor to put the site together, but you really won't be able to see what the results are very easily, and although it's a great way to learn, you might find it all a bit bewildering and hard to follow without some authoring software to help produce the material from your "design in mind". (One thing I would not recommend is to try making the site in MS Word and then have it save as an html page. You will end up with a completely incomprehensible page of markup that will make it hard to even contemplate what's going on "behind the scenes". Xara will do that to your mind if you look at the source code of the generated page, but you can do fancy things that look hard but are made easy, as long as you don't delve too deeply.)

I can't comment on any other authoring packages, but nvu has a pretty good reputation, and I believe, plenty of support.

If you want to do it longhand in text editor, then let me know and I'm sure it can be done.

First lesson - to make an external link. You have to tell the page what you want the link to say, and where to go when the link is clicked. (You can also tell how the link should look when it's new, already visited, hovered over too, but that's the job of the stylesheets).

Code: Select all

<a href="http://www.puzzlebrains.co.uk">Click here to visit the Puzzlebrains website</a>
is what a (regular) link looks like in the code. The < tells the browser that there is a markup tag beginning. It is an "anchor" tag, denoted by the "a" immediately following. Then the href= part tells the browser where to go after the link has been clicked. Then there is a > to show that the "opening" tag is stopped and the "content" begins. That means that your browser will display the text "Click here to visit the Puzzlbrains website" as the link to be followed. After the text, there is </a> which is the closing tag to say that the "anchor" tag is now ended, and not to keep displaying any further material as part of the same link.

The result would be something like:

Click here to visit the Puzzlebrains website


You will find a lot of help here: http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp which can give you a lot of grounding in understanding html - and much more besides.

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Re: creating a website

#12 Post by nell » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:05 pm

Brilliant and many thanks - that pretty much made sense - off to do some work on what I've got next. Be back again!! I'm still quite vague on the 'posting' bit but I need to do some more work on what I've got so far first.

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Re: creating a website

#13 Post by SparkOut » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:17 pm

nell wrote:creating some graphics (if that's the right word for pictures) using gimpshop (except it now seems to have stopped working on me - every time I try and open a new document the program closes down - however, I have a started but not finalised template I can copy and amend and so can keep using the program this way - and yes I have tried re-downloading it).
http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/graphics_tools/gimp_user_manual/en/using-expert.html wrote:Problems with fonts have probably been responsible for more GIMP 2 bug reports than any other single cause, although they have become much less frequent in the most recent releases in the 2.0 series. In most cases they have been caused by malformed font files giving trouble to Fontconfig. If you experience crashes at startup when GIMP scans your font directories, the best solution is to upgrade to a version of Fontconfig newer than 2.2.0. As a quick workaround you can start gimp with the --no-fonts command-line option, but then you will not be able to use the text tool.

Another known problem is that Pango 1.2 cannot load fonts that don't provide an Unicode character mapping. (Pango is the text layout library used by GIMP.) A lot of symbol fonts fall into this category. On some systems, using such a font can cause GIMP to crash. Updating to Pango 1.4 will fix this problem and makes symbol fonts available in GIMP.(Not relevant on Windows)

A frequent source of confusion occurs on Windows systems, when GIMP encounters a malformed font file and generates an error message: this causes a console window to pop up so that you can see the message. Do not close that console window. It is harmless, and closing it will shut down GIMP. When this happens, it often seems to users that GIMP has crashed. It hasn't: closing the console window causes Windows to shut GIMP down. Unfortunately, this annoying situation is caused by an interaction between Windows and the libraries that GIMP links to: it cannot be fixed within GIMP. All you need to do, though, if this happens, is minimize the console window and ignore it.

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Re: creating a website

#14 Post by MBH » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:39 pm

Excellent post sparkout :)

A quick click on 'Quote' on his Lesson, and scanning down to just after "The result would be something like this:", and you'll see just how much HTML style logic is already known by regular forum posters ;)

I did a 10-week "Dreamweaver" course YEARS AGO. Never got to use it for real, so it's all forgotton now. (I Know - it would be there if I ever needed to 'relearn' it - pretty simple stuff as I remember)

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Re: creating a website

#15 Post by nell » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:47 pm

More thanks to sparkout

And MBH, I learned so much on DVP forum about HTML just by the work I did in putting together the chronology and other postings. It's what gave me the nerve to want to attempt doing my own (simple) website.

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Re: creating a website

#16 Post by clvrlad » Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:31 am

id suggest ignoring the FTP for now get your web page(s) running as youd like on your computer make sure all the graphics files and html etc are in there own little folder... organised as youd have them on the server......
thinking two steps a head once it is working we can help more or if you have specific questions etc... but looking at source code of sites you like the look of is a good way to learn how things are done... ;-)
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Re: creating a website

#17 Post by Scurra » Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:26 am

clvrlad wrote: but looking at source code of sites you like the look of is a good way to learn how things are done... ;-)
May I say "No it bl**dy isn't!" It is a good way to get very, very confused though. Even a fairly simple site can get rather intricate if it was written with an authoring package.
I wouldn't stop someone from doing it, but I'm genuinely not sure you would learn anything unless you already knew what you were looking at. And even then you often wonder what on earth something is actually meant to do...
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
All of my puzzles are simple and obvious. For certain values of "simple" and "obvious".

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Re: creating a website

#18 Post by MBH » Tue Apr 21, 2009 11:03 am

:lol: You Said It :lol:

Somewhat like learning a foreign language by watching that countries language by watching the equivilent of their version of Monty Python (which never made sense to ME)

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Re: creating a website

#19 Post by SparkOut » Tue Apr 21, 2009 11:38 am

We haven't even mentioned the subject of cross-browser compatibility yet, either.

Ow, OW! Stop throwing those stones at me!!!

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Re: creating a website

#20 Post by MBH » Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:33 pm

You're not the web-messiah! You're a naughty, naughty boy

:lol:

Brilliant - I've just found that the've updated this OLD joke. I actually don't even recognise half of them now, but the BASIC, COBOL, and Assembler ones are still going strong. :lol:


How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot in Any Programming Language

The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to have stolen countless features from one another) sometimes makes it difficult to remember what language you’re currently using. This guide is offered as a public service to help programmers who find themselves in such dilemmas.

C
You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++
You accidentally create a dozen clones of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can’t tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, “That’s me, over there.”

JAVA
After importing java.awt.right.foot.* and java.awt.gun.right.hand.*, and writing the classes and methods of those classes needed, you’ve forgotten what the hell you’re doing.

Ruby
Your foot is ready to be shot in roughly five minutes, but you just can’t find anywhere to shoot it.

PHP
You shoot yourself in the foot with a gun made with pieces from 300 other guns.

ASP.NET
Find a gun, it falls apart. Put it back together, it falls apart again. You try using the .GUN Framework, it falls apart. You stab yourself in the foot instead.

SQL
SELECT @ammo:=bullet FROM gun WHERE trigger = ‘PULLED’;
INSERT INTO leg (foot) VALUES (@ammo);

Perl
You shoot yourself in the foot, but nobody can understand how you did it. Six months later, neither can you. (via Andy)

Javascript
YOu’ve perfected a robust, rich user experience for shooting yourself in the foot. You then find that bullets are disabled on your gun.

CSS
You shoot your right foot with one hand, then switch hands to shoot your left foot but you realize that the gun has turned into a banana.

FORTRAN
You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling ability.

Modula2
After realizing that you can’t actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.

COBOL
Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER. on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.

LISP
You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds ….

BASIC
Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

FORTH
Foot in yourself shoot.

APL
You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.

Pascal
The compiler won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot.

SNOBOL
If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot.
If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.

Concurrent Euclid
You shoot yourself in somebody else’s foot.

HyperTalk
Put the first bullet of the gun into the foot of the left leg of you.
Answer the result.

Motif
You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.



Unix
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm: .o: No such file or directory
% ls
%

Paradox
Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.

Revelation
You’ll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.

Visual Basic
You’ll shoot yourself in the foot, but you’ll have so much fun doing it that you won’t care.

Prolog
You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn’t allow it to explain.

Ada
After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type.

Assembly
You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot. After that’s done, you pull the trigger, the gun beeps several times, then crashes.

370 JCL
You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.

Python
You try to shoot yourself in the foot but you just keep hitting the whitespace between your toes. (via Marco Azaro)

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