Website development...any brave ones on here?

antonroland

antonroland

Inspector Gadget
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4,210
Name
Anton
Edit My Images
Yes
Hello

I am about to tackle the (apparently) impossible and would like to know if anyone would be willing to assist...or tag along for a few good giggles at least...

I want to attempt to start my own website from scratch and would like to hear from anyone brave / silly enough to volunteer assistance.

You may respond as soon as the laughter subsides:D:LOL:

Not to bore you initially but I DID manage in switching the 'puter on and getting this far:LOL:

Cheers
 
What sort of website are you trying to do?

I used to be a big fan of creating sites from scratch, but have been fully converted to Wordpress. There are loads of people on here who would be able to help!
 
Hello and thanks for the response.

Would be very impressed if I could just get a page up...nothing fancy...can always tweak it later and add content.

The big thing for me is getting the main page done and then adding, say, flash player galleries and all that
 
Depends if you want content management or not. With a bit of reading you can get a static website set up and written in html/CSS fairly easily.

If you want to dynamically manage content, blog postings, images etc, you'll need to be familiar with a server-side scripting technology, usually PHP or Microsoft's .NET framework. None of it is rocket science, in fact it's about as easy as programming ever gets, I built a complete web photo album management system in a couple of weeks while I was at uni :)
 
I've made my website from scratch (www.afowler.cuk.uk) and am pleased with how it has turned out. Before making it I knew nothing about web development, so it was a steep learning curve. But slowly chipping away at the problems and ending up wth a new skill at the end is so satisfying.

First things I would do; Learn about basic HTML. tags and layouts etc. Learn about CSS and how that fits together with HTML. Make a few very basic pages that connect together with a navigation menu. Then try and integrate a gallery system (If you indeed want images on your site, I presume you do). I ended up trying out loads of different gallery programs, but finally ended up on pixelpost. I would highly recommend pixelpost as it is hugely customisable, has good community support and makes adding and organising images so much easier.

Good luck. :)
 
Long term, what do you want the website to achieve? Is it the beginnings of business? A personal page for sharing things with friends and family? An online exhibition of your photography? Or is it just a chance to teach yourself some HTML, CSS & Javascript?

All of these will lead to very different advice on how to proceed.
 
Thanks everyone for the help so far(y)

It is very much business orientated and yes, I want to put LOADS of images up in different galleries.

Now I have a domain with various options of cms packages and I know of the existence of FTP but it would seem that a basic working knowledge of html and css are essential...

Do I google for tutorials and start reading and experimenting?
 
Before doing anything on your actual host, I'd have a play locally.
If you download and install XAMPP, this will give you a full Apache (web server), PHP (scripting language) and MySQL (database) environment on your desktop machine.
Then you can download each of the CMS systems that you ISP offers, install them and have a play. Once you've found one you like, then you can have a look at what needs doing to customize it.
I'd reccomend going the CMS route. If it's for a business you'll have plenty to do without having to hand craft a new set of pages every time you change your portfolio or want to add a new case study, news story etc...
 
Or if you just want to play with static HTML just use a folder on your computer and point your browser to it.

If you are looking at putting up loads of images I would certainly go for something CMS based. Having said that the basic XHTML/CSS skills are useful for making the plain CMS systems look how you want them to...
 
What puts me off template systems is that they LOOK like template systems...and the next 239 sites that use the same template.

I had a site on clikpic and it was great at the time but I want better than that.
 
antonroland said:
What puts me off template systems is that they LOOK like template systems...and the next 239 sites that use the same template.
Click to expand...

Most templates (such as wordpress ones) are more or less completely customisable. The only limit is your imagination. Find a good template to base your site off, then just have a play around with how it looks, move things around, change colours, fonts etc etc

:)
 
Good luck! I think it is a great thing to jump in and learn to do it yourself. :)
 
My partner is an Art Director for a marketing media company and knows tons about websites - he designed and built our studio website (see link below)

He strongly recommends Wordpress to anyone who wants to build thier own - the joyus thing is you can find tons of templates free on the web and adapt (As what Surrealillusions said)

Give us a shout if you get stuck :)
 
I learnt how to build by just messing around with softwares! Its the easiest way!
 
OK, folks

I have got this far...just to put you in the picture, I have done a very basic page in Photoshop, taken it into Imageready and uploaded it via Filezilla FTP.

When I now type in the web address: http://www.capture-it-photography.co.za it gives me a white page saying index/

and some links below. Please have a look if you don't mind.

This makes me think that either (1) I uploaded the .gif page design to the wrong place in the public_html directory or (2) the naming and/or file extention is not correct...

Any takers?
 
The page needs to be done in HTML, not as a GIF.

I assume this is what you're expecting to see?
 
OK, so do I save as .html in imageready?
 
yeap, you need at least an index.html or index.htm to make your domain not show a file listing
 
photoshop does have save for web where you can splice the pages up and it outputs the html to string it all together..... then a bit of editing and you can do wonders with a little basic html knowledge and notepad.
 
best advice I can give you is learn dreamweaver (thats what I did) they have demos and you will pick it up quick. I havn't done one for my photos yet (not sure if im good enough yet) but here is one I have done for a Curry House, I like to keep things simple.


http://www.ovilash.co.uk
 
OK, I have now got to the stage where I get a broken image indicator on the web page.

I saved the Imageready file as a .html and imported it via FTP to the right place in the public_html directory.

I know this does work because it is in the exact same place and format as the site of our local camera club web page designed by this mate of mine and I own the domain so I can access it via FTP.

I must be missing one little piece of detail in the whole show:bang::bang::bang::bang:
 
I've created a couple of web sites, or rather am in the process of putting a group of web sites together around my photography. I've used a combination of gallery2 and Drupal and I'm fairly please with the results. The ls-EYEWORKS site I wantedto be able to search the pictures and have a keyword cloud so that I didn't have to worry too much about hetting things in an order that some viewers might miss.

The beauty of gallery 2 is that you can add or alter content without having to reassemble your web site every time you do it and write new html etc. The Drupal bit was because I wanted to appeal both to people looking for photographs and for information, or a view of a chosen location. They are sort of template driven sources but they both look considerably different. I have a personal web site devoted to my professional hat which is built totally from scratch using Serif Webplus X2 which is a great WYSIWYG html tool. It has some gallery elements in it but is suffering a bit at the moment because I used Ligtbox for image pop up and the new Internet Explorer 8 doesn't like it.
 
I used lightroom 2.2 to create a web gallery, I exported it and uploaded the page and embedded it into a simple page I had already made or which could easily be done in dreamweaver or similiar. A simple code removed the border and here you go... http://www.infinity-beyond.co.uk/work.html
 
Have you also uploaded index.gif? From the code, that should be placed in the public_html folder too.

Just having a picture will be absolutely rubbish for SEO. If you want to learn SEO, the link posted above to w3schools is really good, but if you want a useable site fast, somethin like Wordpress, then tweak the theme to get the look you want.
 
<html>
<head>
<title>capture-it-photography</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
<!-- ImageReady Slices (capture-it-photography.psd) -->
<img src="images/index.gif" width="1024" height="768" alt="">
<!-- End ImageReady Slices -->
</body>
</html>

Thats the source code. Theres only 1 image there, nothing else. The image will be good to look at but completely useless for everything else.

You need to convert the image to html code.

:)
 
antonroland said:
OK, I have now got to the stage where I get a broken image indicator on the web page.

I saved the Imageready file as a .html and imported it via FTP to the right place in the public_html directory.

I know this does work because it is in the exact same place and format as the site of our local camera club web page designed by this mate of mine and I own the domain so I can access it via FTP.

I must be missing one little piece of detail in the whole show:bang::bang::bang::bang:
Click to expand...

I had a look at your code, do you have a folder in you directory "images" and inside that folder your gif images? Just uploading the page is no good on its own you have to upload your images too, (sorry if you have done this already, just going over the basics) Your web page is asking for images that may not be there (or in the wrong place) hence the broken image sign.

Hope this helps
 
I would suggest you get yourself the following programs:

Filezilla (FTP Program)
Notepad++ (for developing code)
usbwebserver (webserver for a usb stick, so easy to use for beginners)

I am not a big fan of package editors, I prefer coding myself although actual design is my weak point.

Get yourself either to w3schools or, if you can get the book "head first HTML & CSS" you will learn it very quickly, then look at moving on to PHP & MySQL.

Learn by doing, build a basic webpage that looks how you want, then think, "Right, now what do I want?". Then you go off and work on the next bit for the site :D

I am on my laptop and I am very tired, but if I get chance I will have a look at your site tomorrow on my desktop. I'd suggest you look at saving all your code files as .php, this will allow you to add php functionality at a later date to all your pages without having to go through and edit all the links from .html to .php :D
 
Thanks for all the responses guys

I am going to give it a break for today so won't be around for much longer.

Will have a good look at your responses when ready to get going again...maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday...

Thanks for the advice and patience.
 
Hi there

The other people who have added comments and suggestions prior to me are (very obviously) much more experienced than I am in web design although the couple i have done i have used Serif WebPlus (currently using edition X2) - this is a real what-you-see-is-what-you-get package - all the content/layout etc is up to you - also it has a range of flash photo galleries that you can choose from - just add the pics and the programme does the rest... if you are looking for a programme without having to sit down and learn lots this may be worth considering...?

Hope this helps

Kind regards
 
Like larryg, I've used Serif Webplus (X2) to build my website and it was reasonably easy. There's a very helpful forum and a 'live chat' area too. Might be worth your while to check it out
 
I agree with the above comments. Webplus X" is a great WYSIWYG editor and has a pretty easy learning curve. Yoy can start off using a template or build from scratch, or use your Photoshop save for web html. It is also good at keeping track of your site navigation, give you some basic flash galleries and has some e-shopping abilities.

X2 is currently selling at £59 but you can purchase and download Webplus 10 for £29.99

or £9.99 if you find the right page...https://www.freeserifsoftware.com/checkout/checkout.asp

It isn't qiuite as thorough in features as X2, being the previous version, but does the job or Webplus SE download for free which will be ok for a basic html site.

I would also consider looking at Jalbum. You can use this for creating galleries and uploading that to your own web space, although if you want to sell you will have to pay. I sometimes use Jalbum to put content together for my web site and then extract the compiled slide folder into my own directory. It's a good place to batch process a large number of images into a reasonable size.

As I said before my sites are built with Gallery2 and Drupal, both free applications, and if you use the right ISP can be installed for you. But there is a learning curve involved in their development.
 
Someone else has already offered the advice that I'm going to give -

Wordpress

You ought to be concerned with the content of the web site. ie the text and images.
You are mad in this day and age to be attempting to recreate from the basics the structure and format of a web site. Fine 10 years ago when the available tools were either really basic or very expensive, but now?

Especially when you clearly don't have the background knowledge. Fine play around on a home server to learn/understand, but if you want to have a good looking presentable site then use the tools available.

And the easiest free one is - Wordpress.
 
Woohoo:D:D:D

Got it this far and got to do slicing too:D:D:D
 
I learnt to use Dreamweaver last year when I did a simple but very effective site. I've just registered a domain name and set up hosting in anticipation!
 
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