Hey guys, I'm wondering if you guys could give me some advises or how to start building a website? I'm a CIS major, but have never try web design before. So, I was interested in trying it out and designing one for my parent's friend restaurant. I know I have to register a domain name first, and I found that it was available at godaddy.com (any other good host sites?). Do I just use programs like Dreamweaver? Is it free? Is there any free web design software that you guys had used before that's simple to start with. thanks,
http://www.squarespace.com/ Free trial and your stuff isn't locked in as with some hosting/blogging sites. Will not go down if your site get Yahoo Buzzed or Dug or whatever. I think TWIT has a coupon or something.
I am a web designer and I will tell you right now that if you want the site to look half way decent, function well, attract new business, adapt well to browser updates, etc. then you need to have someone design it for you. Building a very basic website is far from rocket science, but DESIGNING one that looks good is a whole different ball game. You could always buy a template design, but then you run into the risk of someone else using the same one and that's not good for business. Plus, you're working with code and image files that are unfamiliar to you, so adapting to new needs for your site down the road maybe difficult or even impossible. Plus you have no one to turn to when there's a problem because you paid for the pipes but not the plumber. Honestly, if it's for a business then parents' friends should be willing to pay for good design. Too often people look at a web site as a cost rather than an investment on which they will eventually see a very nice return. For example, if it costs $500 for a lawyer to get a nice website built, and it ends up getting him just 1 or 2 new clients, it was likely a hell of an investment. Even a $500 site for a restaurant that gets 10 new customers in the first year is more than breaking even. And please, I beg you to steer clear of godaddy.com. They are fine for securing a domain name, but hosting is NOT their strong suit. I use hostmonster.com for my site and all sites that I build for clients.
Yeah, I have read that the hardest thing about web design is designing one that looks some what professional. Most people that's starting out would put to much into designing it and end up making it look more amateur. I have been interested in designing one and just putting one up. Only reason I wanted to put up my parent's friend restaurant was just more to have his to-go menue online for his customers. So, I was just thinking about doing a simple design ... maybe have some pics, google map, and menue of his places that's it. Just trying one out to learn from. Is there a good free software for designing? or do you still have to remember alot of HTML codes.
I have tried Templates but they kind of sucks however I lack the skill/training . . . so I am just trying to chug at it. Rocket River
You can't make a good website using drag-n-drop methods. Coding is pretty much key here. <HTML> is fine, but there are better codes out there, which are harder to learn, but end up making your website look and run better.
I would advise you to either approach this as a site that is actually going to be a representation (first impression even) of your parents' friend's restaurant, or approach it as a learning experience. It should not be both, because if the site doesn't turn out well and it goes public, it could actually hurt business. If you're interested in truly understanding how to create a quality website, you will have to learn it. There's really no short cut to it. So again, either take the time to learn and understand what you're doing, or just treat this as practice and don't harbor intentions of actually using the site. Again, as an alternative you could also pay someone who already knows what they're doing. If you decide to go that route, you could e-mail me through the board. I've built sites for a few clutchfans members already and they have been pleased.
i've been a web designer and a web based programmer for 7 years now i can say html isn't really hard to learn. they're just a bunch of tags remember and 90% of them are for formatting. there's no algorithms involved. you, being a cis major can pick up that part pretty easily and probably all you need for a simple restaurant site. if you want to make it dynamic then it gets complicated. THIS PART WILL TAKE YOU YEARS. you have learn javascript, java, flash with actionscript, php, sql databases language - usually in combinations. once you learned the language, you then (should) learn security, web standards, accessibility, best practices (like oop). luckily, most web based programming resembles c. the best advice i can give you, if you want to go into this field is: before you write a function, see if it exists first. php has a ton of built-in functions.. i.e. need a function to count, sort, pop, iterate through, search, split an array...it's there. in school, they make you write a lot of the functions yourself, but in the real world, it's a waste time. edit: i forgot regular expression... it's extremely useful, but i've never really got a hang of it aside from the basics.
I've got a question for webbies out there, hope it doesnt derail the originail thread though. I have my current web site (Link below) and I add all the content, but I basically got someone to set it up for me on the server its on. The web site software is free, but I'll be honest, I have no idea how any of the guts of the web site works, I just do content and thats it. So my questions.... 1. I want to back up all the content on my web site, just to be safe. How do I do this? 2. I would like to set up another web site with the same format, colour schemes and such as my current web site. How easy is it to transfer all of that type of set up to a new server?
Regarding editors, Dreamweaver is probably the most popular but isn't free, you should be able to get a 30 day trial of it though. Eclipse is a really popular free editor, it's mainly a Java IDE but there are plugins for other languages (HTML/PHP/JSP). It may be too complicated for what you want though. To backup the files you'll need to get FTP access to the site, whoever set it up for you should have this information. Once you have that it's just a matter of copying and pasting the files. For the database content it will depend on what your ISP has set up, most of them have some admin area like CPanel that has tools to manage your database. Once you have a backup of the files and database it would just be a matter of setting up a new site and then restoring everything there. At least in theory that's all it would take.
Holy meta tags, Batman! I hope the person who made that site for you didn't claim to be an SEO expert because that is a hot mess (and mostly useless...possibly even harmful).
yup. i'd like to add... look in your CPanel for phpMyAdmin. chances are you have it. you'll need your password and username for the database. once you log on, you have an option to save your whole data in a text file, with the text being a large sql statement.
Nah that was just me messing around quite honestly. I posting as much rubbish in there as I could! :grin: Anyway thanks for the tip. I'll give it all a try tomorrow.
There are some open source Content Management Systems such as Drupal or Joomla that makes things a ton easier than building from ground up. My company uses Tapestry Framework which takes away the tediousness of building common components. It does require some proficiency in Java to get a handle on its quirks. So those who work with Java will likely appreciate it the most.
Well, the reason I said it can be harmful is that flooding your page with meta tag keywords and oversized descriptions can raise red flags with search engines because they realize you're trying to spam them to get better results. It'll actually make them drop you in the rankings, or not list you at all.
ROFL. Christopher, you just made my day reading those tags. Well, at least 20 or so of the 85,000 of them. "viagra oyster" lolol. :grin:
