Some Information on Creating Websites

I see many people who want to know how to go about creating a website. It's really not all that difficult. Of course, knowing HTML is immensely helpful; but knowing it initially isn't necessary. As for Javascript, there a many pre-made scripts available that can merely be copied and inserted into the HTML source code, but it is helpful to know the basics of it to know how it can be used, and how to include it in the source.


Software & Design:

It is also not necessary to purchase retail web page designing software either, although admittingly I'm sure that products such as Adobe's Dreamweaver can produce very professional looking results and also has templates included and/or available. There are a couple free open-source "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What You Get) editors, namely KompoZer and W3C's own Amaya. Most hosting sites have website building software available online, although the end result may not be exactly what you want or be as good as what can be produced with an editor.

There are some free quality website templates available at Open Source Web Design, freecsstemplates.org, and andreasviklund.com that could be used as well.


Hosting:

So with all that in mind, the first thing to consider is hosting. There are free hosting services such as Freewebs and 110MB.com as well as many others. Paying for hosting however, has many advantages and is probably much cheaper than most people may think. NearlyFreeSpeech.NET offers pricing based on use.

If FTP software is needed to upload the pages to the hosting server there's FileZilla and the Firefox extension FireFTP; & of course for GNU/Linux there's gFTP (available in most repos). The hosting service's FAQs should have information on uploading using FTP software.


Blogging:

If you are interested in blogging check out the easy to follow (but thorough) guide at startbloggingonline.com. They have a great tutorial written specifically for Wordpress free hosting: How To Start a Blog on WordPress.com.

If you have paid hosting you can use WordPress Weblog free software (your hosting service may have information on how to install it on your site). There's a great tutorial for it at websitesetup.org along with guides for setting up Joomla & Drupal.


I've also put together a short guide covering a few common HTML coding questions; including Hyperlinking with Absolute and Relative URLs, Hyperlinking Images, Linking to a Specific Section of a Page, and an important note about fonts. Take a look: A basic guide for common HTML coding questions.

These pages were created and maintained just using a text editor. They utilize a style sheet. I acquired ("borrowed", "stole") the original template from BLUEROBOT.COM and altered it. The source code of this page can be viewed here.


Some good information on CSS can be found at:

HTML information:

Also:

This Monday By Noon article has some information on how to create a "favicon" (the little logo that shows up next to the bookmark & URL in the address bar). I've made them in GIMP and just saved them in .ico format. There are also online favicon generators available, like the one at HTML-Kit's site.

Web Pages That Suck - learn usability and good Web design by looking at bad Web design - has some excellent information on designing web pages as well.

On my contact page there are links to some PHP and JavaScript resources. The date script I use can be copied from here.


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