Advice on creating websites

Terry_Lasater

Terry_Lasater

All about the Caption
I'm attempting to learn how to create a website by taking an online course that just began this week. Lesson One is a bit of history on the internet, WWW, HTML and browsers, etc. I already know some of this stuff but realize I have to get through the redundancy in order to fill the gaps in my knowledge.

Anyhow, from what I've read, it seems knowledge of Dreamweaver and CSS is at the core of what I'll eventually need to understand.

First, I'm looking to create a website for myself. Secondly, I have a few friends with their own businesses I'd like to help with an online presence. Lastly, if I become proficient enough, I'd like to add creating websites to the list of what I do for a living.

So, any advice, comments, or questions from those of you who create websites would be greatly appreciated. :)
 
Heh, yeah, they never do.

...

I've never actually properly learned Dreamweaver. I do all my web dev. in plain text (normally using jext (www.jext.org)) - some text editor with code highlighting is critical for any serious coding.

That said, a lot of the sites I build are technically complex. Lots of active code. (PHP, MySQL, etc...) While the visual design perhaps could use some work. I'm more of a tech person.

For someone looking more at it from a design than engineering perspective, I'd see the immediate preference to Dreamweaver. "Designing" sites in code isn't the most fluid process - little changes can take a long time to implement.

Two sides to the same coin .. and I guess quite different departments in web design firms. But it sure doesn't hurt to know both approaches.

- Mikko
 
I actually think the easiest path to get into web design/development is to start with an open source solution like Wordpress, osCommerce, or Joomla (depending on the type of site you are wanting to create). You can get up and running with a Wordpress site in a matter of minutes yet it's flexible enough to do some pretty amazing things on the front-end, all-the-while you get the advantage of having all the backend work done for you (eg. you don't have to know how to design a database and have your webpages connect to it, read from it, write to it, etc). Yes, I know that was a really long sentence.
 
As a web designer/developer (thats my day job) I advise learning this in the following order of importance

1. HTML
2. CSS
3. Flash

And you don't need to know HTML 100% before you move onto CSS !!
 
The list of basics/core, you should -as stated above- include CMSes (Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, etc.) and a little php (since most of the sites will be dynamic and based on open standards, adjusting or rebuilding the look and feel will be done in both the CSS and the php chunks). When comfortable with HTML, PHP isn't that difficult (or the part you need to handle isn't that difficult, all obscure database instructions won't be your problem as the CMS/template will handle that).

But there are many paths to building/designing/maintenance on websites.
 
Learn at least the basics of HTML first. This will allow you to have some hope of understanding what's going on with your website. Then move on to CSS. Photoshop is your friend. So is Illustrator if you want to move farther into more ambitious visual designs.

If you go with a dynamic website powered by WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or anything like that, DO NOT FORGET TO RUN REGULAR SECURITY UPDATES! If you just set it up once and forget it, your site is almost certain to get hacked sooner or later. There is a cat and mouse game between developers and security researchers, and security holes are discovered from time to time in all software. It's easier to prevent this from happening before hand than it is to clean up the damage later. All of these programs should have a mailing list you can sign up for that will notify you when new versions are announced. Make sure you know how to install the new versions, and do so promptly when they are released.

If you do attempt to learn PHP, learn a little bit about security before you put it into production on a live web site. If you don't know what a SQL injection attack is, or what cross site scripting is, or why you would want to validate all user input and escape all output, you should find out before you open your site up to attackers. Don't create any e-mail contact forms that allow people to specify the To: e-mail address (you will become an open spam relay), and if you pass any user input to the PHP mail() command extra headers field, make sure the user input is validated and can't contain newline characters.

If you just want to make a halfway decent website, Dreamweaver will help you to do a pretty good job. If you want to get more serious, learn how to code HTML by hand, as it will ultimately be more compact and free you from being tied to any particular program.

In this day and age, I would recommend trying to use XHTML 1.0 strict with CSS. Invisible tables and single pixel GIFs for spacing are so 1999. Watch out for Internet Explorer 6. It has about 15% of the market (and dropping), and will render your site a little differently than all the good modern browsers.

Test your site on every browser you can get your hands on. Unlike film, video, or print, HTML layouts can vary wildly between browsers. There are some best practices for dealing with this, and using web standards is the best way to go in the long run.
 
As is pretty typical from a webdesign perspective, thus far the discussion centres around code and what to learn and thats important stuff.

And then taking a look at Mikko's link, brings me to what I wanted to add. A business website is a marketing tool. Nothing else. It should be designed to market a product, business or a professional to sell those. It is not a space for a webdesigner to say hey look at me, look what I can do. If you know those tools, you should be using what will best serve the site as a marketing tool, not what simply "looks cool".

The problem is usually the business owner does not understand this. So when he/she sits down with a web designer he/she isnt 100% sure on approach - "we want to show what we do", "we need to have company history - we are a 100 family business, I think its important" etc etc cough bullshi*. And then the web designer makes that reality and then follow Mikko's link for what happens next due to the fact the business owner was never really sure what he wanted at the outset.

Either the business owner needs to consult a merketing firm first who tells them what they need to do with their website - lets face it, not many are going to go down this path, I want a website I dont want to pay $$$ for a marketing firm as well, being shortsighted and all.

So that leaves web designers to fill the void. Back to Mikkos example - the headings are fairly common - "the toast", "a little history" and "the experience".... who gives a rats. Honestly. You see 10 companies that sell the same product, with the same website, with small tidbits of reading - how does that help anyone purchase? Its all good on back pages.

Some facts

- the average time spent on a website is 60 seconds.
- people looking to actually use a service type four or more words in their search.

So Bill is sitting in front of his computer one day and thinks I want to order me some toast. (Not sure why I am too lazy to get up ad make my own), Leave me alone I just want to order toast (Bill's got some issues). Anyway Bill sits down at his computer and he's made the decision he will buy toast. So what is Bill going to type into his search? Well not just toast. He's thinking about eating that delicious toast. Bill wants more than mere toast. So he types this (as an example), the best toast on the lower east side *click* whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr now lets say the store in Mikko's link is located on the lower eastside - it says it in location, how do you think it will fair in the search?

How about if said toast store had this in text at the top of its site? - looking as pretty as it can of course. Looking for the best toast on the lower east side?

BING. Bills found what he was looking for. He's not even going to look at another site once he see's this. And based on his search the site will hit the mark - it addressed the clients and the business needs. The client wants something, the business must solve his problem. This simple statement solved Bills problem in this case. But what are other possible problems people may have - relevant to this?

Thats just one example and I could go on and on and on and on.... but its too early as I just woke up.

So in conclusion - Terry, I think knowing these skills are equally as important as learning the options and which will work best.
 
robotsound said:
Test your site on every browser you can get your hands on. Unlike film, video, or print, HTML layouts can vary wildly between browsers. There are some best practices for dealing with this, and using web standards is the best way to go in the long run.
Click to expand...

I only semi recently upgraded to IE8 (and switched to Firefox) from IE6 .. not because IE6 was that good, but because the majority of visitors to the more important sites I admin still used IE6, so I needed to see what they were seeing.

A *great* tool is www.browsershots.org While you can't look in huge in depth detail, it's super handy for making sure the basic rendering of your site looks good in a variety of browsers.

- Mikko
 
This is a very good point. If you know exactly what you want your website to do for you, you will be in a better position than many right out of the gate.

I'm guessing most people here would want a "brochureware" sort of a site... e.g. one with a home page, a little bit about your company/film/whatever, some video clips/pictures/etc. to show what you do, and a way to contact you. For this, Joomla or WordPress are high overkill.

Make it look as professional as you can, and (similar to narrative filmmaking), think about what story you want to tell to the public. This is your home on the web. Are you trying to attract investors for your independent film, or make wedding videos? These will be two very different web sites.

If you wear many hats, try to make it cohesive somehow. You don't want to be like that old website that was the home of a doughnut shop that was also an internet service provider. Find the heart of your message and focus in on it.
 
As a app & web developer myself i'd say it depends:

are you trying to learn how to create:

(a) a website
(b) a web application

If (a) then you can get away with:

(1) HTML
(2) CSS
(3) touch of Javascript


If (b) then its a whole different thing altogether:

(1) all the above and
(2) a programming language (C++,C#,Java,Ruby,Python,VB,PHP, Perl, etc )
(3) a Web 'Framework' eg ASP.NET, Ruby On Rails, etc
(4) SQL eg SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite etc
(5) XSLT (optional)
(6) Javascript libraries e.g. JQuery
(7) XML, for things like JSON or SOAP web service transmission protocols etc
(8) AJAX
(9) Some basic understanding of TCP/IP, UDP and HTTP protocol (even if its 10,000 feet view)
(10) Basic web server admin, Linux LAMP stack or Windows WAMP stack

and that's just off the top of my head.

Anyway if want to just mess about learning how to create websites, your more than welcome to use my production webserver to host your test sites for free, drop me a line.

Cheers.
 
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Noel Evans said:
A business website is a marketing tool. Nothing else.
Click to expand...

Interesting perspective but it's not an accurate one. As business is far more complex than simply marketing, it holds that a business website can be used for many purposes other than marketing and nothing else. As an example, it can be a sales tool if it supports online quotes, ordering, downloading of products, etc. It can be a service tool if it provides contact information for customer support, answers FAQs, supports online service requests, includes real-time chat with a customer service rep, etc.
 
No, I think you're right. I was looking at a more specific market - not your online store or telco type business, more along the lines of the SME or individual end of the market and for that matter what is garnered in the content section of your main page as it relates to that.
 
Terry_Lasater said:
I'm attempting to learn how to create a website by taking an online course that just began this week. Lesson One is a bit of history on the internet, WWW, HTML and browsers, etc. I already know some of this stuff but realize I have to get through the redundancy in order to fill the gaps in my knowledge.

Anyhow, from what I've read, it seems knowledge of Dreamweaver and CSS is at the core of what I'll eventually need to understand.

First, I'm looking to create a website for myself. Secondly, I have a few friends with their own businesses I'd like to help with an online presence. Lastly, if I become proficient enough, I'd like to add creating websites to the list of what I do for a living.

So, any advice, comments, or questions from those of you who create websites would be greatly appreciated. :)
Click to expand...

i don't design websites, but i do have a comment about websites in general.

keep it clean and easy to navigate. i don't want to get frustrated searching for relevant information, i want it to be easily accessible. it's better to keep it simple than flashy and cluttered.
 
I designed the beach front hotel website and like stated - keep it clean, less clutter, easy to navigate but most of all - GET TO THE POINT! Gah! I dislike websites that rattle on and on.

Also, in web design, we "borrow" codes and stuff. What you don't know you "pick up" it's an unwritten code of how things are done. I never made my own background, I just picked it up somewhere and went on.

So few things are truly copy right protected - but I don't take icons/photos.

CSS is not too bad to figure out if you just keep looking at the coding and search the proper websites for coding.
 
That's what I do all day long at work. Luckily, it's all intranet, so none of you will be subjected to it. :)

And it's all ASP (C#, aspx), which is semi-useless for the majority of hosts.

Anyway, Visual Studio isn't bad for creating websites. Expresion is...different. Dreamweaver is a pain in the butt. HoTMetaL Pro was nice, but has disappeared.

And I still do a lot of simple editing with Notepad. :)
 
Thanks for all of the comments and input, everyone!

I will use this thread to ask more questions and seek your advice as I step through the course and the process of learning some basics.

In the meantime, please feel free to add any additional advice to this thread.
 
Terry, don't do it. Don't learn any of it. You'll regret it. You'll start looking at computers with nothing but utter contempt and will eventually want to smash them against the nearest wall (unless you have a hammer close by, in which case, you'll just use that since it will be easier and you'll get more enjoyment out of the process.) Eventually, you'll get to the point where you're constantly asking yourself, "WHY am I doing this?? I was never meant to do this! I'm wasting my life! I'm an artist, damn it... I should be really be pursuing this acting thing instead of wasting my time... oh sorry... got carried away there... :cheesy:
 
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