Tips for Making my own Site?

[Lee Mac]

Wow, this thread has given me a lot of food for thought...

I initially wanted to get a site up asap, so that if users needed a particular LISP, I could just straight away direct them to the correct place - instead of having to dig around on here trying to find a LISP I posted eons ago...

But, that said, I still want to do it properly. I am in the process of trying to learn C++, which hasn't really been dented as far as the amount I have learnt, as I can't resist returning to LISP all the time. But, if CSS and HTML is as easy as you say it is to learn, I may just look into that. After all, I'm no chimp..

Thanks for the info guys,

Lee

[StykFacE]

Keep us posted Lee. I'd love to help you along with anything

[Lee Mac]

I have downloaded and had a quick play around with Nvu, but tbh, I am a bit lost as to what to do.

Should I create all the pages for my site and then look into Domain Names and hosting etc? I had a look at 123-reg.co.uk, but wasn't sure if this was a trust-worthy site to use - if any of you have had any experience with them, just shout

But, even as far as the actual page creation goes, I am getting nowhere in particular - I have made some Title-text and put an image in the middle of the page, but that is about all I can seem to do

Any help/advice is very welcome at this point

Lee

[StykFacE]

Start using Tables, first. They are <table> tags, and embedded is your table rows <tr> and table data <td>. This will essentially give your layout a "grid" to work off of. Here's a link to get started:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp

Then move on to blocks after that, which is a <div> tag. This is where the fun really begins, and you can start nesting blocks and tables and CSS Layout rules in here. But for now, just learn tables, and learn how to insert images, use text, etc.

[CADTutor]

Start using Tables, first. They are <table> tags, and embedded is your table rows <tr> and table data <td>. This will essentially give your layout a "grid" to work off of.

NO!

Please DO NOT use tables for layout - use CSS for layout.

You have a lot of background reading to do but you could start with my Webpage Design course notes here: http://www.coursestuff.co.uk/DESI1046/

At least some of the links on that page will take you to some sound advice.

[Lee Mac]

OK - so I have Styk's quick and easy option, or David's professional and better long-term solution...

I did see Tables in Nvu - but I didn't think to use them for my purposes.

I shall take a look at your webpage Design Site David - looks like a ton of info on there

Thanks for the advice guys,

Lee

[Cad64]

Of course, if you want a website that looks as though it were designed by a chimp, that's a good approach.

Hmmmm, I'm a bit offended by that comment.

I'm no web design professional, nor do I care to be. Dreamweaver does everything I need it to do for my own personal use. I couldn't give a rats ass about how elegant the code looks. Who's going to see that? All I need is a place to post my artwork. I don't have the time or patience to learn how to build a site from scratch, and I would much rather spend my time creating the content for the site, than sitting with my nose in a book trying to learn how to build the site. And I'm not going to pay some web geek thousands of dollars to do something I can do myself with this simple program. Dreamweaver works, and unless you plan on doing web design for a living, I don't see the point of learning all that coding.

So I guess I'll just pick up my chimp looking website and be on my way.

[CADTutor]

In addition, it's probably worth getting hold of a good reference book to start with. I recommend this book for absolute beginners or this book if you feel a little more confident. I reckon you'd do better with the second book but check them both out. Both are excellent and describe the right way to go abouty designing a website.

[CADTutor]

So I guess I'll just pick up my chimp looking website and be on my way.

It's horses for courses. But as this is Lee's website and he's a coder, I kind of assume that he'll care about all that stuff. How likely is it that Lee would want to write a verbose and ineficient LISP routine? To the user it makes little difference - who's going to notice the extra milliseconds? But there is a beauty and satisfaction in creating good code. It's the same with web design IMHO.

[StykFacE]

NO!

Wow, David, a little harsh. Tables are the very basic of sites. I do not use tables hardly at all anymore, but I recommend everyone give it a shot before diving into CSS. Crawl before you walk.

And for the record my best friend who's a fantastic web designer still uses tables a lot, because they work good in cross-browser support and still work good with PHP/MySQL.