Building a Website????

[Sonny Jenkins]

I'm thinking I'd like to have a website,,,,but I'm on the low end of technologically challenged,,,,,I ran across the site http://websitesetupguide.com/ makes it look pretty simple,,,,and inexpensive. I'd appreciate any comments, opinions etc. Would this be a good way to go????

[Wiz Feinberg]

I am a webmaster, among other things. I have been doing websites since the year 1999. I have spent so many hours studying techniques, it is beyond keeping count. In fact, I am currently experimenting with brand new, state of the art coding that will let me convert existing websites into what are called fluid designs, which view well on all types of screens and devices.

That said, when you are just starting out there will be a lot of bumps in the road. You will find good and bad information on the Internets. I will attempt to give you some guidelines to perhaps avoid falling into traps along the way.

• You do want to obtain your own domain name (you.com, you.net, etc). You need a certified Domain Registrar to do this. Registration is paid for annually, or for longer terms up front. I use Dotster as my Domain Registrar. Rates vary from time to time, but tend to average around $15 a year for a .com or .net domain.
• Most professional hosting companies offer one free domain name, which they register on your behalf. It usually stays free as long as you stay with that host. If you leave that host, you'll probably have to pay a ransom to keep your domain name, if it was free with your package. That is why I keep my Registrar and web hosts separate, with just one less important domain name exception.
• You do need professional hosting. It averages between $6.95 to 8.95 per month, depending on how long you sign up for. Most hosting companies charge a couple dollars less per month if you sign up for three years at a time.
• Web hosts that only routinely charge a 3 or 4 bucks a month are often, but not always, garbage hosts. This is simply not realistic. However, even the good hosts have occasional short term promotional sales, with rates as low as $3.95/month, over three years. That is about $3.00 under their standard fee.
• You get what you pay for in web hosting. Low cost hosts usually suffer a lot of downtime and have offshore support (India).
• Free hosting comes with huge limitations on what content you are allowed to have. They disallow your use of most affiliate ads, but place their own ads on every page you create.
• The better web hosts offer "one-click" installation of specialty web scripts, like blogs, galleries, shopping carts, etc. They also have phone support located in the same country (in the USA for US customers, in Canada for Canadians, etc). I can pick up the phone any time of the day or night and speak with somebody in tech support if I have a problem with my website, that I didn't cause.
• Servers do fail and when they do, all of the hundreds or thousands of sites hosted on them go down. The good hosts keep daily backups and will restore your websites once the server has been fixed.
• Thus, there is no 100% uptime guarantee! But, 99.99% is typical, over a year.
• There are lots of website creation programs available. I use CoffeeCup HTML Editor and a lot of their other programs. However, good hosts usually offer a free or low cost online web page creator program for customers to use, when they are just getting started.
• It is possible to create a website on your own computer and get it right before getting a domain name and hosting. Also, your own ISP may offer free hosting space to its customers. This is a good way to get your feet wet, without drowning in technicalities.

I'm sure you'll have a thousand questions. Go ahead and ask them here. Lots of our members built their own websites and have figured out who and what are good or bad. You are bound to come across low cost offers that are not such good deals once you try to get anything done, or fixed. GoDaddy comes to mind.

[Dave Potter]

My ISP used to include some server space for personal website hosting, and I dabbled with it years ago. This was long before MySpace, Facebook, and similar websites came along.

I eventually lost interest when I became aware of the time and effort required to ensure that my site was compatible with all the various versions of all the various web browsers. A web page may look OK in one browser and look totally different in another - often not at all what the owner intended, unless it's just a plain-jane vanilla text-only website. Even earlier and later versions of the same browser often display differently. Yes, there's software available that includes the capability to test a web page in different browsers, and that's a step in the right direction. But it's still a hassle. Also, a web page looks pretty plain if it contains only HTML, and learning stuff like javascript gets intense pretty quickly.

Same thing goes for peoples' display resolutions, which are all over the place. I personally use a display with a native resolution of 2560 X 1600 pixels, and there are lots of others in use across the web. Pages you publish should look good on all of them, a tall order.

Another factor in my decision to take my website down is that it contained information about me. Now, I personally believe the less information there is on the web about me, the better off I am. Publicizing personal information makes identity theft that much easier.

Just some things to consider.

[Wiz Feinberg]

Dave's reply demonstrates why newbie website owners prefer to hire somebody with skills and credentials to at least develop the website, correct coding mistakes and get it indexed.

Designing a layout in a WYSIWYG editor is not that difficult. Creating the other codes and scripts to make it work properly across multiple browsers and devices is not trivial at all. Some people are still using the long-outdated and deprecated Microsoft Front Page editor to create garbage websites that are pretty much broken in all but Internet Explorer browsers.

Others use editors that favor tables for everything. That is no longer good design, especially for pages that will be viewed on smartphones.

[Sonny Jenkins]

Hey guys,,,thanks a million,,,,not only does this sound like something that would be next to impossible for this dummy to do,,,,but I may not even be able to navigate it the way I would need to after it was running!!!! I'm a lifelong craftsman,,,,I make things,,,like custom jewelry, musical instruments,,,or whatever strikes my fancy. I was thinking of a place to reach potential customers,,,with pictures,,,text (I guess a "blog"?). What would be a ball park cost on getting something set up,,,and then maintaining it?

[Dave Potter]

I was thinking of a place to reach potential customers,,,with pictures,,,text (I guess a "blog"?). What would be a ball park cost on getting something set up,,,and then maintaining it?

For reaching potential customers, I think the web is ideal - the world is your marketplace. You may want to take a look at some of the template-based web design software that do a lot of the work for you and address the issues I mentioned earlier.

Wiz's other post touches on design, hosting, and maintenance costs.

[Wiz Feinberg]

WordPress.com hosts blogs for free. They provide you with lots of themes and help files to get you going. You would not have to buy a domain name because they assign you/let you choose a subdomain name on their main domain. You could probably create something very presentable on their system. Then, you could provide friends and contacts with a link to your page or pages.

Note, wordpress.com is not the same as wordpress.org. The .org is where folks like me would go to get wordpress and themes that we manage on our own website accounts hosted elsewhere. The .com is a managed blog hosting arm of the company. They earn money through ads.

Search engines are able to index blogs hosted on wordpress.com.

You can move up to a proper website later on, after gaining experience with layouts and such.

[James Quillian]

Sonny, you can make a website. Just get started and it will start coming together. Don't worry about everything that eventually must be done. Don't think about step 2 until step one is done. It isn't hard at all. It just gives that appearance at first.

For a server, I recommend Total Choice. It is only $44.00 per year. I have been using them since 2002 and haven't had a problem yet.

Get a copy of MS Front Page and use it as an editor. You don't even need to know any code.

IMO the world needs more folks with their own web pages to counter the herd mentality of sites like facebook.

Hey guys,,,thanks a million,,,,not only does this sound like something that would be next to impossible for this dummy to do,,,,but I may not even be able to navigate it the way I would need to after it was running!!!! I'm a ls felong craftsman,,,,I make things,,,like custom jewelry, musical instruments,,,or whatever strikes my fancy. I was thinking of a place to reach potential customers,,,with pictures,,,text (I guess a "blog"?). What would be a ball park cost on getting something set up,,,and then maintaining it?

[Scott Duckworth]

I recommend SeaMonkey as the editor.

[Wiz Feinberg]

Despite one member's recommendation, I strongly recommend against any use of FrontPage. It was discontinued by Microsoft a long time ago and writes horribly incompatible code that is way behind the times and fails in all browsers except Internet Exploder. Most modern web hosting companies have dropped support for FrontPage Extensions for new customers and only support existing customers who are grandfathered in.

[Sonny Jenkins]

Hey,,,,I appreciate EVERYONE's advice and opinions!!! At this point I'm still weighing whether or not I even want to attempt this or not,,,,using time to learn,,,or do something like this,,would take time away from the other things I'm trying to do. Need to think about it a little more.

Thanks again,,,sooooo much for all the comments,,,,,this forum is my "go to" for opinions,,,,and I consider every one of them!!!!

[Wiz Feinberg]

Hey,,,,I appreciate EVERYONE's advice and opinions!!! At this point I'm still weighing whether or not I even want to attempt this or not,,,,using time to learn,,,or do something like this,,would take time away from the other things I'm trying to do. Need to think about it a little more.

Thanks again,,,sooooo much for all the comments,,,,,this forum is my "go to" for opinions,,,,and I consider every one of them!!!!

You can always hire a competent webmaster to do the heavy lifting for you and allow you the freedom to create great content. SOme folks on this forum have done that in order to get their websites up and running. Then they learn how to upload new content to either template pages, or existing pages.

Finally, a professionally hosted blog is an option.

[James Quillian]

The way I use frontpage is to delete the starting code and then everything shows up as straight html. What code is it that is incompatible?

As far as I know, my pages show up on all browsers.

What do you suggest for folks who prefer not to type in raw code?

Despite one member's recommendation, I strongly recommend against any use of FrontPage. It was discontinued by Microsoft a long time ago and writes horribly incompatible code that is way behind the times and fails in all browsers except Internet Exploder. Most modern web hosting companies have dropped support for FrontPage Extensions for new customers and only support existing customers who are grandfathered in.

[Richard Sinkler]

I believe Microsoft "replaced" FrontPage (which is crap) with MS Expression. I don't know anything about Expression. I use Adobe Dreamweaver, but it is very expensive, and although it does a great job, the code sometimes needs to be tweaked a little. My hosting company no longer supports FrontPage. I used it many years ago, and ran into lots of problems.

[Wiz Feinberg]

The way I use frontpage is to delete the starting code and then everything shows up as straight html. What code is it that is incompatible?

As far as I know, my pages show up on all browsers.

What do you suggest for folks who prefer not to type in raw code?

James;
Thanks for asking.

I too used FrontPage in the beginning of my website development. When it first came out it was a good tool for non-techies to throw together a website. It got updated a couple of times over the next few years. I do believe that the HTML standard at that time was either HTML 2 or 3.

Eventually, when people began using non-Microsoft browsers, like Netscape and Opera, FrontPage websites were often missing elements and sometimes the layout was broken in these non-Microsoft browsers. With the demise of Netscape and introduction of Firefox, a push began to get browsers to be more compatible with the actual published HTML standards. Microsoft itself is a member of the International W3C Standards Committee, but was notorious for having proprietary coding in their browsers and in FrontPage, which was not recognized by the standards community.

About 10 years ago Microsoft made the decision to at least try to join the website standards World, both with their browsers and their web development tools. They thought about updating FrontPage to get rid of the senseless bloated codes and tables it created, as well as getting rid of widgets that only MS browsers could display. Instead, the decision was made to simply stop work on FrontPage and come up with a brand new web-dev tool. This eventually resulted in three different new tools being released and being deprecated over the next several years. They were: Microsoft Expression Studio 1, 2 and 3, all of which were terminated on December 20, 2012, when Microsoft announced that the Expression products would be deprecated, with Blend becoming a standalone tool with Visual Studio 2012.

Since then, other companies have filled the gap that was left by these failed experiments from Microsoft. They have been mostly left in the back of the bus by such website creation software as is made by CoffeeCup and others who forged ahead with standards compliant web tools.

Things have advanced so far from when FrontPage was vogue, that the codes written by it break in most modern browsers. We are now in the era of HTML 5.0 and Responsive Web Design, where websites are written, or re-written to display well on all types of screens, from huge desktop monitors to 320px wide smartphones. I am currently in the midst of redesigning three websites from HTML 4.01 to HTML 5.0 and Responsive Display.

When Microsoft announced that they were halting support for FrontPage, web hosting companies also began dropping support for the expensive FrontPage Extensions required to run these websites properly. Some hosts allowed existing customers to continue using FP Extensions, since they were already paid for on those servers. New customers often have to hunt to find a host that still offers support for FrontPage websites. Without the official Extensions, FrontPage does not work on a server.

[Wiz Feinberg]

I believe Microsoft "replaced" FrontPage (which is crap) with MS Expression. I don't know anything about Expression. I use Adobe Dreamweaver, but it is very expensive, and although it does a great job, the code sometimes needs to be tweaked a little. My hosting company no longer supports FrontPage. I used it many years ago, and ran into lots of problems.

One of the websites I am working on was composed in Dreamweaver and it is full of tables and code-bloat. I am basically rewriting the code to give the same layout in current HTML 5, with Responsive design using positioned DIVS instead of most of the tables. Where the tables must be kept, I learned a code tweak that allows smartphone viewers to use their fingers to scroll the tables horizontally across the cells, with the rest of the page remaining in place.

Further, I now use @Media queries to change font sizes, styles and DIV widths and positioning of various elements, as the screen size goes up or down.

[James Quillian]

That partially answers my question. Other than Dreamweaver, what do you recommend?

The only thing I use Frontpage for is to create simple html code.
Do you see any harm in that? I don't know one version of html from another.

This is how Front Page starts.



What is there about this particular code that wouldn't that wouldn't work outside of explorer?

I just delete it before starting and the code I end upon seems to work just fine. Of course all I do is make a few tables, links and simple stuff.

I am not an advocate of frontpage. I just started with it years ago and never changed.

The way I use frontpage is to delete the starting code and then everything shows up as straight html. What code is it that is incompatible?

As far as I know, my pages show up on all browsers.

What do you suggest for folks who prefer not to type in raw code?

James;
Thanks for asking.

I too used FrontPage in the beginning of my website development. When it first came out it was a good tool for non-techies to throw together a website. It got updated a couple of times over the next few years. I do believe that the HTML standard at that time was either HTML 2 or 3.

Eventually, when people began using non-Microsoft browsers, like Netscape and Opera, FrontPage websites were often missing elements and sometimes the layout was broken in these non-Microsoft browsers. With the demise of Netscape and introduction of Firefox, a push began to get browsers to be more compatible with the actual published HTML standards. Microsoft itself is a member of the International W3C Standards Committee, but was notorious for having proprietary coding in their browsers and in FrontPage, which was not recognized by the standards community.

About 10 years ago Microsoft made the decision to at least try to join the website standards World, both with their browsers and their web development tools. They thought about updating FrontPage to get rid of the senseless bloated codes and tables it created, as well as getting rid of widgets that only MS browsers could display. Instead, the decision was made to simply stop work on FrontPage and come up with a brand new web-dev tool. This eventually resulted in three different new tools being released and being deprecated over the next several years. They were: Microsoft Expression Studio 1, 2 and 3, all of which were terminated on December 20, 2012, when Microsoft announced that the Expression products would be deprecated, with Blend becoming a standalone tool with Visual Studio 2012.

Since then, other companies have filled the gap that was left by these failed experiments from Microsoft. They have been mostly left in the back of the bus by such website creation software as is made by CoffeeCup and others who forged ahead with standards compliant web tools.

Things have advanced so far from when FrontPage was vogue, that the codes written by it break in most modern browsers. We are now in the era of HTML 5.0 and Responsive Web Design, where websites are written, or re-written to display well on all types of screens, from huge desktop monitors to 320px wide smartphones. I am currently in the midst of redesigning three websites from HTML 4.01 to HTML 5.0 and Responsive Display.

When Microsoft announced that they were halting support for FrontPage, web hosting companies also began dropping support for the expensive FrontPage Extensions required to run these websites properly. Some hosts allowed existing customers to continue using FP Extensions, since they were already paid for on those servers. New customers often have to hunt to find a host that still offers support for FrontPage websites. Without the official Extensions, FrontPage does not work on a server.

[/img]

[Richard Sinkler]

Dreamweaver only uses tables when you put them in. I only use tables for data like my guitar tunings.

[Wiz Feinberg]

Dreamweaver only uses tables when you put them in. I only use tables for data like my guitar tunings.

It is only recently that I have been able to move away form tables for layouts. CSS 3 now includes some positioning codes for DIVs that approximate the actions of table rows and cells.

Basically, tables were created in HTML code to present tabular data.Back in the day, we programmers saw that tables could also be used to do layouts of web page sections. The neat thing about tables is how they can expand with a browser, then contract to a certain minimum size, but never give up the alignment of rows and cells. It has taken forever for CSS standards to catch up to this configuration for positioned DIVs. So, I still use tables where nothing else will line things up the way I need them to. But, now I know how th allow smartphone users to scroll horizontally across table cells, without changing the other elements on the page.

I use a couple of different code editors. The main one is CoffeeCup HTML Editor, plus their brand new Responsive Layout Editor. However, since I know my codes, I also use Notetab Pro to manually type HTML codes, CSS and JavaScript. This is beyond most mortals, but I am not one of you, so to speak.

[Richard Sinkler]

This is beyond most mortals, but I am not one of you, so to speak.

I had to update someone's website, and it was built using tables for just about everything. I ended up talking them into starting over with modern day techniques.

I can pretty much hand code pages, but where I suffer is with Javascript.

[Wiz Feinberg]

This is beyond most mortals, but I am not one of you, so to speak.

I had to update someone's website, and it was built using tables for just about everything. I ended up talking them into starting over with modern day techniques.

I can pretty much hand code pages, but where I suffer is with Javascript.

I keep various scripting and coding books and reference sheets on a shelf behind my computer chair. I have programmed some frequently used JavaScript commands and functions into NoteTab Pro, which I use for about 85% of my website work. I also use Notepad++ which has some special highlighting features missing in my other editors. Finally, CoffeeCup software is pretty much the cat's meow, at a much lower price than DW.

[Richard Sinkler]

Notepad++ is a cool editor.

[Wiz Feinberg]

Notepad++ is a cool editor.

I like the way NP++ highlights all occurrences of any word or phrase I highlight once. Also, it has a really advanced search/find and replace system.

But, for my everyday freehand coding and website editing, I love NoteTab Pro. It takes all manner of plugins, some of which I have composed, or modified myself.

CoffeeCup HTML Editor and Responsive Layout Maker are state of the art HTML 5.0/CSS3 tools. The HTML Editor has come a looooong way, since it first appeared in the late 1990s. I now own most of the CoffeeCup web software. Updates have been free, until recently. Companies have to make money to stay in business, so they have finally begun charging for major program updates.

[Russ Wever]

• You do want to obtain your own domain name (you.com, you.net, etc).
  You need a certified Domain Registrar to do this.
  Registration is paid for annually, or for longer terms up front.
  I use Dotster as my Domain Registrar. Rates vary from time to time,
  but tend to average around $15 a year for a .com or .net domain.

Wiz, I see that Dotster has apparently now become Domain.com.
I'm curious if it's a simple company name-change or if it's the case of another
company buying out Dotster and altering their operations to their liking.
More to the point, I'm curious if Domain.com still has all the good merit that
Dotster had, and if you recommend Domain.com as you did Dotster.
Thanks for your opinion and advice,
Russ

[Wiz Feinberg]

Russ;
Dotster owns several associated companies, one of which is Domain.com. Some of my more recent domain purchases went to that Registrar, older ones stayed on Dotster. It is the same company, just different brand names to separate various segments of the business.

I am still an affiliate for Dotster and Domain.com and have advertising links for them on some of my web pages.