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Website Creation for Dummies?

Foolmewunz

Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Foolmewunz
Joined
Aug 11, 2006
Messages
41,468
Location
Pattaya, Thailand
I have a friend here trying to convince me that any boob (and no the boobs here in Asia aren't so great if you're a boob man, so save that joke) can make their own very lovely website.

The short of it? I need to create one, but I don't want it to look like those disasters, such as The Web Fairy, or frankly - even though I think he's hysterically funny - Kramer's site. (I haven't seen it recently but it was generally painful to the eyes.)

Do I just bite the bullet, financially, and go to someone who can build me a site? Or is it actually possible for a complete yutz to do this on their own? And, if the latter, is there a book (those things with covers and pages and printed words on same) like Building Websites for Dummies? I'm an analog kinda guy and am the only guy in the building, generally, who actually does RTFM.
 
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Depends on what you actually want to use the site for. I'd tend to suggest going to wordpress.com and setting up a free site there. It started off as a blogging platform, and it's still very good for that, but with plugins you can pretty much make a Wordpress site sing and dance if you want to.
 
I'd suggest reading the html bible, finding a decent source for learning php and sql, and writing all of your pages solely in Notepad. Notepad++ if you must.

Seriously, it depends entirely on what you need the site to do. I do actually recommend the html bible as a good source for learning that sort of thing, but it may well be overkill, depending on what you're trying to achieve.
 
Sorry - I should've made that clear. I'm going to open a coffee-snob barista style caffe in Thailand. All I really want to do - initially - is to plug "Coming Soon to Pattaya", and then when/as I open up, a simple few screens of the product offerings - which will be like - coffee, more coffee, other coffee.... . And some delectable snacks (beignets), of course.

I figure a Home with a history/back story.... a page to show the location with opening hours, a couple of pages of menus. Maybe a message board? I don't know if that adds a level of complication.

That's all for the beginning. No deliveries, no interactive shopping, no product offerings.... YET. All of that could come late, so a site that's flexible and easy to build-out.

The ex-pat community in Thailand just about lives on the internet. Many of those are retirees who aren't about to pay me four bucks for a cappuccino or latte, but an equal number are probably caffeine junkies who might just beat a path to the door.

In short - nothing fancy. Just pretty and functional.
 
Yeah, probably best with a set of static pages. Traditional-style, though these days the "stylish" thing would be to have a whole lot of flash and popup menus.
 
You seem to be worried more about design than coding. That's not a bad thing nowadays as there are plenty of software tools to do what you want with minimal pain or effort on your part. With that in mind my suggestion is to find a few websites (disregard the content at first) that are pleasing to your eye (it does have to reflect your tastes after all) in color and general layout and navigation. Then take the elements that you like the best and incorporate them together on paper first. Keeping it simple while getting your content across to the reader in an easy and pleasant fashion is your goal, not showing off how you can incorporate every gimmick that you like.

Then decide what your content will be. If it's going to be a lot of reading then a not too bright of a background, usually a very, very light pastel of off white works best. If it's more graphically oriented then a darker background to draw the eye to the images should be your goal.

Then break it up into logical segments and have a start page to direct your visitors to the content that they want to see.
 
If that's all you want to do, why not just make a document in your word-processor, and save as HTML? Then upload it as index.html to your web hosting account.

(I know it's web-design heresy, let the flame wars commence....)

ETA:

It may not be what you'll use in the long run, but it'll do for the "Coming Soon" page.

If you're thinking of setting up a message board, a Google search comes up with a variety of promising links, such as...

http://www.focalmedia.net/sitenetbbs.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/scripthosting/messageboards.shtml

ETAA:

That second link also links to How to Start / Create Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide, which may contain the information you're looking for.
 
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Thanks, gang. Didn't mean to seem the ingrate but I was out buying a new 'puter and setting it up. I've now got this great honking 15.6" screen on a Lenovo G570, so I won't be working from my trusty old IBM Thinkpad with the teensy screen any longer (but I loves me that laptop - have had it refurbished three times... alas, it belongs to my company and I can't bring myself to steal it).

I'll check out a couple of the links. I'm waiting for some graphics from a friend in Moscow. (I'm a complete slut - free advice from JREFers all over the world, graphics and logo from the lady in Moscow, coffee/tea contacts from buddies in Thailand... and I'm only getting started.) I'm not pressed for time on the website, but I want to get a feel for whether I have to throw in the towel... early.

I don't really want it to do anything fancy, but in order to make sure I go in every day, I'm thinking of a "thought of the day" but concentrating on skeptic issues and sites that I can link back to. Lawd only knows Thailand could use a little more skepticism. I'm heading to the land of woo!

Thanks for the tips and advice. Much appreciated.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Thanks, gang. Didn't mean to seem the ingrate but I was out buying a new 'puter and setting it up. I've now got this great honking 15.6" screen on a Lenovo G570, so I won't be working from my trusty old IBM Thinkpad with the teensy screen any longer (but I loves me that laptop - have had it refurbished three times... alas, it belongs to my company and I can't bring myself to steal it).

I'll check out a couple of the links. I'm waiting for some graphics from a friend in Moscow. (I'm a complete slut - free advice from JREFers all over the world, graphics and logo from the lady in Moscow, coffee/tea contacts from buddies in Thailand... and I'm only getting started.) I'm not pressed for time on the website, but I want to get a feel for whether I have to throw in the towel... early.

I don't really want it to do anything fancy, but in order to make sure I go in every day, I'm thinking of a "thought of the day" but concentrating on skeptic issues and sites that I can link back to. Lawd only knows Thailand could use a little more skepticism. I'm heading to the land of woo!

Thanks for the tips and advice. Much appreciated.
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Hmm...

I don't get it. Show us where you have tried and failed, and we will be glad to help.

Making a web page? Static, or dynamic, with a database, or without, with fancy javascript/jquery/HTML5, none of that is hard. None of it. If you're willing to learn a bit.

Where are you at right now?

Nothing wrong with shared hosting or wordpress by the way... it's the 3rd party plugins for wordpress that can screw you.

Anyway, where are you getting stuck? I'd be glad to help
 
kevinquinnyo said:
Hmm...

I don't get it. Show us where you have tried and failed, and we will be glad to help.

Making a web page? Static, or dynamic, with a database, or without, with fancy javascript/jquery/HTML5, none of that is hard. None of it. If you're willing to learn a bit.

Where are you at right now?

Nothing wrong with shared hosting or wordpress by the way... it's the 3rd party plugins for wordpress that can screw you.

Anyway, where are you getting stuck? I'd be glad to help
Click to expand...

Where I'm at? The beginning. I've been reading through the link provided by Brian-M. I'm not stuck, per se, as I'm just getting started. I'm going to run into silly little wrinkles - like setting up a PayPal account, which I never intended to do until I get to Thailand because my credit cards aren't transferrable from HK to TH, and all the little fees for registration and hosting are generally directly drawn from PayPal or directly from your credit card.

In short... I'm at the very beginning. So I'm not really stuck on anything technical, just wanted to hear from some folks here as to whether it really is as easy as people make it sound (apparently it is if you don't try to get too many bells and whistles thrown in). I'm not planning on taking orders over the web or doing deliveries - just a promotional site.
 
Brian-M said:
If that's all you want to do, why not just make a document in your word-processor, and save as HTML? Then upload it as index.html to your web hosting account.

(I know it's web-design heresy, let the flame wars commence....)
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Not just design heresy… coding heresy as well. HTML files output by word processors tend to be very inefficient and do weird things like putting the styles in the HTML elements themselves – which will probably make it a huge pain to make any kind of design change to the site at any point in the future. Sometimes, it’s a wonder the pages they output even work. With a project of any scale, they probably just don’t.

ETA:

It may not be what you'll use in the long run, but it'll do for the "Coming Soon" page.

If you're thinking of setting up a message board, a Google search comes up with a variety of promising links, such as...

http://www.focalmedia.net/sitenetbbs.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/scripthosting/messageboards.shtml

ETAA:

That second link also links to How to Start / Create Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide, which may contain the information you're looking for.
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I just started up a site on DreamHost a week or two ago. They have “one click installs”, to put various things like message boards or CMS on your site.
 
If you want to make a website for dummies, keep it very simple, so they will understand it more easily.
 
Coming late to this thread. In my current job I'm the system administrator for a small web company. As such, I have responsibility for all aspects of our company's web presence: domain names, web servers, email, and DNS.

Domain name: You should register a domain name for your company; "www.mycompany.wordpress.com" looks cheesy. For the remainder of this post, I'll use marcelloscaffee.com (which is available, BTW.) In fact, one of the considerations to take into account when choosing a name is the availability of a domain name for it in the ".com" or ".co.th" (or ".com.th" -- I don't know which convention they use) domains.

Any one of a large number of companies will handle the registration for you. I note that GoDaddy has fallen from grace recently due to their initial support for SOPA, which they yanked after a public outcry. You may want to register using a company in Thailand, but I don't know what's available there.

Web hosting: Once you have a domain name, you will need somewhere to host "www.marcelloscaffee.com". Sometimes the domain registrar will offer a hosting service, but I'd recommend you shop around.

On a technical note, someone who points their web browser to simply "marcelloscaffee.com" should end up at the www site as well. Or don't bother with a "www." name and just put the website on to "http://marcelloscaffee.com".

Email: being able to receive email at "@marcelloscaffee.com" looks much better on business cards and stationery than "marcellos.caffee@gmail.com". The company that hosts the web site will usually offer one or more mailboxes for your email. Your best bet is to simply forward all email received at marcelloscaffee.com to your preferred email provider. However, you should ensure all correspondence you send for business has a from address of marcelloscaffee.com.

DNS: DNS is what is used by the internet to find your web site and the mail server. Very often your registrar will offer to host your DNS. It can also be done by the company that hosts your web site and email, but that setup's a touch more complicated. It's probably best to use the DNS service provided by the registrar, who will likely provide a web interface for setting up your DNS records. Point your web site and mail server (in DNS parlance, the "A" and "MX" records) to the IP address(es) supplied to you by your website/email hosting company.

It's entirely possible that all four of these functions can be handled by different companies. But that's getting into geek territory and I don't recommend you try that at home.

And all this before you even write a single line of HTML!
 
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try www.w3schools.com

Start with Learn HTML. There's a lot of examples you can try.

If you like, you can edit and test the web pages locally. To achive this, you can install either XAMPP or WAMP. Both will install Apache, MySql and PHP.

If you are only creating plain HTML pages (without server side scripting or database), you can enable IIS (instead of XAMPP/WAMP). If you need help in activating IIS, let us know if you are using XP or Windows 7.
 
If you don't want it to be a disaster pay someone else to do it. Learning HTML so you can botch together a half-arsed web-site is pointless, it might save you a few pounds but a good website is worth it.
 
arthwollipot said:
W3Schools has a few problems. I'd be inclined to go straight to the source.
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A good suggestion.

HTML has evolved over the years from a simple language (which could be used to create simple web pages) in something that's quite complex, especially when you start playing around with CSS in addition to HTML. I've been playing around with computers for over thirty years, but I still can't get my head around the CSS box model.

kingstuart said:
If you don't want it to be a disaster pay someone else to do it. Learning HTML so you can botch together a half-arsed web-site is pointless, it might save you a few pounds but a good website is worth it.
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One problem with that idea is you're now beholden to the people who built your site for all future maintenance, even something as simple as updating a telephone number. Especially if they used tools such as HTML and CSS generators to put together the fancy pages. Sure, you can view the HTML and CSS in your browser and even download them to your computer, but making a change to them would be a nightmare.

So what do you do when said company goes out of business? In the web world that's an all too common problem.
 
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Blue Mountain said:
HTML has evolved over the years from a simple language (which could be used to create simple web pages) in something that's quite complex, especially when you start playing around with CSS in addition to HTML. I've been playing around with computers for over thirty years, but I still can't get my head around the CSS box model.
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Absolutely. I'm a web content manager by trade, and I use a CMS that manages my CSS automagically. I'd be lost if I had to deal with the CSS directly.
 
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