Website creation Help
polycounter lvl 12
Hey guys im really interested in creating my own website. But i dont really know how to begin... I want to make it my own and not have a template from another site.
So do you guys know any good tutorials to get me started or wat do i need to do?
Any thoughts would help thanks
So do you guys know any good tutorials to get me started or wat do i need to do?
Any thoughts would help thanks
Replies
in case you don't know anything about html, you need to learn the basics like how to set up your .html files, how to do basic text formatting, links and integrate images.
http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/fullindex/ is a good starting point, basically everything you need to know. The 'my first site' tutorial explains everything nice and easy to follow for the non-programmer folks
Once you understand the basics it's really not hard at all!
http://selfhtml.org/ is also really great, but it's only available in German and French.
I really dont know anything about websites ha sorry
And thanks for the link yo
So could i use godaddy.com to get my domain?
Or is there a better/cheaper site?
The links you were provided above are good ones to go with. Staring off can be quite a pain, but once you get a hang of CSS and HTML, it's pretty fun.
Some of the more complex things are handled by PHP and jQuery [eg. contact forms, fading images etc], but that can be dealt with later.
However, you will need to gain some knowledge of HTML and a TINY bit of PHP in order to get the most out of your Wordpress site.
2: read about SEO
3: Content.
4: No matter what you see people who know nothing about publishing on the web do, DO NOT follow their footsteps with splash pages with "enter site" button and DO NOT do flash site or any other crap that may look good, but causes your site to never be seen by anyone (for more info, see #2)
It might seem a bit expensive but only for “unique” purchases, for 60 bucks you get unlimited downloads. I use them all the time for quick projects, some good stuff in there.
If your website isn't on there for people to find you through a search engine, it's useless, probably. What purpose is it to spend money on a site you only give the address to a handful of people, right? Your site should attract people to it who are searching for what/who you are - wordpress goes a long way to help that be easy to keep under control, especially with the right plugins. Your site should be there bringing you connections that you didn't know were looking for you - just "a site for the sake of it" is a waste of time, effort, bandwidth, money, etc :P
The advice I gave was to make sure any investment of any kind is worth their while, I see so much seo fail it is incredible. This is the same reason inide/modding/music sites without marketing wizards fail ther owners. If you don't have marketing, you have nothing. And SEO is the cornerstone of any marketing, of any kind, portfo or otherwise.
Sounds kinda "matter of fact" the way I say it, just trying to help, it's worth taking seriously! Google loves wordpress, too.
I'm broke as hell, I'll make anyone here rank #1 for the keywords of their choice if you got da monies :P
If wordpress is daunting to anyone, I'll set that up for free for anyone in return for friendship hearts. I'm a pretty lonely guy. It's easy once it is set up, and you will love it, and it is totally flexible to anything you'd like to try with any prior html/php knowledge you have (easy to test things, revert if you dont like it/doesnt work etc)
It depends on what kind of site you want, how often you'll update it, how you want it to function, and how much time you want to put into it.
If you don't know HTML and CSS, then you won't know PHP, so Wordpress is out, if you want to build it yourself. There are other CMSs (Content management system) out there that you don't need to use PHP for, which might be a better option for you if this is the first site you're building.
I've used indexhibit, and the more customisable Stacey (which my current portfolio uses). They can be scaled down to the bare tacks, and aren't as bloated as Wordpress invariably is. They can both be modified considerably, if you know HTML and CSS. Check out their "Participants" and "In use" pages, to see what other people have done with them.
A static (Hand built, without a CMS) site is perfectly fine, if you only have one project finished every other month. A CMS is great if you can put the time into customising it, and will update your site regularly.
I just have a bit of a bias, after being in the web stuff for years before wordpress came out, I mean, when wordpress came out, I missed it, but when I discovered it (it was gaining ground by then), it was literally like the first snow tire in alaska. The first sliced loaf of bread - suddenly, life was simple, and I didn't need to spend hours updating sites and links (or fiddling with includes/many files)
It's like this:
UDK is to coding a game from scratch
as
Wordpress is to coding a website
It's like that, from the perspective of someone who's tried it all, BUT it is true that perhaps a complete noob would have trouble with setting it up. You can literally install it with the push of a button with most hosts though (fantastico installer), and without it, it's the "famous 5 minute install".
Plenty of tutorials and videos out there too - shockingly easy to get started.
I look like I'm marketing the thing now, I know, but adamant as I am, I am really trying to put the power of wordpress in your hands. Sounds dramatic, but you would crap if you knew just how easy it is to rank #1 when you have a wordpress and everyone else is using img link menus with no alt tags and flash splashes etc - this "market" as it were, the ones that would relate to this site, they are ripe for the picking, really, there are not many people in digital art world who are exploiting the full potential of google.
IF your site is just a CV for resumes, that's one thing, respectable and all, but freelancers above all would benefit a lot by learning SEO and marketing techniques, then applying them to their trade.
Anyway, you should definately give hand coding a try, far better to learn the inner workings of stuff so you can customise later on, than rely on a downloaded template, imho.
The fact of the matter is, web design can be as complex and convoluted as some 3D modeling. It can take years to learn all of the eccentricities and standards that surround web design. I've had to learn multiple web languages, and all of the cross-browser compatibility wrinkles that go along with them. I actually constructed my own page from scratch. And although the back-end for it is pretty solid, the actual content is extremely lacking. I spent so much time focusing on the development that I never got around to populating it with content.
It's a very common problem. Using pre-built services like Wordpress get around this. Just learn some basic CSS so that you can customize the shell graphics for your Wordpress site, and you should be good to go.
Learn enough to make/get a website that accomplishes the reason for having the website in the first place. Do not forget why you are making the site. I'm not entirely sure how to phrase this better, but I hope you get the idea.
I could not agree more. Wordpress is extremely powerful and intuitive. Not only can you get a great looking website up, but you can update the content in a fraction of the time.
May I ask what this website is planning on doing or being used for? It's hard to give you a good direction to go in without some more details on what you are trying to accomplish.
so mainly i need to get a domain, find a good template that i like to get me started and learn about all this HTML stuff
I guess thats how ill start...
do you guys know of any good free templates to get me started?
This is really likely your best bet if this is the only or one of very few websites you plan to make.
There are many many video tutorials and documentation, ticket systems, forums, huge userbase, great plugins.
You may think wordpress and think blog or see the same layout for every site etc, but it is not the case. Highly customizable, especially the themes, and no matter what you want to do there is probably a plugin for that that literally makes it hassle free for you.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryPortfolio
Wordpress is also good but you need to tweak a lot based off of the themes you choose, and trust me you'll want to at least know some basic PHP to edit those features you do or don't want.
My advice? Go simple, go clean. Don't overthing it, make a banner and throw your work on there. It'll save you the headache.
1. Determine your dimensions (width of your site)
2. IE, create website in photoshop based off of your resolution, go for something on average like 1280 width.
3. Create the layout in photoshop however you want it to look.
4. Use the slice tools to cut up and export your images into an HTML page.
5. Tweak and add content using an html editor.
Also what is this site going to be used for?
Whoooof. Gag unto me with a spoon! Do NOT use Photoshop to create your site. The HTML that Photoshop exports is garbage, outdated table-based design generated by the slice tool. You have no idea how many times I've had to go into a Photoshop exported site and reconstruct the whole thing from the ground up.
Table-less design is the way to go with web coding, and you aren't going to get any of that from a graphics program. This is partially why I suggest using an existing blog/CMS system like Wordpress. They have all those design features built in by default, so you don't have to worry about them. You just get to focus on the content. If you export your site from Photoshop, sooner or later that horribly outdated code is going to come back to bite you.
http://leminhnhat.com/web/
Grab some tutorials and get cranking.
Wordpress is okay but it's also a hugeass pile of code. If you make something yourself it's fast, limited to what you need, and you understand how it works.
To start I'd say have a simple centered column with a bunch of images. Something like http://www.brameulaers.com, http://www.polygoo.com or http://www.liamtart.com is pretty simple to do, but it works well.
You really need to spend a lot of time reconstructing a header with just a table and few cells for thumbs?
Header --> Table with your Work (thumbs) --> Footer
Profit
I think folks over analyze the content that makes a good folio, trying to get all fancy like having a CMS Blog, Widgets for their WIPS, and other "Digital Art" they may throw on there like clan sigs n cool stuffs lol.
Throw your name, a logo you'd use for your business card, throw your work on, sign the bottom, call it a day.
It is a pile of code, but you never really have to look at it. Find a theme, edit its css to your liking. It's already nearly there once you pick the theme. Then you're just changing colors or getting adventurous with moving around the structure.
Plugins are like the app store "there's a plugin for that", I don't think I've needed anything through all the things I've tried that I couldn't find contributed by other wordpress users. It's so good, you can tell I'm taken by it, love it.
WP Supercache is also not compatible with some themes and can cause browsing issues.