Help on website creation

[Adam]

I need to knock up a website - for my beekeeping club. It's mostly a "how to join", "whats involved", "whats on" type thing so no amazingly advanced content needed.

I did lots on HTML about 5 years ago - but everything has moved on. I can program, if push comes to shove with some historical knowledge of C for example.

I'd like a site that looks uniform, is fairly easy to maintain, but I'd like to learn something whilst I'm making the effort so am loathe to mess about with older technology.

Any suggestions and good websites / software to use? I did have a copy of dreamweaver but seem to have lost it. Grrrrr..

I see ASP and CSS - is this the way to go?

Adam

 

[momo]

Only thing I personally dont like about sites is when they stick loads of them silly (to me) flash things on them and it takes forever even in this day and age to load, oh and I hate the font sans comic, arghhhhhh, other than that I cant help you, I used too use hotdog and homepage I think it was called, then again I never did anything fancy.
Garry

 

[christoph clark]

I like Swish2 http://www.swishzone.com/index.php but is flash based.

This pages shows you some sites made with it..
http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=resources&tab=sites&do=page&cat_id=2

 

[mr]

HTML, CSS, PHP, MySql (if you need it) and a text editor like notepad are all you need essentially. Mix in a bit of time spent on the learning curve and you're all set.

Alternately you could look at an open source templating system / CMS like Joomla http://www.joomla.org/ Which will get you up and running fast and leave lots of room for fancy add ons if you get the urge at a later date.

Joomla is easy to set up, easy to use, lots of functionality and allows for custom coded modules if you want to get into that sort of thing - it's worth a look I think.

cheers Mike

 

[wizer]

Another vote for a CMS here. I have used Drupal extensively and think is great. I hear good things about Joomla and intend to use it on my next site. The god thing about a CMS is that you can set user permissions for 'authors' giving your members the ability to tend to the site in your absence.

 

[Argee]

Try HTML-Kit from Chamis software. It's free and has all the features you would need and - in spite of the name - is up-to-date and easy to use.

Ray.

 

[Adam]

Joomla is easy to set up, easy to use, lots of functionality and allows for custom coded modules if you want to get into that sort of thing - it's worth a look I think.

cheers Mike

I'll have a play around with it - it looks interesting. Thankyou.

Adam

 

[bobscarle]

If you have some knowledge of C then I would say take a serious look at PHP. Very much like C in syntax and can be used with MySql for a database enabled site.

Apache, MySql and PHP are all open source and a lot of hosting sites offer them. Use notepad to construct the pages.

Bob

 

[wizer]

If you pickup new languages quickly then maybe building a site from scratch would be interesting for you.

CMS packages are often built in PHP and CSS. You can modify and customise them to suit your needs, but someone else has done the donkey work.

I used Drupal for an allotment association website that I did. They now look after the site themselves and I pop in every now and then to do updates.

 

[Dave S]

It's mostly a "how to join", "whats involved", "whats on" type thing so no amazingly advanced content needed.

I did lots on HTML about 5 years ago - but everything has moved on.

Everything you describe can be done in HTML. I would suggest that a scripted, database-driven site would be somewhat over the top and would involve a fair learning curve. Fine if you want to learn it, but unnecessary, IMO.

All CSS is, effectively, is a way of removing all the formatting and styling from the HTML and putting it in a separate file. In that sense things have moved on since 5 years ago. But you would really need to learn CSS if you went down the scripted, database-driven route anyway.

If you have some knowledge (albeit rusty) of HTML, I think you would be able to get something up and running quite quickly. There are loads of CSS tutorials on the web and you need nothing more than notepad and a web browser to do it.

This is the route I would take - then if at some stage in the future you want to take online subscriptions or have some other more advanced content you can consider a change to a scripted site.

A caveat that I should make clear - I have no personal experience of the CMS systems that others have mentioned.

Dave

 

[ratkinsonuk]

Adam - my vote would be for PHP/MySQL.

You can download and install all the required software in a single hit using WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) at http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php

It has a nice point-and-click interface for configuration, and will allow you to create and develop the site on your PC. Once you're ready, you then find yourself a host that support Apache & PHP, and simply upload the site to their server.

As far as the site itself, I've used Mambo extensively (the direct parent of Joomla, both written in PHP), and it's very easy to configure and get running very quickly, as long as you spend some time reading the online documentation.

If you want to have a look at what's best for you, this site is great for having a play with all the popular CMS systems available, without having to instal a single file, or write any code :-

http://www.opensourcecms.com


Another alternative is C#.Net (sometimes known as ASP.Net), but I would stay away from classic ASP, as this is now dying off.

Although you could probably do most of what you want in flat HTML, I think you would soon get frustrated at not having some kind of database behind the website, to at least store members logins, details, etc. You could turn to PHP, Perl, Python, .Net, Ruby, etc, etc, at this point, but I'd more inclined to go the CMS route from day 1 and save some of the grief.

If you have the time spare, I'm happy to work something out for a seminar I'm giving on creating Web applications :-

http://hpug.org.uk/index.php?option=com ... il&agid=32


That site is 'stored' in Mambo, by the way.

Rob.

 

[StevieB]

I built a website on the Joomla template for work but it was not that easy to get to grips with if you wanted to edit things to the nth degree. We now use plone instead, again freely available, which is slightly better.

Steve.

 

[Scrums]

My site is built using Frontpage 2003 with a free template.....couldn't be easier - if you've got or can acquire Frontpage. Oh, and your hosting server needs to have frontpage extensions.

Chris.

 

[Dave S]

Another alternative is C#.Net (sometimes known as ASP.Net), but I would stay away from classic ASP, as this is now dying off.

Incorrect. ASP.Net pages may be written in C# or Visual Basic, as can desktop applications.

The tools for these may be downloaded for free, but web hosting is generally more expensive.

Dave

 

[ratkinsonuk]

Incorrect. ASP.Net pages may be written in C# or Visual Basic, as can desktop applications.

Agreed Dave, although some of the terms used can lead to confusion, so I wanted to let Adam know some of the alias terms 'wrongly' used for writing websites using the .Net framework.

If we were to take this to it's n'th degree, the term ASP.Net is possibly now incorrect, as it's been replaced by Silverlight ( http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/ ), just another muddying of the waters.

Rob.

 

[Dave S]

If we were to take this to it's n'th degree, the term ASP.Net is possibly now incorrect, as it's been replaced by Silverlight ( http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/ ), just another muddying of the waters.

Rob.

Silverlight is more an attempt to replace Flash than to replace ASP.Net.

Sorry, re-reading my last response it was worded rather tersely, which was not my intention.

Dave

 

[Anonymous]

I found joomla (or mambo as it was) slow considering most of my pages were static and hardly every changed. As a system it was just far too much for what I wanted.

I now use Wordpress which is much simpler and faster(in my view). Still mess about with the templates to get what I want but it allows swmbo to easily add stuff.

For the gallery I use JAlbum. I had used gallery2 but again it was slow considering my albums hardly ever change.

I did start developing my own software but realised it was going to take every minute of my time for months to get anything going. I still don't understand why there is no cheap/free software for creating a fairly static website easily i.e. without knowing about style sheets, html, php, etc.

Dave

 

[ratkinsonuk]

found joomla (or mambo as it was) slow

Dave - do you mean slow to develop, or slow to load pages. If it's the latter, you could try switching the statistics off (if you're still interested), which increases page load speed 10-fold.

now use Wordpress

A lot of 'low volume' programmers I speak to swear by Wordpress as well. I don't have any experience of it. The problem with any all-singing, all-dancing CMS system, is as soon as you need to customise something, you spend days hacking through the guts of it to find out how it hangs together. Those that have spent 6 months trawling through the code can make fairly quick changes, though.

why there is no cheap/free software for creating a fairly static website

There is, but you soon find out it's missing a key component or function. Quite simply, a single person would have to spend every minute of every day constantly updating Freeware to make it as good as Dreamweaver, etc. That just isn't viable, so nobody is willing to take on such as task.

Rob.

 

[ratkinsonuk]

Sorry, re-reading my last response it was worded rather tersely, which was not my intention.

Dave

No worries. I was at a PHP Conference in London recently, with about 400 people in the room. One guy insisted on heckling all the speakers, saying that their software was 'illegal' and 'a fraud' because they didn't strictly comply with the MVC model.

Luckily, everyone has their own opinion of the best software, otherwise we wouldn't have Perl, PHP, Ruby, .Net, Python, etc, etc.

Rob.

 

[Anonymous]

There is, but you soon find out it's missing a key component or function.

Is there? I'm talking about simple software which my mum could use with minimal training. I like the look of CityDesk but it costs too much (at least last time I looked) and it's missing some quite fundamental functionality (at least last time I looked.

Quite simply, a single person would have to spend every minute of every day constantly updating Freeware to make it as good as Dreamweaver, etc. That just isn't viable, so nobody is willing to take on such as task.

I've heard lots about Dreamweaver. It's a shame it's so expensive (for the home user).

Dave