building a webpage

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mbuster

mbuster

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I'm trying, but it's a bitch. Does anyone know of a program that works the same way Yahoo's pagebuilder does? It's easy as hell to do it that way, but you cant use Pagebuilder unless you're making a Geocities site.
 
with whom

With whom are you hosting?

They might have a way to make it easier. I know I use netfirms and they give away a cd to make a webpage easy-piezey.

Also, if your computer came with word, you can always design a site in that.
 
Im cant remember what yahoos site builder looks like,butCoolPage is a "drag and drop" editor.No HTML knowledge required.....they have a free version that requires you to place a small gif on your pages with a link to their site.I ended up buying it(paid version doesnt require their gif-link)and it's the only editor I use on my ISP webspace.
 
sounds like just the trick kramer. It's the whole HTML thing I don't like. Thanks.
 
-

I can make you a kick ass site if you want.
Not free tho.

Nice graphics = alot of time and efforts.

i really really doubt that your interested in paying for a nice webpage but anyways, i need money so im asking.
 
I never used a tool, but learning HTML is pretty easy man, you can pick it up in a few days.

Check out www.webmonkey.com .. even if your not interested in actually learning HTML, they have reviews on building tools.
 
demensia said:
I never used a tool, but learning HTML is pretty easy man, you can pick it up in a few days.

Yup! Nothing beats having total control over your own site.
I learned the basics of HTML on my own a number of years back just by playing with it for an afternoon and seeing what happens. You can type up your site in Wordpad, save it with an .html extension, and open it from your hard drive through your browser to check it out before you upload it. It's a process of experimentation for a while, but it doesn't take long to make sense. My first website took me something like five hours to make, but it was fun. I can probably make a site like my first one in something like fifteen minutes now.

The only "web editor" I've ever used is Wordpad!

For extra help and reference, I recommend this book.
 
Well.

I'll tell a different story. While some might extoll the virtues of learning html and developing your skills the hard way, I preferred the easy shortcut. That's what life's all about anyway. Get it done fast with half the effort!

My first web page was done in Macromedia's Dreamweaver on company dime w/ company software. I didn't alter the HTML tags in the slightest and it came out pretty decent. Way better than it would have if I had struggled through learning HTML and making retarded 3rd grade level webpages. When I left that gig, I sucked it up and bought Dreamweaver. Now, I charge for web design and I still don't write a line of code. ;)

Screw doing web pages the traditional way. Buy the layout software and make exceptional sites right away.

stone
 
stonepiano,

I disagree. While WYSIWYG tools are great at what they are, if you don't know HTML, then if something doesn't work, you are hosed.

By reputation Dreamwearver is perhaps the best tool of its type, but I'm sure it has some limitations. A year or so ago a friend had some problems when he created some nested tables, and he could not shake it loose within Dreamweaver. I had to go take a look at the HTML that it generated and find what was wrong. If you don't know HTML, you are lost at that point.

I won't even start with Microsoft FrontPage and its quirks...
 
AlChuck said:
I disagree. While WYSIWYG tools are great at what they are, if you don't know HTML, then if something doesn't work, you are hosed.

Exactly! I wouldn't feel comfortable charging people to make websites if I didn't fully understand how they work. Seems like running a restaurant by cooking Swanson dinners for people. If you've got customers, more power to you.

Plus, I've actually played around with some of those "HTML editors," and many of them make errors, assume things you don't want them to assume, and add useless extra code to your site. Saves money too. I did this by hand (except the few flash bits), and though some of you might not like it artistically, it saved money and I can customize it at will.
 
Thanks guys for all the repies. I've actually gone ahead and built a few pages. Nothing spectacular at all. Now my problem is publishing it. My host uses bluelagoon cpanel. I'm new at this and am having one hell of a time. I can't get my pages to appear! The Tech support guy says, "upload your files to the "public_html" folder. I did that. Now my index page comes up, but all the images are just boxes with x's in the corner. I uploaded all the pictures I used to the "images" folder inside the "public_html"folder. Still nothing. None of the buttons (which don;t really appear) have working links. I really have no idea what I'm doing. I can tell I'm going to feel like a real moron when I figure it out.
 
mbuster said:
Thanks guys for all the repies. I've actually gone ahead and built a few pages. Nothing spectacular at all. Now my problem is publishing it. My host uses bluelagoon cpanel. I'm new at this and am having one hell of a time. I can't get my pages to appear! The Tech support guy says, "upload your files to the "public_html" folder. I did that. Now my index page comes up, but all the images are just boxes with x's in the corner. I uploaded all the pictures I used to the "images" folder inside the "public_html"folder. Still nothing. None of the buttons (which don;t really appear) have working links. I really have no idea what I'm doing. I can tell I'm going to feel like a real moron when I figure it out.
Hey, maybe you could post a link?
I'll do a "view source" and see if I can figure it out for you.
 
OK. Here is the link. I suppose I should note that it's not a music or recording related site, it's for my electrical contracting company. Any help would be way appreciated.
 
You have bad links like

http://www.electricalinnovations.biz/index

and

http://www.electricalinnovations.biz/smarthome

that I suspect should be files with a .html extension.

Yep, there's a file there named smarthome.html.

If you link to /smarthome, you are telling the server you want the default page (usually index.html) in the smarthome subdirectory. Add the .html extension to that link and the smarthome.html page gets loade upon clicking the link.

The images, I don't know what's wrong except that the files you are referencing are not present where the server is being told to find them. Perhaps it's a filenaming issue. For example, the graphic for the smarthome link is supposed to be

Smart_Home_Button.JPG

in the same directory as the main page is. Is it possible it's in a subdirectory? Or that the .JPG should really be .jpg? (Linux amd UNIX web servers are case sensitive, while Windows ones are typically not.)

Hope that helps clear it up.
 
OK...I'm at work for another couple of hours, so I'll look more carefully when I get home, but I can tell one thing right away:

If you posted your images in the "images" folder and your html site in the "public" folder, your html site doesn't know where to look for the images. You can fix this one of two ways:

1. You can either move your pictures from the "images" folder into the "public" folder (I do this...it's easier for me to just keep everything for one site all in one place).
2. You can change your references in the html to reference the "images" folder. I'm not sure if your program has a way to do that or not, but you could do it by hand.

You image references look like this:
<IMG SRC="DistributedAudiobutton.JPG" NAME="idElement123Img" ID="idElement123Img" WIDTH=105 HEIGHT=47 BORDER=0>

They should look like this:
<IMG SRC="images/DistributedAudiobutton.JPG" NAME="idElement123Img" ID="idElement123Img" WIDTH=105 HEIGHT=47 BORDER=0>

And by the way, there's a lot of html in there that doesn't really need to be there, which is another reason I dislike the programs.

I'll get back to ya in a couple of hours or so...
Cheers,
Christopher
 
AlChuck said:
I won't even start with Microsoft FrontPage and its quirks...


Let's just sum it up by saying MS FrontPage blows mouldy goats... shall we?

:D :D :D :D :D

- Tanlith -
 
tanlith said:
Let's just sum it up by saying MS FrontPage blows mouldy goats... shall we?

Well.....yeah...
But Mbuster is using "FREE version Cool Page," as advertised all over the place in the extra shit embedded in his html.

Just getting close to the end of my shift...I'll relook at this page when I get home.
 
Check out this for a starter.

Some basic notes:
Keep all image names and file names lower case only...easier to keep track of. Sometimes "case sensitivity" comes into play. Then change the image and file names referenced with your software, if you can. I didn't really do this in the example, but it's a good practice.

Links to other sites should always end in an extension...like ".html" There is no reason these links shouldn't work as far as the HTML is concerned. The names are incorrectly entered. I got the buttons to link to your sites by adding the .html extension (with exception of "distributeaudio" which is probably misnamed somehow).

I was able to get the "images" to show up simply by putting images in the same folder. Obviously, they're not your images, I created them quickly to demonstrate.
I would have used your actual files, but couldn't find them to save my life. Did you take them off the server?

That link to the Cool Page advertisement has to go!

I'd have worked on it more, but (one) I have to go to bed and (two) I don't do webdesign for a living :)


This is a big reason I don't like "html editors" vs. doing it yourself.
 
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The upper case thing!

God, i remeber it well, when i first started doing my web site. The program I used at the time always seemed to save images with an uper-case .JPG extension, whereas i was entering the name in my code all in lower case! Took me ages to figure out what the problem was. Now I save everything in lower case routinely.

I think its worth sitting down with a pen and paper and work out what kind of sub-drirectory structure you're going to have in place. It's a trade off between having everything neatly organized and ending up wiuth long path names which are a bugger to type in eg 'images\homepage\mugshots\...' , as opposed to dumping all images in 'images\...' which means you end up with loads of graphics and pics in one directory which can be a nightmare to keep track of.

Christopher, I like your site, especialy the stories - kept my attention. You write well.
 
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