Web Development Help

[MR. M]

I wanna get a head start before they start teaching use how to build a website at my college. Whats the easiest way to create a good looking website on a apache webserver i have at home?

Edited August 21, 2011 by MR. M

[Infiltrator]

There are plenty of tutorials on Web site development on the Internet, 3WC (http://www.w3schools.com/) is one of them, it has plenty of contents aimed towards web programming. Now if you are new into the whole web development side of things, I would suggest to buy books on XHTML, CSS and Javascript, and learn all you can about them.

Moreover, if you have time constraints, you could download open source web templates for free and modify them to your likes.

http://www.oswd.org/

http://www.opendesigns.org/

http://www.oswt.co.uk/browse_designs.php

http://opensourcetemplates.org/

[eovnu87435ds]

Check out adobe Muse. its free in beta right now, and it is really slick. It's basically for those who are good in creative design but dont want to be bothered with coding. Basically, Apple's iWeb on crack.

http://muse.adobe.com/

It won't teach you how to code, but it will make a cool website and you can always dive into the code and write it out like Dreamweaver.

Edited August 21, 2011 by eovnu87435ds

[digip]

Personally, I would stay away from ALL of the WYSIWYG editors. Dreamweaver, muse, etc. Not that they don't have a purpose, but most likely, the school, will use something like dreamweaver anyway, so let them teach that part to you. I would just start with the basics. At most you would need to get started, is notepad and a browser. Seriously. W3C schools site is a great resource to get started, and once you get down simple layouts, learning how different doctypes cause different things to happen with CSS and such, then start getting into deeper code and experimenting with things like PHP. You don't need a web server to create web pages locally from the desktop, but if you want to set up PHP and Apache, for learning php, download a Turnkey Linux VM of something like LAMP (thats linux, apache, mysql and pear, which I never even really dove into or tried using pear before and only dabbled a little with mysql when I have to backup wordpress and move it somewhere else)

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/lampstack

if you don't have VMware Workstation, download the free version of VMware Player to run it. And since its a Virtual Environment, no need to fiddle around with installing anything other than the hyper visor to open the VM. That for me would be the best way to learn website development, creating the files and uploading them to the web server so you can test php at home and on the desktop without having to shell out money for a web host and domain name. This is also a good way to learn how to install and configure wordpress or any other number of CMS packages for building sites, but personally I love Wordpress. Easiest to learn and a wealth of knowledge available online for it.

Once you master all of that, and you get to school, you probably won't even want to use Dreamweaver. I use Notepad++, which has syntax highlighting and line numbering and thats about all I really need for creating my websites. That, and photoshop for the artwork, but I do web and graphic design for a living. So my tools and things I would suggest:

- Notepad++ (or any text editor with syntax highlighting and line numbering)

- Browser of your choice, but I suggest opera for its inline editor and Dragonfly to inspect pages and learn from other sites coding

- LAMP Vitrual Machine for local web server

- VMware Player

- Wordpress if you want to create themes and templates to style a site through CMS

- Photoshop (or any equivalent image editing software, such as Gimp or "Paint.Net", a free windows editor similar to photoshop but a bit less features)

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Hi, first post here!

I used to do graphics and illustration for many years, then became a stripclub DJ after those many years' frustration at working for cheap bastards built up to the point where I couldn't stand drawing anymore. That may seem beside the point, but it's not (sorry to seem obtuse lol).

I had always dreamed of starting an erotic website, and finally got started just this month. But despite my years of experience with hand drawn graphics and illustration, I was entirely ignorant of how to do it on a computer, or how to build a website. Basically, I have taught myself how to use Photoshop and Dreamweaver in a double crash course.

I have had to hurry to prove to this model that I could back my talk by doing the walk, or whatever, and get her to sign the damned model release forms and get them back to me pronto--like a damned fool, I have paid her a couple grand for videos without the release forms. I was a little too trusting.

I don't think that's going to be a problem now, because the preview website I built looks pretty good, with two pages, a front and a preview page, with some pretty snazzy graphics if I do say so myself, and links to three preview videos.

Obviously it's going to take a lot more than that to produce a money-making website, but after what I have learned so far, I think it will be doable without too much more effort.

I bought a somewhat dated book on Photoshop, that helped a lot. Dreamweaver was pretty tricky to teach myself quickly, but I found that by using the w3c tutorials, and combining that with Dreamweaver, I was able to get it done, after a lot of trial and error (and much loud cussing lol!).

It's pretty easy also to do a google search for tricks on how to use Photoshop.

One bit of advice, there is a way to save your completed Photoshop project for web use--you definitely want to do that!

I would also highly recommend you use Hostgator for your domain name and hosting--their technical assistance is so much better than you can imagine! They really helped me get through the first rough nights trying to get it all down. Their page editing feature is also fantastic--they have a code editing option, and also a very simple to use interface for webpage creation.

Basically I used all of these programs in combination in a mashup that somehow worked for me through trial and error, and when I got frustrated (which was frequent at first!), I would do a search or try what I was doing on another program.

Another bit of advice--copy the html code that Dreamweaver will produce for you and look closely at how it's structured. I still don't understand a lot of it--but for instance by finding where the 'center page' command was located in one page I had Hostgator help me with, I was able to enter that section of code in all other subsequent pages I made and thereby center the pages myself. Etc, etc.

Good luck! Don't get too frustrated lol...

[psydT0ne]

Content Management System

http://wiki.e107.org/index.php?title=About_e107

[justapeon]

Not a web programmer by any shape or means. If I see a website I like, I will view source and save it. Then use the file as a template for what I would like to create. Thall shalt cut and paste. I agree that w3schools is a good site. There are several others that can be easily found with a web search. Sometimes we use wget to copy the training sites (open source sites that it) to make it easier to view off-line.

[Sitwon]

http://w3fools.com/

[tbstuntz]

this is a really popular topic but I never see anyone suggest http://www.thenewboston.com/

Its excellent if your wanting to start a new language:)

[Hyperant]

http://w3fools.com/

If you ask me if a sites whole purpose is to bad mouth another site because they have got a few things wrong on there site in regards to html etc then at least they could code there site so that it doesnt have a shitload of css warnings (firefox drops a lot of there css ;) )

So the moral of this story is if your going to make a site to bag another site for getting it wrong then at least make sure you get it right

[digip]

If you ask me if a sites whole purpose is to bad mouth another site because they have got a few things wrong on there site in regards to html etc then at least they could code there site so that it doesnt have a shitload of css warnings (firefox drops a lot of there css ;) )

So the moral of this story is if your going to make a site to bag another site for getting it wrong then at least make sure you get it right

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fw3fools.com%2F&profile=css21&usermedium=all&warning=1&vextwarning=〈=en

Yeah, anyone who uses W3schools to get "certified" needs to get their head checked. But its still a great place to learn about code and gives examples for beginners, but please, its not the end all be all resource on coding standards. Even the w3 site itself has implementations of standards, that while they are standards, all browsers at some point or another have rendered them in their own way, and not always with the same results across all browsers. Defending IE8 is just too funny. IE has been the hankering pig of all browsers when it comes to standards and compliant code running the way it should on their browsers. IE9 is definitely closer to what things should be, and while IE8 is not horrid, it gets a lot wrong too and still doesn't handle css3 properly. As a designer myself, I don't want to have to create a site for every browser, and thats a problem if you want to support legacy crap like IE6 and 7. Even 8 needs some tweaking and occasionally added css just for itself, but for the most part IE lacks standardization as do most browsers. For example a border-radius is compliant css3 code, yet Mozilla and Webkit based browser, require their own in house prefixes, such as -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius. Its ridiculous. not to mention, that if you want to do it in IE8 and below, you have to use active-x. dxtransforms or javascript to make shit happen.

Bottom line is, you have to start somewhere, and w3schools is a perfectly legit site to use for learning. Its not the gospel, but who cares. It services its purpose. I visit w3schools and php.net all the time to look up coding examples and there is nothing wrong with using them to learn from.

[justapeon]

http://www.thenewboston.com/ Videos in byte size pieces, Interesting,,,,

[Hyperant]

As a designer myself, I don't want to have to create a site for every browser,

I fill the exact same way, i dont see how they can get away with it to tell you the truth. We have standards for a reason. The way i look at it is that they dont create a standard and then say you dont have to implement it exactly how we say, close enough is fine. Just image if all the operating systems implemented the tcp stack just a little different, you know close enough to the standards for tcp, we wouldnt except it. But yet for some reason when it comes to web development we just seem to except it and deal with it. But if you ask me, every web developer should just stop trying to support all the different browsers out there and just make sure there code is 100% complaint, that way if it doesnt show up right in a browser it isnt actually your fault but the browsers fault.

Bottom line is, you have to start somewhere, and w3schools is a perfectly legit site to use for learning. Its not the gospel, but who cares. It services its purpose. I visit w3schools and php.net all the time to look up coding examples and there is nothing wrong with using them to learn from.

I agree with that 100% i often use w3schools just to refresh my memory on css attributes etc.. Its a very handy site.

[digip]

http://www.thenewboston.com/ Videos in byte size pieces, Interesting,,,,

Don't forget http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/ too, but they mainly cater to webkit browsers which is kind of liek catering to internet explorer. Some of the coding examples only work in webkit browsers, which is why I didn't link them initially, but still has some nice coding examples.