My first ever shot making a website

[yurimxpxman]

"But yeah, the days of making web pages in notepad are prettymuch long gone."

Not necessarily. It's true that a lot of small business sites and homepages are made that way, but the most powerful sites must be hand-coded. It's the only way to achieve the exact results you want, especially if you need scripts. Most of the powerful websites these days are powered by hand-written server-side scripts, such as PHP. That's why you'll see a lot of sloppy looking HTML, but their actual PHP source usually looks very clean.

But like I said before, site managers are great for most people and they certainly have improved over the years, but I still recommend at least learning the basics of HTML before attempting to make a site with an app.

Personally, I don't let any HTML apps touch my code at all because it's hard to read application-generated code. I have my own standard way of coding pages and I can make an impressive site that way just as fast as someone using Dreamweaver. Of course, there are certain tools that can come in handy, such as color pickers and notepad apps with auto-indent and color-coding.

It's been my experience that M$ Word generates the worst code.

[Neo_Angelo]

CSS is always good to know. i've been studying up on it ^^.

maybe you should learn javascript and add some nice liottle features for your site. javascript has a good variety of effects and isn't limited to much at all. but if your after all out web based design, i'd recomend doing your site using PHP, since you can include HTML in there to as well as CSS definitions.

[Lead Head]

Originally Posted by Neo_Angelo

CSS is always good to know. i've been studying up on it ^^.

maybe you should learn javascript and add some nice liottle features for your site. javascript has a good variety of effects and isn't limited to much at all. but if your after all out web based design, i'd recomend doing your site using PHP, since you can include HTML in there to as well as CSS definitions.

I'll look into that eventually, but my site doesn't have any real purpose, it was more a self test to see if i could make a website in notepad

[Jokerswild]

I start looking at doing this stuff for web pages and I can't bring myself to spend that much time to learn everything. Too old and too dense I guess.

[yurimxpxman]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

I start looking at doing this stuff for web pages and I can't bring myself to spend that much time to learn everything. Too old and too dense I guess.

I've been thinking of writing some web programming guides. Learning HTML is essiential for anyone who's interested in any kind of programming, web or non.

[Neo_Angelo]

i'm a big fan of HTML and i've been learning it for a few months, in my own time. i have a huge book on it. but i want to learn PHP the most as its more capable of doing the things i want it to do and is more easier than using HTML.

[yurimxpxman]

Originally Posted by Neo_Angelo

i'm a big fan of HTML and i've been learning it for a few months, in my own time. i have a huge book on it. but i want to learn PHP the most as its more capable of doing the things i want it to do and is more easier than using HTML.

umm... I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you can't write PHP scripts without knowing HTML thoroughly. PHP tags are put inside of the rest of the HTML in a file and will only output the HTML you tell it to.

[Jokerswild]

Whats cobol? I have a cousin that works programming with it but I never have gotten into a discussion with him about it.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

Whats cobol? I have a cousin that works programming with it but I never have gotten into a discussion with him about it.

COBOL is an ancient language that computer science students are forced to learn. Thankfully, I have never taken it, know anything about it, or have any desire to learn. I don't think I've ever heard anyone speak of COBOL with a positive tone.

[Capper]

Originally Posted by yurimxpxman

"But yeah, the days of making web pages in notepad are prettymuch long gone."

Not necessarily. It's true that a lot of small business sites and homepages are made that way, but the most powerful sites must be hand-coded. It's the only way to achieve the exact results you want, especially if you need scripts. Most of the powerful websites these days are powered by hand-written server-side scripts, such as PHP. That's why you'll see a lot of sloppy looking HTML, but their actual PHP source usually looks very clean.

But like I said before, site managers are great for most people and they certainly have improved over the years, but I still recommend at least learning the basics of HTML before attempting to make a site with an app.

Personally, I don't let any HTML apps touch my code at all because it's hard to read application-generated code. I have my own standard way of coding pages and I can make an impressive site that way just as fast as someone using Dreamweaver. Of course, there are certain tools that can come in handy, such as color pickers and notepad apps with auto-indent and color-coding.

It's been my experience that M$ Word generates the worst code.

I disagree with a lot of what you say. While M$ Word is not a good HTML program....but Dreamweaver, Front Page, Coffeee Cup, etc are great applications for site building. I also disagree that most "big" sites are hand coded (actually, I know this for a fact)....most use applications like the one we use (PHPCOW), and while I did almost all of what you see myself....it was pretty simple considering this was my first attempt at building a site from scratch.
A good way to approach it is to use Dreamweaver or Front Page to generate the code, then clean it up on your own and preview it before using it.

LH, most hosts offer basic web site building applications free with their hosting package.....and Google is now offering a website builder program
http://pages.google.com/manager/