making a website [Archive]

rioters bloc

10th June 2006, 04:09

i tried myspace after drain.you suggested it to me but i don't like it.

so, what's an easy way to set up a website? i don't wanna do them wizard things. they annoy me and look ugly. however i'm hopeless with html (other than real basic stuff).

is there any shareware around that could help me?

i just want a fairly basic website to upload photos and videos from actions, maybe a function to make posts about actions, and a calendar type thing to announce upcoming actions (although www.active.org.au is good for that so not necessary).

please help :(

oh and any cheap website providers would be good to know too :)

Sugar Hill Kevis

11th June 2006, 13:35

Obtaining a copy of dreamweaver would be a good idea... either getting a cheap copy off of eBay or through other means

It's relatively simple to use and I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials online should you get stuck...

www.softarchive.net also has some good templates in the 'other' section if you want to use them and modify them slightly, should you not want to put in the time of doing it all yourself...

which doctor

11th June 2006, 18:57

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2006, 05:36 AM
Obtaining a copy of dreamweaver would be a good idea... either getting a cheap copy off of eBay or through other means

I downloaded Dreamweaver through a torrent. I was clueless using it, but maybe I was just doing something wrong.

Nachie

11th June 2006, 19:13

http://www.livejournal.com is sort of like MySpace but more of a "blog" format that would allow you to just do news updates and picture posts without having much tech knowledge. The downside is it will only exist as a newswire and you can't set up archive pages, though you can always go back and look at the things you've posted before. Most people use LJ as a "social networking" site but you can definitely use it like a public newswire that is already set up for you to use. It can also be hard to use effectively unless you already have a network of people using the site.

For hosting photos, photobucket.com

Usually the hard part about making a website isn't coding it so much as finding a place to host it and FTP'ing your files onto their server. That can all get a bit tricky which is why it can be a good idea to start with things like LJ and photobucket that just make things pretty easy.

More Fire for the People

11th June 2006, 19:20

HTML tutorials:
http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/html/ <- [more advanced]

But if you want a blog, I suggest you use blogspot.

Nachie

11th June 2006, 19:27

Originally posted by Hopscotch [email protected] 11 2006, 04:21 PM
But if you want a blog, I suggest you use blogspot.
Oh snap I had forgotten about that one, yeah it's definitely very good. There are also already some pretty good radical blogs on there:

http://bombsandshields.blogspot.com

http://riotporn.blogspot.com

Check those out and see they're "the kind of thing" you were talking about...

Sugar Hill Kevis

11th June 2006, 22:43

I found just playing around in dreamweaver, seeing what does what for a little while kinda works... I find just doing flashy graphics in photoshop and having simple dreamweaverage works quite well...

I just tend to use frames, right clicking and changing default fonts, background colours and whatnot as well as the navigation bar feature... apart from that I just drop in images...

rioters bloc

13th June 2006, 07:38

oh wow! people actually replied. heh, i dunno how i missed it.

thanks all! i've tried using dreamweaver before and it wasn't bad, but i no longer have a copy :( i asked my bf to 'acquire' it for me as my internet's slow but they cut his download down :angry:

i've tried blogs before and i'm hopeless, like really hopeless. i post once and then i can't be arsed. but i'll give all of those things a shot :)

i appreciate all the suggestions! much love. when it's all set up and shnazzy i shall bombard you all with it :)

which doctor

13th June 2006, 07:54

You can try to use google pages. They give you unlimited bandwidth, but only 100mb of space for storing stuff on their servers. And the best part of all it doesn't cost you a thing and it's ad-free.

All you need is a gmail account, if you don't have one PM me for an invite to it.

It's best to choose a gmail name that you want the name of the site to be.

Here's an example of a small site I made. http://the.insurrectionary.googlepages.com/home

In that case my gmail name was [email protected] I don't use that as my main email account, but I made a new one so I could have a relevant site name to the content.

Google Pages (http://pages.google.com/)

rioters bloc

13th June 2006, 08:04

oh cool :D thanks FoB. cpa gave me a gmail account today, and the username i picked is the same as what i want my site to be anyway lol ;)

another question, gmail doesn't work on my computer. it always 'times out' both on ie and safari. anyone know why?

which doctor

13th June 2006, 08:07

Originally posted by rioters [email protected] 13 2006, 12:05 AM
another question, gmail doesn't work on my computer. it always 'times out' both on ie and safari. anyone know why?
Hmm...I don't know why that could happen. I don't use Safari or IE. I use Firefox and Opera and it always seems to work fine with me. I remember you saying something about you having slow internet, that could be it. It should still work though, even if you have something as slow as 56k.

Try to see if it works on Mozilla Firefox

ps: didn't I give you a gmail account too?

rioters bloc

13th June 2006, 09:18

Originally posted by Fist of Blood+Jun 13 2006, 02:38 PM--> (Fist of Blood @ Jun 13 2006, 02:38 PM)
rioters [email protected] 13 2006, 12:05 AM
another question, gmail doesn't work on my computer. it always 'times out' both on ie and safari. anyone know why?
Hmm...I don't know why that could happen. I don't use Safari or IE. I use Firefox and Opera and it always seems to work fine with me. I remember you saying something about you having slow internet, that could be it. It should still work though, even if you have something as slow as 56k.

Try to see if it works on Mozilla Firefox

ps: didn't I give you a gmail account too? [/b]
yeah lol i think you did, and it didn't work :( oops i meant i use firefoz not safari.

it could be my internet :/ but... actually no, it works for my brother!!!!! i dont get it!!!!!!! :(

apathy maybe

13th June 2006, 09:43

Umm... Given what you want I would suggest learning PHP and doing it yourself (or if I was given an incentive and you could wait until after my exams finish and a bit more, say a month, I could do it).

Webspace. Depends on how much you are willing to pay. I was looking to get a "commercial" website, but then I thought about going the route of running it off my own computer, then stuff caught up with me. (Besides I am hosted on ids.org.au at the moment. $10 for a year!)

Make sure any commercial website has SSH & FTP access, PHP and MySQL as well. You might not use it, but you might (especially if you are wanting to do the stuff you suggested).

If you do get commercial hosting, make sure to read the terms and conditions, you want more then 99.5% uptime (guaranteed). You want to make sure they will not be able to cut off your site because they feel it is illegal. Get a lawyer friend to look over the contract for you.

As for tools, I would suggest having a look at Wiki software (such as what runs Wikipedia.org and ids.org.au/envirocollective/wiki). It is not HTML and does not require knowing any. It does require knowing a liddle bit of PHP (or having a reasonable level of intelligence to pick it up).

I would steer clear of Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG tools. They (often) produce cruffty code that is horrible to look at, is not standards compliant and takes longer to download.

rioters bloc

13th June 2006, 09:49

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 13 2006, 04:14 PM
Umm... Given what you want I would suggest learning PHP and doing it yourself (or if I was given an incentive and you could wait until after my exams finish and a bit more, say a month, I could do it).

Webspace. Depends on how much you are willing to pay. I was looking to get a "commercial" website, but then I thought about going the route of running it off my own computer, then stuff caught up with me. (Besides I am hosted on ids.org.au at the moment. $10 for a year!)

Make sure any commercial website has SSH & FTP access, PHP and MySQL as well. You might not use it, but you might (especially if you are wanting to do the stuff you suggested).

If you do get commercial hosting, make sure to read the terms and conditions, you want more then 99.5% uptime (guaranteed). You want to make sure they will not be able to cut off your site because they feel it is illegal. Get a lawyer friend to look over the contract for you.

As for tools, I would suggest having a look at Wiki software (such as what runs Wikipedia.org and ids.org.au/envirocollective/wiki). It is not HTML and does not require knowing any. It does require knowing a liddle bit of PHP (or having a reasonable level of intelligence to pick it up).

I would steer clear of Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG tools. They (often) produce cruffty code that is horrible to look at, is not standards compliant and takes longer to download.
LOL

i asked chris to help me and he said: "ask apathy maybe :)"

you sound smart.

i have no idea what you just said.

smart michael :)

apathy maybe

15th June 2006, 06:24

Basically if you are looking for commercial hosting you want them to have SSH (secure shell) & FTP (file transfer protocol) access, PHP (http://au.php.net), MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/) and 99.5% uptime (guaranteed). You do not need to know what these terms mean just now.

Wiki software is great stuff and lets you edit things really easily. See Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) for an example.

The other software to actually run your site, I'm currently writing something similar for my own use, shouldn't be too hard to fit what you want it for. But it will take time as I have shit to do.