How to Build a Website

meangene01

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I concur with the Wordpress ideas; there are a lot of free themes so you won't have to do any real coding and a lot of people are using these themes for full fledged sites and not just blogging. I'll also add that you can get a pretty reasonable hosting plan through most reputable places for about $100/year (I've been using Dreamhost for about a decade and they include Wordpress in the package). Hosting your own site will help with branding and make you look a little more professional.
 

Reziac

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I do design websites and use DreamWeaver, which I wouldn't recommend you running out and purchasing right now. There is the Front Page clone, now retitled Office Sharepoint Designer by Microsoft. It is free.

Oooh, thanks for that. Once they got the backspace-over-table-tags bug sorted, FrontPage became a nice user-friendly editor that made relatively clean code. (And it had a long way to go, considering it was initially designed as a site manager, not as an editor.) It was also the only thing I found that could clean up the mess made by DreamWeaver. :tongue

Now if they'd just add link-following (instead of having to open-in-new-window)... that's the feature that keeps me using AOLpress, now 17 years old. (And the other is... absolutely clean code.)
 

Laer Carroll

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I was working at NASA when the web was just a baby. My bosses gave me the job of creating one of the very first web sites. I built it from scratch. It worked well for several years, giving a bunch of scientists a way to post & share experimental data from deep-space probes. So I was tasked to do it again.

I can write HTML and CSS and more esoteric stuff almost in my sleep. And on short-deadline jobs pretty much did.

So I tell you from a pro’s perspective. DON’T BUILD YOUR SITE FROM SCRATCH. Use all the pre-existing code you can get. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Take almost any free site and create a basic blog/site. WordPress is the best choice, Blogger the second. Start small, stay small, take baby steps to improve. Look at the bigger picture: what do you want to accomplish with your site? How can you make it look good and be easy to use? And ESPECIALLY easy to redesign and update it. A bunch of homebuilt code is incredibly difficult to modify, even for pros like me.

Building your own site can make you feel like a super techy. But in the end you’ll likely have a lackluster site which not even your mother will visit.
 

dantefrizzoli

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Does anyone know how to build a website and how much it would cost? I'e googled this before, and I have no idea. I'm thinking about eventually starting an author site, but I don't know how to go about it. I haven't been good with computers since I used to program BASIC on the Commodore 128. Any ideas?

If you have the money you can buy Adobe Dreamweaver and build your website from the UI that it provides. Then you will need to buy a domain name. After that you will need to find a host and then upload your files to the host for hosting.
 

robjvargas

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Dreamweaver is a major investment. And with Adobe's demand that you subscribe to their "Creative Cloud" crap, I can no longer recommend the software. Others may be less concerned with that.

There are numerous free and low-cost methods to have your own Web site, including services like Blogger and Wordpress that have a whole platform of more or less plug and play add-ons and templates that allow for a great deal of customization.

Free and open source editors are getting harder to come by, because of platforms like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and other systems that can install right to your Web site and take care of the deeper level coding for you, without blocking you from digging in to the HTML and CSS that they run with. Kompozer is one that I've used a little bit. If you Google "WYSIWYG HTML" you'll find numerous sites offering choices, and 5-7 of their recommendations are pretty near universal.
 

atthebeach

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Excellent advice on this thread.

I absolutely love Wordpress. It is free, and does not have to look like a blog at all if you do not want it to (all up to you, all free).

Follow the advice given. I bought my .com domains for about $7-$10 per year each (bulk discount for multiple years purchased).

The only thing I am currently doing different is regarding hosting. I did have one of the companies that provide cheaper hosting ($4-$8 a month) and that still works great for many people.

I am now switching over, however, to a more expensive plan of managed Wordpress hosting, mainly because of being hacked and recently realizing my host was not as great as I had thought.

I am upping my cost to about $27 a month for hosting (minimum plan for them- websynthesis, which hopefully will be worth the investment), but I might quickly have to switch to the $99 a month one, depending on traffic.

But, if you are just starting out, and you save backups of your posts, and you are not doing much ecommerce/selling on your website (perhaps only an Amazon link or two), then the smaller low-cost hosts should be okay.

So get a domain from one company, get hosting cheap from another, install a free Wordpress theme you like, and you are done and ready to add content! Best wishes...
 

dantefrizzoli

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Dreamweaver is a major investment. And with Adobe's demand that you subscribe to their "Creative Cloud" crap, I can no longer recommend the software. Others may be less concerned with that.

There are numerous free and low-cost methods to have your own Web site, including services like Blogger and Wordpress that have a whole platform of more or less plug and play add-ons and templates that allow for a great deal of customization.

Free and open source editors are getting harder to come by, because of platforms like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and other systems that can install right to your Web site and take care of the deeper level coding for you, without blocking you from digging in to the HTML and CSS that they run with. Kompozer is one that I've used a little bit. If you Google "WYSIWYG HTML" you'll find numerous sites offering choices, and 5-7 of their recommendations are pretty near universal.

I have always been the type to go big or not go at all. Plus I have always liked Dreamweaver, but I never subscribed to the Creative Cloud.
 

fivetoesten

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Whenever I want to use a WYSIWYG html editor I use Amaya, then I tweak the html by hand.
 

henmatth

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Matt, I think you need to refresh a bit with web design and see its latest updates. It may sound costly, but it is good and wise investment. Sacrifice some dollars and go study HTML and CSS. Believe me, it's worth the effort. If you don't want this option, you might as well study how to go about WORDPRESS. It may sound difficult, but there are some tutorials you find in the NET.

Technology has advanced so keep up with the times. If you don't want to be left behind, take a chance to do something to keep up. Or you may utilize a web developer for that!
 

robjvargas

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It doesn't have to cost anything but time. There are numerous tutorials and MOOC offerings throughout the Web. For text, I generally use W3Schools, and Coursera for something more instructor-led, although you have to wait for course availability that way.
 

ssbittner

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I just wanted to thank everyone for their excellent advice in this thread. I just got my new WordPress webpage up and running thanks to it!
 

Jack Oskar Larm

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I'm surprised (?) that no one has mentioned using Wix or Weebly to build and host their site. I use Wix for a number of sites, both free and premium. The tools offered are incredibly powerful but easy to use. There are hundreds of templates that you can modify to your heart's content. For someone who doesn't want to tackle code these services are perfect ... and in most cases offer functionality that is just as good as that provided by coders. I used to code by hand, then moved to DreamWeaver, but other priorities like writing got in the way. And, no, I'm not affiliated with either of these companies.
 

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I'm surprised (?) that no one has mentioned using Wix or Weebly to build and host their site. I use Wix for a number of sites, both free and premium. The tools offered are incredibly powerful but easy to use. There are hundreds of templates that you can modify to your heart's content. For someone who doesn't want to tackle code these services are perfect ... and in most cases offer functionality that is just as good as that provided by coders. I used to code by hand, then moved to DreamWeaver, but other priorities like writing got in the way. And, no, I'm not affiliated with either of these companies.

Wix and Weebly control your content. You can't easily move it, export it or back it up, and they're wretched in terms of sites accessed on smart phones or tablets.

I'd look at a free blogger or wordpress.com site long before I'd look at either Wix or Weebly.
 

Jack Oskar Larm

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Wix and Weebly control your content. You can't easily move it, export it or back it up, and they're wretched in terms of sites accessed on smart phones or tablets.

I'd look at a free blogger or wordpress.com site long before I'd look at either Wix or Weebly.

What do you mean 'they control your content'?

And regarding phones and tablets, Wix has an easy smart phone editor that only needs a little tweak here and there to get it looking right.

Regarding moving, backing up or exporting ... I've had no problems there, either.

Admittedly, I haven't had any problems, yet. I'll keep in mind your comments. Thanks.
 

Laer Carroll

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One of the good things about WordPress is that it can be both a blog and a web site. Blogger has followed their lead and now has this option too.

So for my "pro" site, devoted to my writing, I set the Home page to the blog section of my site. This is what viewers first see. It has short announcements of recent sample chapters, books published, and such. It also includes (again, SHORT) announcements of stuff I think my typical readers would like to know about. This includes tech stuff such as aerospace developments (I'm an aerospace engineer and such topics crop up in my fiction). Also sci-fi and fantasy topics, such as the premiere of the latest incarnation of Dr. Who. And personal stuff such as my love of the music of French songstress Alizeé.

On the static part of my site I include sample chapters for each of my books, background info on the settings used in the books, and longer articles such as the actresses I think most embody Wonder Woman's look. (That last includes shots of them in bikinis, so it's no wonder that a year after its intro it's still one of my most popular pages!)

IF I also had a blog with posts of very personal stuff I could also include a link to that in my About biographical page, but I prefer not to blather on about stuff not even my mother (God rest her soul) would care to read!
 

robjvargas

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I'm surprised (?) that no one has mentioned using Wix or Weebly to build and host their site. I use Wix for a number of sites, both free and premium. The tools offered are incredibly powerful but easy to use. There are hundreds of templates that you can modify to your heart's content. For someone who doesn't want to tackle code these services are perfect ... and in most cases offer functionality that is just as good as that provided by coders. I used to code by hand, then moved to DreamWeaver, but other priorities like writing got in the way. And, no, I'm not affiliated with either of these companies.

Wix and Weebly seemed friendly enough. But one test I always carry out is to try to move myself to another service. These two services present their data in a proprietary format, and didn't offer me a whole lot of support in saving to a format that Blogger or Wordpress could easily import.

In essence, once you start with them, they assume that you're staying. I'm not a fan of that kind of lock in.
 

Jack Oskar Larm

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Wix and Weebly seemed friendly enough. But one test I always carry out is to try to move myself to another service. These two services present their data in a proprietary format, and didn't offer me a whole lot of support in saving to a format that Blogger or Wordpress could easily import.

In essence, once you start with them, they assume that you're staying. I'm not a fan of that kind of lock in.

I'm no fan of 'lock in' contracts, either. I suppose the deal with this devil I'm willing to make is they provide a good platform at a good price and I'll stick with them. If, however, they hand me a shovel and lead me to the coal furnace and suggest I start feeding the flames, well, then I'll kick up a fuss.

I appreciate your insight.