Website Creation Recommendation

[Shaun.P]

Hey All,

Well its the summer holidays and I've left Secondary School (High School) and I have lots of free time (don't start Uni until September) in which I'll need to get a job! However I'd like to create a website. I used to use Frontpage (when I had a PC) to make my websites and host them on Geocities (I have a Star Trek RPG website) however this was many years ago and I didn't actually know how to code with HTML, only how to 'work with it'.

Anyway, for some time now (I have a Mac now) I have wanted my own personal presence on the website, where I could maybe post a blog, post some photography, a CV and other sort of stuff. I want it to look good, and ideally I would like to use .Mac however I feel it is far too expensive.

Any recommendation to where I could have my own presence on the web and any tips would be greatly appreciated. I recently found a member on MacRumors with a myspace account and it looked pretty good.

Anyway, what are your views?

 

[40167]

Well if you have the equipment (a computer that can stay on all the time, and a decently quick broadband line), id recommend building your own server aswell... this way you can easily add stuff like PHP, which normaly wont work with free hosting... though im sure if you looked hard you could find that, but i douth it would be very good.

As for the website itself, if your going to use free hosting or .mac (which I personaly wouldnt use, as yeah... its kinda expensive, seeing that you can get the same for free; your isp probibly gives you some sort of free webspace), id use dreamweaver, it's fairly easy once you know what the buttons do and it churns out some pretty good looking websites... (the one in my sig is from a couple hours in dreamweaver) especialy if your going to compare it to frontpage. ~ If your going to use your own server, then id recommend using something like PHP-Nuke, as you can pretty much set that up and leave it... if you want to change anything, you just login to whatever.com/admin.php with your user/pass and edit it trough there or add some photos, videos, or text to your blog entrys; and what I personaly like is the ability to load up a bunch of themes, and have the users be able to choose the look that they want for your website and all your information will stay the same no mater what look they use... I used to have a php website, and i'd have the entire look (default that came up) of the website change for holidays or seasons; was pretty nice.

 

[Shaun.P]

Thanks for your reply.

No, my mum wouldn't let me keep my eMac on constantly too noisy and it's in my bedroom also!

I tried using DreamWeaver and found it far too complicated .

BTW, your website looks good!

 

[theappleguy]

No, my mum wouldn't let me keep my eMac on constantly too noisy and it's in my bedroom also!

You should look at getting a cheap hosting package. I know TJR Networks has a half price special at the moment and their plans are very affordable.

As far as creating the site goes, HTML Dog is the best place to start if you don't want to use a WYSIWYG editor.

 

[Shaun.P]

I was thinking of more along the lines of making a website where you provide the information and the page is automatically made.

Something really similar to .Mac. I think the look of .Mac is great and I'd like to use something similar, very cheap or even free. It's not the actual HTML coding that I'm not good at, it's the designing - I'm very fussy about design. I don't know why but I like the .Mac homepages - they are simple and look good.

 

[theappleguy]

You might want to look at RapidWeaver, but it doesn't give you very much design freedom compared with a WYSIWYG editor like Adobe GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver.

I was thinking of more along the lines of making a website where you provide the information and the page is automatically made.

If you look for a host that offers Fantastico, you can install a content management system at the click of a button. However, you still need to have some basic HTML knowledge to customise its output.