Making a web site?

Most ISP's have something to help you put up a site, and many will have recommended software. Internecine Exploder used to have it built in. Pagespinner is not bad, but I haven't used it in years.

Try looking at Tucows.

Last time when I was at Staples there was a software called WebEasy they carried that has templates and helps you build a website.  I use dreamweaver for mine but for a basic site that's overkill.  (yes my copy is legal after I got it while working for my school paper as the online editor =P )

There is NO magic in a web site, none whatsoever.  Those who charge outrageous fees for building them would like you to think otherwise, but it's a fact.  HTML is just text and even viewing it "Raw" is not difficult.  I use Notepad for most of my pages.

If you have Microsoft Word you have a page editor.  Word can save documents in HTML format (although they are very unoptimized, Microsoft-specific, and nasty inside).  Take a look at the Mozilla browser at This Link.  It has a built-in WYSIWYG editor and basically you just drop in pictures and it creates the HTML code.

A word of advice though: Use thumbnail images!  Instead of linking to a whole bunch of large images, use some sort of graphic editing software to create reduced-size thumbnails (I usually use 200 x 150 for 1024 x 768 images) and then add a link to the larger image.  This makes it a LOT faster to load than having the full-sized images scaled down on the page.  A friend set up a page once and asked me to take a look at it.  He had about 30 images on it and I couldn't figure out why it took several minutes to load over a broadband connection.  I looked at the page code and all of the images were over 2,000 pixels wide and scaled down on the page to fit in a postage stamp sized grid.  That page required several megabytes of images just to show the thumbnails.  If I had tried to look at it with a dialup connection I'd have given up before it ever loaded.

Another thing is to just keep at it and trying new things out. if they don't work, thats what the undo button is for. It is really not that hard to put one together like Scott said. That and set up the structure of the site up pretty organized fromt he start. A lot easier than trying to fix it later. I taught myself how to do it so it's not that hard at all.

I went from my first site  ,to one of my recent sites pretty easily.

I don't suggest Angelfire though. I woulnd up not being able to get in and edit it because it would not give me anything but a page to upgrade my service. There are alot of places that give a pretty good amount of space for free now days like http://100webspace.com/

A good little program to resize pictures and do basic editing is Irfanview. It is free as well. You can take a picture that is 2MB in size and get it to around 100k without looseing much quality at all. I have over 450 pictures on my one site and it is still under 20MB in size. Just play around and you'll figure it out.

It really isn't hard to make your own website.  The toughtest part is finding a spot to put it and then finding software that help you organize it.  Probably the best way to go about it is to just hop in and get your feet wet.  Once you have your webspace set aside try post a picture or two on it.  Then keep building and refining.

I prefer Frontpage to make my webpages and Photoshop to minipulate the pictures and artwork.  Dreamweaver is pretty good and easier to learn.  But no matter what software you end up using there is a learning curve and I really kinda doubt you'll find one that comes with templates that would be of much use.  At least I haven't seen any so far that were worth trying to use.  Its true webpages are setup using html but its harder to outright learn html then try making a webpage although it helps to understand the html.

i use winsave

The template is "Hot Stuff"

Here is the result

Frontpage is probally one of the most accessable in terms of ease of use vs features in getting a website up. I personally use Golive on my own modelling site but have Frontapge in the past. Took a look a Dreamweaver, way too complicated for what your goals are. Frontpage has a fairly strong template feature, where you specfiy a pre-canned theme, frontpage then generates the pages, and you modify the content. It includes a photo-gallery feature to automatically generate photo pages. If you do use frontpage though, you hosting service must support Frontpage extensions.

If you want the 'free' route, most hosting services have some free simple web design software right on their website. I use 1and1 to host mine, they have a $5/month plan with no ads. I tried to 'free' ones, but got really annoyed with the ads. I personally wouldn't recommend anything that requires you learn HTML - unless you are interested that is.

If you own Photoshop or other photo software, most have a feature to generate web pages with thumbnails from your photos. On the free side, you can't beat picasa (picasa.google.com) - a free picture orginaizer from Google. It also can generate web pages with thumbnials and you specify the actual image size.

You'll most likely need an FTP program to send your files to the web server, there are several free or shareware out there. Hope this helps.

Learning HTML is quick and easy. If you don't want to code it yourself, most online hosting sites have their own templates. Google web templates, and you'll get many hits.

Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage will all do it for you as well.

Thanks for all the responses and tips guys.  Gonna start Googleing my brains out now.

I've been building web sites for awhile now.

I started off by learning HTML and then some Javascript code and then I tried different WYSIWYG programs. I'm using Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop and Flash now. I really like Dreamweaver, but there are many other ways to design pages - Microsoft Word, Netscape Composer, Frontpage Express, Notepad (HTML coding), many more...

Almost all hosting services (free ones or ISP's) supply some form of page/site creation programs for you to use.

It is a good idea though to learn a few basic TAG's (HTML codes) so you can make quick, behind the scene changes. A good place to get started might be to look around here - HTML Goodies as there is a wealth of info to be found along with tutorials. Another helpful tip - when on a simple web page, click: View, Page Source and look at the <tags>.

A couple of free site hosts are Tripod and Geocities, but they have those darn banner ads.

Just a few examples:
My old and forgotten Tripod sites gaming site, drafting site.
My wife's pay site and my pay gaming site.

I do web sites for a living. I'm thinking about posting my progress in getting back into building. I could use just about anything- I have the tools, I have server space.

Still- I'm going with Blogger. (blogger.com)

Why? I want to post some stuff, a few pics, a few notes, have people comment on it. I don't want to mess with the "work" stuff.

So if you're interested in learning web stuff- everyone has posted some great tips.

If you just want to get some stuff posted- try Blogger. If you get really interested, you can always go more sophisticated.

 

Also- a great, simple, free editing program is Paint.net. It has some tools you'll need- crop, sharpen, etc., for graphics. But it's free! http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/

Be sure and post your link when you're done.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

 

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