way way OT - advice on Webspace

I use a company in the states for my webspace -

They do a deal for 12 months. I have had no hassles at all.

Cheers

Peter

I use Pogga for hosting my website.

They do a 1 year hosting package for £10. It's called Student, but is for everyone. You get 5 email accounts with IMAP/POP3 access, 250megs of space, ftp access, PHP, SLQ. Very good value. From the control panel you can access a list of installable webinterfaces such as forums, galleries, content managers, calendars...

I'm currently using a PHP frontend/content-manager called Mambo. You don't need any software to build it, everything is done via a php web interface. David

How do you do?

brewing your own beer may be more fun/useful :)

For price you can't beat the free space provided by your ISP. Also Y! &c still provide free space. With both those you get a rather dodgy looking URL similar to: name.users..com

Next up (in cost terms) there are thousands of hosts operating on stateside servers (also check Malaysia).

For preference I would suggest you research your locale for providors - you can't beat a face-to-face (over a beer or two) for effective comms.

Note that /all/ providers have issues - it's how they deal with them that separates the men from the toys.

notepad will do for starters - FWIW I use textpad (mostly).

There's a good starter tutorial here:

On or around 30 Nov 2005 03:30:37 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com enlightened us thusly:

does your ISP provide it as part of your connection package?

If not...

mine is with 123-reg - the basic elcheapo package - seems reasonable value and works OK.

Firstly, use some free webspace (you should get some from your ISP) to play with - don't worry if you mess it up - it's normal.

Secondly, and most importantly, remember that all web pages are basically 'text' which then instructs your web browser how to display the information. It's a very, very good idea to start by developing a basic understanding of the various components that go into the 'code'.

The 101 Club website

has been written using abasic text editor called 'vi' - this is on a linux machine, as you'reusing Windows look for something other than 'notepad', like 'editpad'. It's very, very easy to pick up bad habits - and then very, very hard to break them. The club site needs a fair amount of changes to be fully W3C compliant - all due to me writing it by hand using my old (10 years out of date) code habits :-)

Finally, remember that the web has become popular _because_ it's so easy to publish content - it really isn't rocket science - if it were, I wouldn't be doing it!

Hi all. I use my ISP's webspace allocated to me when I signed up. The downside is you dont really get to use the name you want for instance my webspace address is...

the name of the site which can be anything you want, for example....er...off the top of my head ...'deesidetkd'. (Apologies for that shameless plug!) I also use Notepad in Windows as everything is in HTML which as mother said is basically just text. I am sure there must be easier ways of making sites but I like the HTML and can do most of it off the top of my head. I also noted that Wanadoo (like many other ISP's) make the tools available for its members to create their own sites using templates. I find these very restricted though. I have a book in .PDF format 'HTML For Dummies' or something similair. I'll find it and if it aint too big I could email it to you if you want it?

Thanks for all the advice, unfortunately I can't understand alot of some of the answers. Soz!

I've set up a little website using Wanadoo and it's fine but you are extremely limited to the format. F'rinstance you are limited to about 5 or so intial formats and then limited to text without many photo's. I can see myself being lazy and uploading loads of pics and don't want to have to write loads of stuff straight away. Also the idea of having a message board is appealing.

On the other hand (I know i'm asking alot here) I don't need it to be horrendous to set up either. So If I can pick and choose from formats again, just alot more of them that would be ideal.

So............I need a website that is versatile, easy to set up yet, not too much hard work initially for a lazy git like me and yet gives lots of scope. Mmmmmmm

Perhaps I should just ask for a series 2 with compliant rid,e that it unstopable off road yet will cruise effortlessly on the Autobahn in near silence. Might be easier.

More help please!

Dave

Good man. The HTML produced by most "automatic" systems is diabolical, and Mickysoft stuff in particular is vastly over-bloated and is nowhere near standards compliant (so those with so-called non-standard browsers, the blind etc don't have a good experience using the site).

Being controversial, my view is that is you can't produce a site using basic HTML then you've not thought through what your site is trying to say to the world. Flash etc can look good on first view, but becomes bloody irritating if it is one you visit regularly.

There's one peddler of LR spares who seem to specialise in producing sites of such complexity that I've not even seen the whole thing in it's latest incarnation, either on this machine or on the "standard" laptop.

Richard

...and snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

(Describes vehicle after next round of "improvements".)

No, I'm not selling.

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Dave,

Do a google on html tutorials.

Then read up on ws_ftp to upload your new creation to your web space. I use lots of different locations and really must tidy it all up one day.

I found the simplest way to learn having done some tutorials was to look at the code behind simple sites.. none of your complexed stuff.

I tend to edit my stuff in word pad.

If I see some fetaures I like I try them. Sometimes they work others they don't.

Once you have your basic site structure set up your laughing. I.e. Home page, Series page, Beer drinking page all sat in seperate folders for to make it simple.

You'll have hours of fun and frustration doing it this way but the satisfaction is worth it in the end.

My sites are nothing clever, indeed true code masters may turn in their swivel chairs, but hey it's not hurting anyone and it's all a bit of fun.

My pages have been written on a variety of software from raw Html to some on Publisher.. if you look at sites produced by publisher then their code is miles long for a simple page.

to look at code try this..

then right click on the background and select "view source" scan through and you will eventually get the idea what it's all doing. "Save as" onto your hard drive then open the document by right click and "Open with" something like notepad wordpad or the likes... tinker with the code.. save again then just double click the file to see what you have done. Thats how I learned what I know along side html tutorials free on the web. It's unlikely the images will show but you will get the idea.

All sounds very complicated but once you've had a few drunken nights tinkering you'll soon have knocked up your own basic site. Not only that you will become a "view source" addict on new sites you visit to see how it's done.

One day I'll master Java and alike.

Lee D

Not selling what? The mind altering drug you are taking?............

Thanks Lee,

I've done what you did but I think I really need to go back to basics. Is there software that you can buy where you can just "fill in the gaps?".

I think I need to be able to go; right, I want this here and that there, and this picture up the top and a fiddly bit down here etc etc. or do I HAVE to use code. Is is possible????

All the symbols and lines gave me the shivers, reminding me of programming a Commodore 64 for 5 hours striaght just so the bloody thing would bounce a ball round the screen or something!!

There is a small chance, however, that I am blow> snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com uttered summat worrerz funny

Something like microsoft word will create web pages for you (choose 'save as web page' or start a new 'blank web page'.

It creates some horrible bloated messy code but its very easy to do!

Take a look at the Composer part of Mozilla. I used that for a while when my pages where plain HTML. It produces reasonable code that most browsers will interpret how you expect. It's not a template system so not a "fill in the gaps", but a WYSIWYG web page editor. You can easyly get to the raw code should you need to.

Horrible bloated messy non-standard code that probably won't render correctly even in a MS browser!

If all you want is simple images and words then it does alright.

I generally recommend word to people at work who say they want to create a web page and who id classify as 'a basic computer user'. Its one of the easiest things to get the hang of (since they can do simple word processing already) and involves very little help from me (other than telling them to save it as a web page or start a new 'web page'.

If somebody can recommend another bit of software that is just as simple to use (i.e. uses the same sort of approach as word does to making a web page) and makes nicer code then i'll start recommending that instead!

My dad has to do a lot of departmental web pages at the uni where he works. I'm sure he said he had found (or a colleague had written) a program that cleaned up word generated HTML into nice tidy code.

All the vi's are available for windows too. I always preferred gvim.

That really is a good place to start.

Yes - but all of them together don't amount to much more than a bill of sale.

Stop.

What you need first of all is content, that is: words and (possibly) pictures.

That's programming which is completely different from markup.

Yes, start simple, grow slowly and please try to remember that creating documents for the web is not at all like creating a page for print.

Did you look at the link I provided previously? It is right on the button for beginners and won't lead you into bad habits.

HTMLTidy -

you can get the software free on

and you also need a program to upload onto your webspace (FTP) didn't your ISP grant you free webspace? NTL gave us a bit. Derek