Member Avatar for Mushroomer

Hello, I was just browsin the web, and i somehow ended up here. So I thought that if i had questions this would be the best place to ask them =) .I am currently working on my first website, and a sort of buisness so that the site can grow with what money is coming in. I got a few questions id like to know though since i have absolutely no idea what i must do to create such a place. All i know how to do for it is create its layout with photoshop. You know, make the sites skin. And thats it. =0 Anyone got any good answeres for em? There just basic questions is all. You IT Dudes would know em in a snap.

1. I've Noticed that there are alot of web design coding langueges that i must choose which one to learn and use for development. Is there an Easier to learn code? Is there a certain langeuge which is the most powerfull over all? And Which type would be recommended for a website?

2.Okay i got all of the imaging done for the website. But I have never made a website before so i have absolutely no idea whatsoever on how im supose to put them all together for the site?

3. I might want to put flash documents into the site. How would i do that exactly?

4. I think i might just decide to give my website a somewhat full Flash interface for the site.. I dont know how that would work, i geuss you would use Just the homepage for that. But if i did that. Is there something that i would need to know? And what res should i make the flash out to be, aswell?
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I am for sure going to put up a forums. Thats going to be MANDO, But again, i know absolutely nothing about creating a forums. Which is where these questions come in

1. How do i install a forums? I mean what can i do to set one up?

2. Could i set like a little server up on my OWN computer and use
it as the forums for my site that is being hosted by somebody
else?

3. I geuss there are a few different forum types for download, like VBulletin, PHBB, etc.

How many of those are there availible out there?

Which of them is the best for use?

Im looking for something that would be best for my personal skinning and themeing.

4. If i said forget all those forum downloads out there, and id probobly be better off trying to make my own forums, from scratch that is, lol. Could this be possible to do? I would think so, but i dont know anything at all about this stuff yet. so lol.

5. Are there further things that i should be asking since i know nothing more then what i get back from these questions?
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Nearing the end of my ranting here, is just a few more questions and ill be done asking for a long while.

1. There is software out there, Good Software that is, for Web Development and maintaining and etc. Like Dreamweaver, Which so far is all i know of at the moment. Could i get a list of as many of these programs as possible or just which one or ONES are the best for people like me.. And im not saying im a freakin complete idiot. lol im not. Im pretty Expert level whith a computer. So programs that are ONLY ment for complete Newbies but have only the "Basic" functionabilities, are not what i want. =)

2. If there are other software titles then Dreamweaver, Is there any tutorials on the subject in question?
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Alright. You are a poor soul whoever reads this and there eyes start bleeding out of theire sockets, because of such a long post. Heh, I just got one more thing id like to add to this.

I am use to lots of flame replies from previous posts in other forums. I dont think there really is any here but in case of the local jack ass wanting to F with me, because i dont know how to create a website. If you do not want to help me which is the only reason why anyone should post here, then dont. I ask for help from the people who will have the decency to assist me, Only. For one way or another i will learn what i have to, to do what i have to do. I am willing to learn all that i can.

Last but not Blah Blah blah yada yada yada. If there is anything else that you reading would like to add additional answeres to questions that i havnt stated and you think would be truly helpfull for me to know then feel free to explain away. And AFTER all the questions i have asked have been answered then if any passerby has any [Previously un-asked] questions that seems to be related to mine then feel free aswell to post them. After mine of course. :icon_cheesygrin:

Peace and Thanks for going through the post, and thanks to the people or person who can help me out.

By the way. I have yet to update my CP here, I have probobly an account on 600 other forums else where which i have yet to work on. So if anyone needs or wants any contact info, Hit me up at the following services.

My Myspace
AIM: Insaneclownkillx
AIM: Mushroomer1 -=Prefered=-
MSN: Darkreaperofsouls@hotmail.com
Yahoo: None
ICQ: None
Email: Insaneclownkillx@aim.com

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Member Avatar for MidiMagic

You need HTML to make the basic page. Designing software (such s DreamWeaver) will write some HTML for you. To handle business account information, your host computer must have PHP and MySQL, or some other server-side hosting.

Member Avatar for jbennet

With relation to forums:

you want SimpleMachines or PHPbb

and XAMPP is a good server for playing about with on your home PC

with relation to languages:

HTML, CSS and PHP are the biggies.


I jave included a simple website as an example. Unzip ALL of the files and open index.html. It should look like the screenshot if you have done it right.

site.zip (22.11 KB)
Member Avatar for MattEvans

group of questions 1:

1. There is no 'most powerful' language for anything... If you want high speed and compact, compiled code, you can write serverside programs in C; but if you want a bit more simplicity and a webpage-based language with lots of existing modules to help with oft-used web functionality, ASP or PHP might be a better option. A good midrange is Perl IMHO; it's not the best language (it's not fast to execute when you start to explore its OO capabilities), but it has a relatively easy to understand syntax, and it's very suited to certain forms of web development.
It's not neccessary to pick ONE language for everything. Different languages do different things better, and sites often have lots of different 'things' to manage.

2. Graphic design is an art, it can't be well-taught or quickly learned.. drawing things out by hand is good to save uneccessary work, looking at other peoples sites might help you somewhat. 'Putting stuff together' is generally done with HTML and CSS, which is quite a detailed concept in itself, but I'm going to assume that you know HTML and CSS, having used Dreamweaver before, although if you work only in 'Design' mode, you're sheltered from the majority of 'code'.

3. When you have your flash ready,search for the means to add it.. it's really simple, and quite easy to find info. If you have Flash MX, it can generate HTML pages with the neccessary embed code, although it generates really, really bloated code.

4. Don't do it. Not everyone has flash, it's not a 'web standard', I don't have flash on this browser, so if I see a site depends on Flash for anything but small non-essential effects or otherwise; I ( am forced to ) go elesewhere.

group of questions 2:

1. Depends on the forum software. Each forum will have different install instructions. Generally, they'll involve either uploading install file(s) to your webserver and running an install script (usually easier than it sounds), or just uploading the files to your webserver in a certain folder structure, which is pretty much all that a website is. Some hosting plans come with auto-installs for leading forum software. This makes it as easy as one click.

2.If you want to actually host the site on your own computer, it'll need to be a relatively good computer running a webserver and server-orientated operating system, and you'll need a fast high-load connection with a static IP address. You'll need to leave the computer on 24-7 or no-one will be able to access the site, and you'll need to configure your domain (i.e. http://yourdomain.com ) to resolve to your static IP address. Frankly, I have no idea how you'd do that, because I've never even considered doing it. There are other issues you'd need to consider, such as security. It's much easier, and still often flexible and configurable, to 'rent' space on a shared or dedicated server, which is already configured, usually has an uptime guarantee, and is managed by professionals.

3. No idea which is best, this forum is vBulletin and it's quite 'skinned', I've used yaBB (Which is messy to skin), and I've written my own, which was easy to skin because I made it that way.. You'd have to look at forums people have, and how well they've skinned them.

4. It's extremely time consuming to do it right. It's easy to make a messageboard, easy to make users / logins / control panels etc.. But, it's hard to make something as powerful and error-free as say, vBulletin, without putting in the same effort the makers of vBulletin put in. On that note, I never finished my forum software... It turned into something else completely (much more complicated than what was originally planned), and it's right at the bottom of my stack of side projects; but for a long while, it consumed most of my free time.

5. These are good questions, but they are very general. The only answers I can give are based on preference, opinion and experience. If that's the kind of answers you want, then yes, they're good questions.

group of questions 3.

1. Dreamweaver is good for developing graphical frontends, but it's practically useless for generating application code/script. The templating system is ok, but a text editor + XSLT would give you 800% more power with, admitadly, possibly 300% more effort. Assuming that web development is scripting and marking-up (i.e. making HTML and serverside code) while web design is only graphical; all you need for web development is a text editor (preferably one that colors in syntax as Dreamweaver does) and perhaps some compilers and transformation tools (XSLT for example - look it up if you want to know more about it).

2. if you want a point-and-click HTML generator, Dreamweaver is certainly the most well-know, I don't know of any others without researching it, if you want to get down and gritty with HTML and CSS (which I'd advise that you do) then there are many syntax-coloring text editors, some of them offer project management like Dreamweaver's. On Windows; EditPlus is a good text editor, but (I think) it doens't offer much in the way of project management beyond a filesystem browser, there are others, Komodo is a good Windows all-rounder. I'm a Linux user these days, and I use a program called Kate; which colors in code in any language (you can even write your own syntax highlighting grammars), and offers basic project management, but no FTP. I actually made the move to Linux to get 'closer' to the existance environment of a website I was developing. That, or i just thought it would cool. at the time. I dunno; nonetheless, I stay here (Linux) most of the time now.

Erm. Hope that helps somewhat.. I've tried not to give answers that are too 'empty'.. But, like I said previously, these are very general questions, and some of them have no single correct answer.

Member Avatar for jbennet

I usde notepad to make that CSS site in under an hour

Member Avatar for Mushroomer

All of you have been helpfull to me, thanks. I kind of got into a bit of real bad trouble with the law, and i think that this time i wont be back among people for a good time but, as soon as i get my crap back together ill be right back at working towards creating my dream site. Thanks.

Peace Daniweb. =) this has been an excellent site for my learning pleasure. And will be some time again. Im 17 which would mean trouble wont be as bad as it could be. But i am kind of running my lines thin, if you understand that. Well thanks for the replys.
I have read them all and i have gotten more understanding of html and site development.

-=The real Mushroomer=-

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