Thinking of starting a website... questions

  • Thread starter G.T
  • 20 comments
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G.T

G.T

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United Kingdom
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Paganisterr
Ak Paganister
Hi all

I'm thinking of creating a website from scratch - most likely a website for my Xbox clan of about 30+ members. This is mainly to keep me busy while looking for a job and to hopefully make me more employable as I'll understand scripting a bit better!

Mainly this is a project so I can create a website using PHP in addition to the more basic HTML and CSS. A news section with a comments section will probably be made with a few interactive elements maybe, so MySQL and Javascript will probably come into it too.

Is there any good tutorials or tips about to start? I have some basic (old) knowledge of CSS and HTML already, it's mainly the other areas.

Thanks. :)
 
Well, I'll say make sure you have the money. If you want your own website not using a provider like webs.com, it will cost you monthly, I think.
 
Grayfox
KISS

Keep
It
Simple
Silly

Having it all flashy and fully of videos that start auto playing and buffering is a no no in my books.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
Use that to learn HTML.
Click to expand...
Yep, I'm quite particular with that. Always been a fan of simplicity is most effective. Much like this site really.

Thanks for the suggestions though. It's not going to be a busy site... so I won't need any major hosting. But I should be able to spare a little cash hopefully.
 
Grayfox
KISS

Keep
It
Simple
Stupid

Having it all flashy and fully of videos that start auto playing and buffering is a no no in my books.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
Use that to learn HTML.
Click to expand...

+1. Only I edited it to the way I always learned that saying :P

Scripting is quite repetitive to be honest, but using a webhosting program just makes things easier. You could always use the cheats version and just use something like iWeb if you've got access to a Mac. I'm not sure that would be suitable for your uses though. It is very basic.

In my opinion, flashy is OK, but it's something that you should take time and develop with your clan so they can say "I like this, I don't like that, change this, put in that" etc. Much like Jordan has done here at GTP. It's taken what, 10 years to get to this stage? By taking feedback from members and now it looks nice and neat, while having plenty of features :). Even though he is using vBulletin, VB is still 75% reliant on coding and HTML.
 
gamerdog6482
Why?
Click to expand...

Primarily because I often right-click a link and open it in a new tab or window. I get annoyed when some site won't let me do that, sometimes to the point of just leaving that site altogether.

In addition, I dislike the whole idea of sites dictating what I can and cannot do with my browser.

Let me ask you a question in turn here: why did you say nothing good comes from right-clicking?
 
BobK
Primarily because I often right-click a link and open it in a new tab or window. I get annoyed when some site won't let me do that, sometimes to the point of just leaving that site altogether.

In addition, I dislike the whole idea of sites dictating what I can and cannot do with my browser.

Let me ask you a question in turn here: why did you say nothing good comes from right-clicking?
Click to expand...

Because of fraud. If you take a picture with your camera and upload it to your website which allows right-clicking, anyone could take that picture and completely ignore the copyright.
 
gamerdog6482
Because of fraud. If you take a picture with your camera and upload it to your website which allows right-clicking, anyone could take that picture and completely ignore the copyright.
Click to expand...

Two points. First of all, disable right clicking on everything because it can be misused in a few situations?

Second, disabling right clicking doesn't stop people from making a copy of the image, it doesn't even slow them down much. There are any number of screen capture programs or even the PrtScr key.

Oh, and how is it fraud? It could conceivably lead to a copyright violation if the person reposts the pic or something like that. But that's hardly fraud.
 
gamerdog6482
Also, make sure you disable right-clicking. Nothing good comes from right-clicking.
Click to expand...

Nothing can stop a rightclick command on a picture.

gamerdog6482
Because of fraud. If you take a picture with your camera and upload it to your website which allows right-clicking, anyone could take that picture and completely ignore the copyright.
Click to expand...

Did you know you can still do that.

Tools>Page Info>Media
This will show all pictures, movies, flash on a page then you can use the save option.

Plus what is to stop them from saving the page as a HTML.

Right click is a fail attempt at copyright control.

With adblock plus i can go on the F1.com page and take what I want adblock prevents the "you can't right click" window and then my right click bar pops up.

And here is what I mean, try it.
lolfailc.png

lolfail2.png
 
G.T
Hi all

I'm thinking of creating a website from scratch - most likely a website for my Xbox clan of about 30+ members. This is mainly to keep me busy while looking for a job and to hopefully make me more employable as I'll understand scripting a bit better!

Mainly this is a project so I can create a website using PHP in addition to the more basic HTML and CSS. A news section with a comments section will probably be made with a few interactive elements maybe, so MySQL and Javascript will probably come into it too.

Is there any good tutorials or tips about to start? I have some basic (old) knowledge of CSS and HTML already, it's mainly the other areas.

Thanks. :)
Click to expand...

Some years ago, I started a small site, to share some pictures with friends and family.
I used back then a Mac with iWeb and hosted the site with HostGator.
They offer rock solid and affordable web hosting, while iWeb allowed me, to easily built the site without any knowledge about programming.

If you have the skills for programming in web language, all the better …

here is the site: www.teknopunk.com
 
menos | M6
Some years ago, I started a small site, to share some pictures with friends and family.
I used back then a Mac with iWeb and hosted the site with HostGator.
They offer rock solid and affordable web hosting, while iWeb allowed me, to easily built the site without any knowledge about programming.

If you have the skills for programming in web language, all the better …

here is the site: www.teknopunk.com
Click to expand...
Hey, thanks for this. This is give or take what I am aiming for but wanting to code it all from scratch. :P

Thanks for the web host info too. 👍
 
I don't know how much help this will be, but you could grab a copy of WordPress or Drupal (or both!) and take it apart to see how it works.

How are your PHP skills, and programming skills in general? Note that "programming" does not include HTML/CSS but would include Javascript. There are any number of PHP tutorials out there on the net, most of them pretty good (or the ones I've taken a look at, anyway). O'Reilley has a number of books on PHP; I have four of them on my bookshelf (and in the process of browsing their website for information for this post, I'll shortly be adding a fifth). Be aware though that O'Reilley books tend to be pretty pricey.

If you haven't already you may want to install Apache, MySQL and PHP on your own computer; much easier to do development on your own machine than on a remote site. Particularly if you're in the early learning stages.
 
My programming is average, never used PHP. I've used Python and Shell Script before, and can't imagine it'll be any more difficult.

And yep, I have those installed on my machine already and don't plan to do anything remote until it's reasonably complete and I'm comfortable with it.

I have 2 interviews next week for a job anyway, so if one of those are successful I probably won't get around to this anyway. :P

Thanks for the help so far though!
 
Hey G.T., despite your wish, to build the website entirely from scratch, something like iWeb can be a lot fun to experiment and learn too.

The way, I use iWeb is really different from it's initial intended use by Apple, providing everybody a simple tool.

There are a lot of hacks, modifications and additions possibly to iWeb sites.
You can add, implement and embed a lot of interesting stuff into the site, that your skills in programming really can be challenged.

If you decide then later, to go and turn the site upside down entirely and built parts of it or the whole thing from scratch, you can still do it.

The nice thing about using iWeb as a base, is, that it provides well working basic tools, as a blog function with automatic archiving editing changes in all influenced pages and other niceties, as a basic gallery function, etc …

Now, a few years after Apple abandoned iWeb, there are many third party tools available with much nicer gallery embedding, that can be easily used in combination with an iWeb built basic website.

If now I had to start from scratch, that would be, what I would do - built the basic skeleton with iWeb and use the best available tools, to implement galleries, blog, …

What I mean is, that your skills are not lost … ;-)
 
There's a pretty good basic introduction to programming basics here: Khan Academy Computer Science

If someone wants to "steal" content, they're going to do it one way or another, so I wouldn't recommend that anti-right-click code.

I run a number of sites myself, and used to be the lead web designer of a small computer technology company. If you get the basics of php "include"s down, you'll be able to quickly build simple web sites. Anything needing a CMS is usually done with Wordpress with a modded front end.
 

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