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How to Create a Website

Step 1:

Decide what you want to display on your website, the amount of data and the type.  If you only want to display static pages then you can chose from almost any web hosting service.  However, if you want to use a Content Management System (CMS), or other programable system then you need to carefully review the software and configurations supported.  For example the CMS I use Website Baker  requires PHP Safe mode to be disabled. 

Possible options include:

  • Photos - use a photo hosting service such as Flickr, FotoLog, Pbase, photobucket
  • Web Pages - use any provider, look at some of the free services, however beware they come and go without warning, I have lost three website in this way
  • Blog - Keep a diary of your life on services such as Blogger, Blogspot,
  • CMS - If you want to maintain your own programs such as blogs, CMS, photo galleries - look here for a list www.webhostdir.com.  I use http://www.SiteGround.com and I am very happy.

Step 2:

Organise your idea on a piece of paper, espeically if you are designing a website from scratch.  Search the web and look how other people do things.  Its a lott easier to get it right up front than have to reorganise your site afterwards.

Step 3:

Decide how you are going to keep the pages updated. If its a blogging or Photo sharing services then the works done for you.  If not decide how to get information up to your site.  Does the server support ftp, web based uploads, HTMLediter, Frontpage extensions etc.  My first website was written entirely in notepad and updated using FTP.  I used to use Fronptage a lot as its very easy to use but the HTML code it creates is very messy and difficult to edit you want to enbeds apps later.  Dreamwaever is cleaner but more difficult to learn at use at the beginning. I still edit alot of my pages with Notepad2.

Step 4:

Registering your domain.  There are many services to chose from and some free domain names through services such as noip and dyndns.  Some web host providers provide this service for free as part of the sign up procedure.  The costs are yearly to maintain your domain name.

A History of my websites

  • My first webiste which surprisingly is still active was written in notepad and used frames.  It was basicaly a way to show photos to my family who lived in England while I live in Italy.  http://website.lineone.net/~pat.tippins
  • My second website was run on a Linux server from my office, I did this as a way to learn Linux and apache etc.  The website was basically a photo database using a Perl program IDS to auto thumbnail and sort images.  This ran really well and it made it extremely easy to share digital photos with my family.  However running a linux server was frustrating when things broke or you wanted to upgrade a module.  I only stopped this server when the company installed their firewall and blocked incoming access.
  • The next two websites were hosted on free serice providers, both who were bought by other providers.  These websites were a little more sophisticated and were created using Frontpage and included java roll-over, pop-up menus, animated gif etc.
  • I also started to use Pbase to host photos, while it was still a free service.
  • When I lost my last webiste I started looking around for a proper hosting company and it was about this time that I became involved in a CMS (Content Management System) project at work. After trying Mambo and a few others I stumbled across Website baker, a very simple to install and use CMS.  I like the system because its very easy to customise and understand.  I have even customised my own Photo gallery module GDPics.

Using Website Baker

  1. Find a website provider such as siteground.com that supports PHP, PHP session support and is not in Safe mode (Note: Websitebaker can be installed by siteground)
  2. Download the zip file from www.websitebaker.com and extract it to your PC
  3. Use FTP to copy this extracted copy to a directory called WB on the server
  4. Run through the setup page and then you are ready to add content.

Note:  I use a local copy running on a WAMP, such as JSAS or WAMP which provides an easy way to run Mysql, PHP, apache.  Using the local copy you can test upgrades, new modules, create templates etc. 

What next

I am still looking for a photo gallery SW that fully fits my needs but some that are close include TWG and Menalto Gallery.  I need to learn some more CSS, then I will rewrite some of the modules so that the website is fully CSS.  I would also like to integrate a Blog.