I want my own website - any advice or ideas?

[Timoe]

I would like to eventually set up my own website.  I know nothing about this subject.

Any advice?

I want something cheap, clean and easy.  No pop ups, minimal or no adds and no special software to update it.

I just want to have a place to share photos and project info.

any suggestions?

[Jeff AMN]

Going the blog route is pretty easy and totally free! Otherwise, you'll have to pay to register a domain and pay for some sort of hosting if you want to avoid ads and such.

[Tahnok]

www.AtSpace.com - A fairly good free webhost. No pop-up ads (unless you really have a ton of traffic).

www.SmartDots.com - Free .net.tc address. Though, I recamend spending the few dollars and registering a .com (see below).

www.Photobucket.com - AtSpace does not allow hotlinking to images, so you may want to use this if you are going to be linking to images externally.

www.CleverDot.com - A paid webhost and domain registration. I have been happy with their services so far. They have a great deal right now for a .com domain and a year of hosting for $30.

Macromedia Dreamweaver - This program has a little bit of a learning curve, but it's nothing compared to learning HTML.

[Knievel]

www.freewebs.com

Super easy to setup. Pick a template, upload your pics and add your text.
Free and ad-free unless you get lots of traffic, then they throw on an ad screen briefly before your site pops up. Was working great for me until my cabinet went in the HoF and the hits went through the roof.
I pay $5 a month now to keep it running ad-free.

[Witchboard]

Do you not have webspace provided to you by your ISP?

[mccoy178]

So, I have an address and a provider.  Could I make my pages in photoshop and then upload those?  That's the kind of info I need.  I don't know how to get from idea to implementation.  Can anyone recommend a tutorial.

[Witchboard]

Yes.  You can make a webpage in Photoshop.  ImageReady to be more precise, but it's included with Photoshop CS.  I haven't done it since I took my classes, so I really can't help you there.  It would probably be easier to pick up a dedicated HTML editor.  You can pick up a free one here.<---link

A good place to go to learn web coding is here.<---link

[DrumAnBass]

I recommend http://powweb.com for web hosting. They give you 12 gigs of storage for $8 a month, and include free domain registration I believe.

Probably overkill for what you want to do, but it is nice having that server space if you need to transfer files to clients or friends. Plus you can set up FTP accounts for clients/friends to send you files.

[quarterback]

So, I have an address and a provider.  Could I make my pages in photoshop and then upload those?  That's the kind of info I need.  I don't know how to get from idea to implementation.  Can anyone recommend a tutorial.

You can work with your images in photoshop, but something like Dreamweaver is a much better solution if you're looking to really make your pages for upload.

Dreamweaver is bloody easy, with a WYSIWYG interface as well as the ability to tweak the HTML directly or just drag and drop stuff.  If you can use word processing software, you can use Dreamweaver.

[mccoy178]

Excellent!  Thanks for the tips fellas!

[Darkstalker]

[quote author=mccoy178 link=topic=52462.msg514543#msg514543 Dreamweaver is bloody easy, with a WYSIWYG interface as well as the ability to tweak the HTML directly or just drag and drop stuff.  If you can use word processing software, you can use Dreamweaver.

Ugh, Dreamweaver.  Same output results, 10 times the HTML code as Notepad...

Dreamweaver is fantastic if you turn a blind eye to the HTML code it actually uses.  I'd actually recommend FrontPage over Dreamweaver, and you are also more likely to find FrontPage-friendly hosting providers.

I recommend 1&1, they are very cheap for a basic website plus a domain, like $10 a month hosting, $6/year for a domain name.

[quarterback]

[quote author=mccoy178 link=topic=52462.msg514543#msg514543 Dreamweaver is bloody easy, with a WYSIWYG interface as well as the ability to tweak the HTML directly or just drag and drop stuff.  If you can use word processing software, you can use Dreamweaver.

Ugh, Dreamweaver.  Same output results, 10 times the HTML code as Notepad...

but only half as much as FrontPage

Dreamweaver is fantastic if you turn a blind eye to the HTML code it actually uses.  I'd actually recommend FrontPage over Dreamweaver, and you are also more likely to find FrontPage-friendly hosting providers.

They have to make themselves "frontpage friendly" otherwise frontpage designed pages will be all effed up.    I've never had any problem with any hosting of any pages I've designed in Dreamweaver.    Frontpage is sukekekekekekeeeee

[squirrellydw]

Might be to advance for you but I use www.aplus.net along with Gallery for my pictures.

www.theseashore.us then click on the photo album link.

[math0ne]

If you sign up at dreamhost with the coupon code "777" you get one year for $10 bucks.  Its great hosting (for a low bandwidth site) and they have one-click installs of wordpress.  Which is what I would recommend you do if you have no experience in html/css/php?

Wordpress is a Content Managment System that allows you to update your site easily over the web. Its super easy to use has a tons of easy to customize templates and will allow you to easily create static or dynamic pages to share photo's, videos, and words with the world.  It also has hundreds of plugins to add stuff like photogalleries, databases, and pretty much everything you could imagine.

Fell free to PM me if you have any questions about this post (I’m a web designer/programmer by trade).

math0ne

Oh yeah, and the dreamhost account comes with a free .com address.

[Tahnok]

Frontpage sucks, but it's good for beginners. You can create an OK website in it, but you will quickly outgrow it.

www.freewebs.com

Super easy to setup. Pick a template, upload your pics and add your text.
Free and ad-free unless you get lots of traffic, then they throw on an ad screen briefly before your site pops up. Was working great for me until my cabinet went in the HoF and the hits went through the roof.
I pay $5 a month now to keep it running ad-free.

I really have to recamend against freewebs. They have terrible load times. Not only that, but forget about offering any kind of download (videos, artwork, etc), as a T1 connection will be about as fast as a 56K.

[jfunk]

There are actually hacks (settings and such) you can do to get Dreamweaver to output totally XHTML 1.0 compliant code.  I did an entire website in Dreamweaver and validated it (with strict validation) just to see if it could be done.

So, yes, it can produce unecessary html, but you can make it (without TOO much difficulty) produce clean results, as well.

Of course, I use vi, typically..  So...

[Knievel]

I really have to recamend against freewebs. They have terrible load times. Not only that, but forget about offering any kind of download (videos, artwork, etc), as a T1 connection will be about as fast as a 56K.

Well I've never had any complaints, in fact I've had a lot of compliments on my site.
I think the templates they have are nicer than what most people can create.

[MikeDeuce]

Whoops, just saw someone beat me to the punch with dreamhost... oh well, here's my original message with a few more great reasons to use them:

Not that this means anything, but I work for a fairly large .com site doing technical design. That said, through the past 10 years I've gone through a lot of bad and a lot of "ok" web hosts. May I recommend dreamhost? They are amongst the best hosts you will ever find $10/mo gets you a domain, 20gb of space, 1tb of transfer, etc etc blah blah.

Best thing about them is they take tremendous care of EXISTING CUSTOMERS which is fantastic. Since I've been with them, my web space and bandwidth has been octupled. They make these fantastic improvements to bring in new blood, but include existing customers in all of them.

Another great thing, specifically for your purposes, is one-click installs of very popular software on your page (wordpress, phpbb, joomla, gallery, etc). These are packages that could potentially take a LONG time to get installed and configured. They make it so you can have any of these running in minutes.

I use wordpress and gallery on a couple of my sites:

http://www.ironvulva.com/  (has project logs)

and http://www.mophos.net/  (car action photography hobby)

Wordpress is super easy to figure out and is one of the most popular blogging packages.

Awesome people, awesome support, awesome hosting.

http://www.dreamhost.com/shared/comparison.html

Dreamhost is one of those companies that breeds loyalists of their customer base by simply being awesome.

[math0ne]

Just wanted to post this link to this page if you are considering using wordpress. Over 600 Wordpress themes, i didnt even think there were that many!

http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/comprehensive-list-of-615-free-wordpress-15-and-20-themes-templates-available-for-download-266.htm

[hanelyp]

I like http://www.nvu.com/ as a web editor.  WYSWYG for most stuff, and an HTML source window for stuff the GUI doesn't do.

[Shifty]

NVU is pretty buggy, but good for simple pages.

Hostgator is a terrific host, great support. For other web-related info, www.webhostingtalk.com provides an excellent forum for everything.

[thebrownshow]

Google Pages is relatively new, but if you don't know squat about web pages or HTML, it might be useful.  You need a google account though, but nowadays, it's certainly easy enough to get one.

http://pages.google.com

[nullb0y]

pay me and ill host you for arcade parts send at random intervals lol