Need help with new website....

[Millenniumtiger]

Yea I'm probably going to stick with HTML as it seems to be simplest style at the moment. I'm still learning all this so I don't feel like jumping into PHP which I hear is pretty complex. Currently, I'm using FreeWebs to get a basic layout of what I want.

Once I have the layout and basically all the text areas done with what I'm going to want (don't want it t be a cookie cutter of the current site) then I will make it all in DW using some sort of template.

After that, I will go ahead and get the domain/host and actually get going with it.

Questions:
How would I add a shoutbox or something similar to an HTML site?
For making a site with DW, do i make all the pages seperate and link them together with the FTP of the host? I know I can define each link down at the bottom of DW, but I don't know how to define the page itself.

 

[CrazeD]

Remember that if you download software such as phpBB or a CMS or something, you don't have to know any PHP at all. You just have to upload files and then install it with the installer script (which is usually just a few forms).

For a shoutbox, you'd need to have a server-side language like PHP or Perl or something to be able to save the data.

I'm not sure what you mean by link them together. Can you explain?

 

[Millenniumtiger]

Remember that if you download software such as phpBB or a CMS or something, you don't have to know any PHP at all. You just have to upload files and then install it with the installer script (which is usually just a few forms).

For a shoutbox, you'd need to have a server-side language like PHP or Perl or something to be able to save the data.

I'm not sure what you mean by link them together. Can you explain?

What I mean is we plan on having a home page, about us page, roster page, and then a page that goes to the forums. Do I make those all seperate in DW? Then, when/how do I give them each their web address.

For example, the home page would be something like "clansite.com" and then the about would be "clansite.com/about", the roster would be "clansite.com/roster" and so on....

 

[Willem Voigt]

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[CrazeD]

What I mean is we plan on having a home page, about us page, roster page, and then a page that goes to the forums. Do I make those all seperate in DW? Then, when/how do I give them each their web address.

For example, the home page would be something like "clansite.com" and then the about would be "clansite.com/about", the roster would be "clansite.com/roster" and so on....

You save it as it's own file. Like, home page = index.html, about.html, roster.html etc.

If you can to do clansite.com/about or whatever with no .html at the end, you'll have to use Apache's .htaccess and make a rule to not use the .html part in the name.

 

[Yek]

... or create new dirs under the root web folder and stick your index file in there.

sitename.com/about/index.html
sitename.com/roster/index.html

Probberly the easiest since you're new to the game.
Just make sure to use the full url in your image/style links as relative linking won't work.

Cheers,

~ Tkey

 

[synergy]

... or create new dirs under the root web folder and stick your index file in there.

sitename.com/about/index.html
sitename.com/roster/index.html

Probberly the easiest since you're new to the game.
Just make sure to use the full url in your image/style links as relative linking won't work.

Cheers,

~ Tkey

That could get extremely tedious and is fairly sloppy though. You just create a new file for each page that contains different content and give it a sensible name (like Carnage suggested). Make sure your home page is named index.html, but that's the only one that is a set name.

You might want to look at MKPortal. It's a really easy CMS to work with and contains a shoutbox, blog, image gallery, etc. It actually runs off the forum database though, so you would need to install phpbb or SMF beforehand. I like it because there is only one login to access the whole site and it makes maintenance much easier.

As said, you don't need to know PHP other than maybe finding a few areas for custom configuration (don't worry...explanations are always in the help documentation).

If you want I could install everything for you then just leave the site maintenance and configuration up to you. Just PM me and let me know if you want to do that.