Complete Beginner to Website Building! Need help!!

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Ank1t

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Hey everybody :)

Well i have this "project" sort of thing coming up. Basically, I have to make and mange a website in the next 2 or 3 months. To put it in short, i know NOTHING about HTML, MySQL or whatever it is that is needed for the purpose. So if people can help me with the following things it would be great :) :

1) What all exactly do i have to learn for the purpose (making/managing a site) ? :huh:
2) Which are the books/ebooks for the *subjects* i have to learn? :huh:
3) Where can i get the ebooks?
4) How much does it cost to open and run a Indian Domain Eg:- .In or .Co.In and how do i go about it?

As one can see i am a complete n00b in this area so ANY sort of help would be much appreciated :clap:

Thanks in advance
Ank1t

Edit : I found this link in one of the stickies :
W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

What can i learn from there?
 
1. Well, firstly you need to decide what sort of a website you want. If you just want a simple site with a few pages, there is no need to use a database like mysql. You just need basic knowledge in html. You could also use javascript/flash to spice up your site.

But if you have to use a database for your project, its preferable to use a combination of php/msql. Plenty of tutorials are available on the web. Just google it up. Alternatively, there are content management systems available, that you can just deploy and customize, but i don't think thats what you intend to do.

2. w3schools is a good place to start, although its absolute newbie stuff. You can just get an idea of what you are gonna use. For hands-on tutorials and help, search SitePoint : New Articles, Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Designers and other web development sites.

3. .in or .co.in domains are usually a bit costlier than .com domains. Try www.net4.in for the prices, although i doubt the service of indian domain registrars

Hope this helps
 
If you have a credit card, buy a .com or .info domain for 8$, 2$ from godaddy.com. You will also get free hosting (with ads).

Learn some html, how to use a ftp software for uploadin your files.
 
@ hacker, Thanks. 1 thing, i buy only the name for $8-9 right? And then hosting there will be the annual fee?

@checksum

Thanks a lot for the help man :) Well the site (initially) is only going to contain a few pages etc. But later a database thing might be added. For example, the users can login and check some stats etc.. What then? What will that involve?
 
Ya if you buy the name you will get free hosting (with ads) for one year.

For database you will have to decide which one you want, access (windows) or mysql(linux) and then buy the appropriate hosting package. 3.59 $ per month.
 
Right now if u buy the domain and Economy linux hosting at godaddy you will get the same for arround 45usd which is approx 1800-2000 rupees for a year. This basically give u a domain name and hosting.

But if you like for starters (like i did) go for a free website hosting (like tripod, freeserver, etc), get yourself a hang of it, uploading via ftp, customising, etc and then purchase the real thing, this way you will have a decent site with your domain name the day you buy it instead of having a parking board saying UNDER CONSTRUCTION for months.

You need database access only if you are planning a forumn (like techenclave) or a password protected site, to run these things you need PHP and mySQL(3-5 databases are free), they both are free and come with the linux package, but if you are inclined towards Windows then you will need to learn asp and SQL, both of them being paid.

I will recommend that you learn Dreamweaver (Adobe Dreamweaver CS being the latest) It is good for creating basic as well as dynamic sites (if u want to use mysql and php). Use the tutorial provided with dreamweaver (in Help) to learn how to create the site and various tools. To test the site you can download easyphp (It installs apache, mysql, phpadmin,etc) basically all the tools required to test the website.

Last but not the least you can buy .in domain and other stuff from meramail.indiatimes.com ( i was using them before turning to godaddy) and its a little expensive. Buy domain only if you have to go in for .in domains otherwise you can stick with godaddy (as far as i can say, I haven't tried others)
 
try dreamhost then. with coupons you can get 1 year hosting with domain for 22.5$. and features are really good.
 
Not an expert on the domains front, but I agree with one (or more) of the posters above - GoDaddy has very reasonable deals, particularly on the .info domains. I think rediff has .in at decent prices the last I checked, but that was when I was in school, so... :ashamed:

As for the website itself, you've hit a good resource at W3Schools, but they have plenty of tutorials, you hardly need to go through all of them to get a website going. Opinions vary widely about how one must go about the process of building a website, but here are a few quick pointers, which I hope will be matters of fact as opposed to opinion:

- You will need HTML along with CSS, to begin with; and some client side scripting - most often, this means JavaScript - is useful. You can learn by doing, or copying pasting - dynamic drive is a good resource for JavaScript (and, lately, CSS), the CSS Zen Garden and A List Apart are good CSS resources, with links to more resources, and you can, of course, learn HTML from w3schools.

(It is generally considered preferable to use CSS for designing the layout of your site, as opposed to tables, but this still leads to a flame war at some places - most of the time, however, you should be able to get along with your common sense.)

- Many people like to have a good hang of Photoshop (or the GIMP, depending on what you can afford, your OS, and what religion (proprietary v/s open source) you belong to) for doing the design. You would most likely want to be comfortable with at least one vector image manipulation software (ImageReady or Inkscape), and one bitmap editor, PS or GIMP.

Once you've acquired the skills, the design is up to you, although there are (apparently) places that teach you creativity. Keep an eye out for free stock photo sites, such as this one, they come in handy :)

- If your website is going to be complex - for instance, if you want forums, or galleries, or stuff that clearly cannot done with HTML and CSS, then you need to learn more. There are many server side scripting options, mainly PHP, JSP and ASP, which are powerful tools on their own right, but are usually popular because of their ability to connect to databases. There's plenty of choice here too, notably MySQL, MSSQL, SQLite, and PGSQL.

I would recommend a combination would be PHP/MySQL, mainly because they are open source systems (admittedly, that's not a major point unless you're an aspiring core-hacker, but I have noticed that hosting is slightly cheaper). Taking this further, a LAMP combination works well for many people - Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP - you will find hosts that offer the "LAMP" deal, so might keep your eyes open for that. Of course, do explore your options - I mention this particular choice only because I use it on localhost :P

- An optional skill is Flash, if you would like a Flash-powered website. There's a lot that can be done with Flex and associated technologies (anyone seen the new Y! messenger on the web?!), but you should remember that not everyone might have Flash on their systems.

- If you're going the server side way, I would strongly recommend googling for "Content Management Systems" and exploring the associated options; sometimes it does cut the slack in terms of work involved. You'll need non-trivial experience with the scripting language itself, though, before you can start skinning or otherwise customizing the stuff :)

- Hosting: Oh well, selecting a web host is about as complicated as choosing a laptop or a mobile phone :( There are way too many options. If you don't need any server side scripting technology, it is not difficult to find good quality, no-ads, free hosting. If you do, however, it can be tough to find quality free hosting, although there are places where you can get hosting in return for posting at forums and such (not really free, but you won't need a CC). However - if this is a non-trivial enterprise, in terms of disk space, bandwidth, and technology, and if uptime is a serious concern, your best bet (generally) is to find paid hosting. Since you're going to buy a domain, it is usually a good idea to get both from the same place. I've had at least a couple of good experiences, but I am not sure if it's okay to advertise stuff here (yet to read rules and stuff :P), so I guess I'll save that for later.

While most of the above qualifies as being optional, do read about web accessibility and standards. In my opinion - this absolutely crucial to building a good website! Also, look up security issues in great detail - don't want your website hacked a week after it's launched!

Finally, good luck, and remember to have fun while you're at it! :cool2:

Mod Edit: The stuff in Bold in the above text are links.
 
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^ localhost :S Ygpm..

@ Hacker,Varkey

Thanks, will look into the options :)

@Prashantrana

I can try doing what you'r saying by using a free hosting first just to get the hang of it and then moving on the the paid domain. I'll have to see if i can do that (have to ask some people :)).

Like i said, later on i might have to add this sort of option where people can become users of the site and login to check stats or whatever it is that's available to them. So ill need PHP, MySQL for that?

@42ndFreak,

Thanks a lot for that man. Really helps a lot :) Can you answer the same question ^^ that i've asked prashant.
 
@Ank1t: I am not sure if I understand your question fully/correctly, but any decent user management system will require server side scripting (PHP/MySQL being one of the options). You _do_ get free hosting with these capabilities, but they usually come with a catch (ads on your website, or some such thing). I'd say go for a reasonable free host while you're practicing, you can always switch later on :)

[If you don't mind posting frequently at forums, a couple of places are quite good, I could PM you details if you like.]

And glad if anything helped, thanks for reading!
 
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