Making a website!

[wezx]

Hello everyone, yes I'm making a CP website using dreamweaver and macromedia studios. I use those free accounts from netfirms, the problem is... Im a total newbie in macromedia and stuff, I've read a few tutorials and they didn't really help me.
Im clueless about some stuff like making a layout, separating boxes so that i can do the welcome column, links, etc, measurments of a normal webpage
anyone can give me some 'pro' views? Recommend a website? How did u guys learn and manage to make a website

thanks,
wezx

 

[endparenthesis]

http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/

Good stuff for beginners.

You should definitely consider making your website specialized in some way if you aren't already. A great deal of the clutter on the internet is people reinventing the wheel and just duplicating information they've found elsewhere... giving people no reason to visit their site and watering down the search engines results in the process. It would be good web design practice of course, but beyond that providing something of real value should be the very first priority in my opinion.

(not to rain on anyone's parade... just something I wish more people would think about)

 

[wezx]

Thanks... ill consider that

 

[wezx]

Ok i have another problem
the links on my site work fine, except for 1, whenever i click it, it creates a new window... i dunno why, anyone help?
thanks

 

[endparenthesis]

Make sure the link doesn't have a target ("_blank" for example would create a new window). Otherwise you may have gotten some javascript in there if you were playing with behaviors.

 

[wezx]

Thanks! it works now

I went to webmonkey and it has only tutorials for html, do u know of a website that teaches dreamweaver's WYSIWYG thing? I've watched some tutorials but they don't cover beginner stuff

thanks!

 

[swords]

I use Dreamweaver pro edition so I don't know if you'll have the same features but lemme open DW and see if I can help....

OK, at the top of the initial open screen there are tabs with names like: Common, Layout, Text, Tables Frames, Forms, Templates....

If you wanna make free floating boxes click on the Layout tab
This gives you a choice between standard view (HTML) and Layout View. Choose Layout view, This lets you use WYSIWYG by drawing a lyout table or layout cell. I like using cells only as it reminds me more of doing a magazine layout in Quark Express. Each free floating cell you can place either text or a photo.

As you draw layout cells guidelines will automatically appear on the page so that you will be able to line things up.

When you place the cursor in a layout cell go back to the "common" tab at the top. here you can choose the image icon and pick an image from your hard drive and it will appear in the box. If you have not setup a website in Dreamweaver yet it will say "this image is outside the file......... do you wanna continue?" just click yes cos it will be there once you setup and save a website.

OK, fast forward.... you've made some pages and are ready to upload a website go to the right side of your screen there should be a column that says:
Design
Code
Application
Files
then two tabs Site and Assets
Choose Site tab
Then there are some options and two drop down menus.
the drop down menu on the left will say "edit Sites" if you have no sites. Click "edit sites"
Then go through the site setup which I will describe here for my websites with no-server technology (no shopping cart or database type pages just a basic website) and FTP upload I make these choices on setting up a new website.

Click Edit Sites
Then in the pop up box choose "new"
Now Name your site
This next box asks about server technology, if you don't have a shopping cart setup choose "no"
This page asks how you'll be seting up your site, will you be working online or build it then upload it? Probably you will design it on your PC then post it online so choose the first option. At the bottom is a location for your website, if you don't specify the folder you have setup with all your websites files in it Dreamweaver will make one up for you.
Ok, next screen is how you connect to your online server, most likely it will be FTP (but it might not so you'll have to findout when you buy some server space how you'll be uploading)
I choose FTP and the next screen is where I type in all my remote server info: Hostname: what folder on the host server, my user name, password and then hit "test connection" and if you did everything right it'll say you have successfully connected. If it doesn't connect go back and do it again and again and again!

One more thing, make sure your first page of your website is www. yoursite.com/index.html you can put anything on this page you want an opening page or the actual homepage but this is the first page that will appear when someone types in www.yoursite.com

I know it probbaly makes zero sense (as much as reading the help files!) but it's hard to explain, simple to show if you were in my neighborhood! Good luck!

 

[wezx]

Wow thanks swords, You filled in some blanks for me, I was really confused about the layout and stuff

Quote[/b] ]I know it probbaly makes zero sense (as much as reading the help files!) but it's hard to explain, simple to show if you were in my neighborhood! Good luck!

Please don't remind me of those scary help files... so many words, so few pictures, they only helped to confused me!

 

[endparenthesis]

Learning HTML will teach you just about all you need in Dreamweaver... all it's doing is creating HTML for the most part. It's better at it than most programs but I still find it easier to just handcode things since I know I'll do it right. I just use Dreamweaver so I can see what I'm doing and so I can insert basic things quickly. So if you learn HTML you'll actually be better off, because Dreamweaver will never be able to mess something up and confuse you with it. There are plenty of situations where my job was to clean up code in a page created by someone who only knew a WYSIWYG program.

So if you just want to get a page up and not worry about how it works I may not be the best one to listen to.