Html Based Website

[CroniC]

does anyone know how to make a html website?

thanx in advance.

[mantapc]

Yes, what do you need to know?

[CroniC]

well i just found a free website provider and i want to make my old page look like my new one

[mantapc]

Ok I am assuming that you aren't an experienced web developer. I suggest that you get a program such as:

Adobe Golive (the best)

Or any other not so great programs:
MS FrontPage
Macromedia DreamWeaver

If you dont want to buy these rather expensive programs, then you can go to the Adobe or Macromedia site and get a free trial version.

[dead_eye]

I reccomend a tutorial to learn html: http://www.friserverplads.dk/inanerantings/html1.html
http://html.about.com

[mairving]

Ouch, wouldn't stick Adobe GoLive anywhere near the top with it's code bloat. Dreamweaver is a far better WYSIWYG editor in my opinion.

CroniC , back to your question. You really have a couple of different options. You can use a WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet editor like the one's mentioned above or you can code by hand or somewhere in between. To code by hand, you could use Notepad or any text editor or other fancier editors like TextPad and Homesite. HTML is not a hard language to learn. The toughest part comes with learning how to place images & text where you want them on a page.

For a tutorial, the one above is good as or others, although I kind of like HTML Goodies. I would also recommend that you get the O'Reilly book, WebDesign in a Nutshell. It is a great book for tips, tutorials and reference.

[Gintaras]

Don't forget about Arachnophilia which is FREE.

[dj4uk]

Coding by hand is the way to go - all the WYSIWYG packages add loads of unnecessary code. Also if you ever intend to do any server side programming it will be much easier. I'd also learn JavaScript if I was you - can do some great stuff with DHTML.

[Rick Hall]

Macromedia Dreamweaver is currently the number 1 editor and the business standard for all web site designers. It is the best editor available today. It not only supports WYSIWYG but can be used as a hand coding editor. In my opinion, the next best (for hand coding) is Homesite, which by the way can be integrated into Dreamweaver.
Adobe GoLive is down at the bottom of the list of preferred editors.

[Xayd]

I'll use Dreamweaver, but only because of the source code panel they implemented that lets you change the source on the fly. It's great for tedious things like table layout and such, but any WYSIWYG editor will spit out bloated code that *should* be hand edited afterwards.

Learn the code, it's not difficult. After you've learned the code, you can pick an editor to make life easier.

[mairving]

As an example, try creating a simple rollover by hand, Dreamweaver & GoLive. The hand coded rollover was 26 lines long. The Dreamweaver was 44 lines long. The Go Live rollover was 106 lines long.

You know I have never understood what you would gain by integration between Homesite and Dreamweaver. I learned how to make nested tables in DW but now I that I know how, I don't need it any more.

[dj4uk]

I agree - I've tried Dreamweaver and hated it.
Its only use is if you are going to do really intensive DHTML and that would be a nightmare anyway cos of all the browser incompatabilities.
I always handcode for work - there is no other way with serverside languages in my opinion.

[Gintaras]

So far from my own experience, the best is to learn HTML. Arachnophilia can help you a lot for that, IMHO, it also, has preview(wygiwys) option.

MS Front Page, is prolly the worst- it even should be considered as suggestion to anyone, by anyone as web page creation software.

I've tried DW4, I like it, and it's harder to learn , but anyway creates a lot of garb.

[LindZ]

I'd say that learning HTML and writing the code yourself is the way to go. HTML is really easy to learn and there are a bunch of good tutorial sites out there. I recommend www.htmlgoodies.com and www.webmonkey.com.

[morriswindgate]

This site has free on-line tutorials by subject.

http://www.beginners.co.uk/