Beggining on a Web Site

[blankloner]

Hello, I was thinking on starting out on my website, I have all the necessary tools, except, I dont know exactly how it will work. I have a couple of questions as to how they should be managed. If I want to make the, say, about me page, same as my homepage, except with stuff about me, do I have to copy the homepage, then erase everything it had on there, and write the about me stuff? In other words, is there a way to make a template that I could use for my website? This system seems very insufficient and I dont think is what people use. One more thing, I would like to make a background for my pages. I was thinking about using Adobe ImageReady and writing whatever I wanted in there, but then if I want to update any page I have to open it up again in imageready and make room for the new text. Is there a way I could upload the background image into frontpage and work on top of that? If not, is there any other program that allows this, custom page templates and custom backgrounds? Thanks.

[kram 2.0]

Hey,

First of all, have you taken a look at the Starting a Webpage/Web Dev Guide? If you have, good - it's a good starting point.

As for the templates, there are ways of doing it thorugh PHP (setting the URL so the content is different), but the simplest way to do it for a homepage is probably to set one file that is your template - just your template, and save it as something like template.html. Then everytime you make a new webapge, you just use that file and insert the content. Save as a different HTML file from there for each individual new page.

As for background, you may want to play around with Adobe Photoshop Elements - it costs around 100 USD and is a neat little piece of software. Make an image with that or something that you would like the background to be, and set your body tag in HTML as "< body background="http://www.yourhomepagenamehere.com/afilename.jpg" >" without the quotes and replacing the arbitrary names I had there. Otherwise, you can just do it through the Frontpage environment - right click on the page and click background. Upload the image from there. I hope I understood your question correctly...otherwise, feel free to ask more.

Hope that helps,
kram

[foolishone]

i have never used it but couldn't CSS do a template effect

actually i just thought of using frames, if you were patient. just link an object or anything to another html document and have it displayed in the other frame

[blankloner]

Okay thanks kram8806, I got ya. Thanks for the help .

Actually, foolishone, I think thats a really good idea. I was experimenting with that, I could have all the things that will not change, like the links and stuff, in one frame, and then link one frame to another page, that way, I just need to change the page that its linked to to change stuff, very good thinking. But, this might be a dumb question, but I dont know, I used frames in my page, then i previewed it, and I was able to resize the frames, how could I make it so that the visitors are not allowed to resize the frames? Thanks .

[kram 2.0]

I almost never use frames - I personally never really liked them a lot. CSS can only format font and the "style" used in the page (like Hyperlink and indentation)...I think. Personally, reinserting the content would be the most optimal way but don't let me daunt you from other options - it's personal preference here.

For using frames, just be sure to make the frame width be zero (width="0") - almost all users won't be able to resize the frame from there.

Hope that helps,
kram

[blankloner]

Okay, thanks bud. One more question, I would like to skin my website using photoshop, But if I decide to add more to a certain page and I already have a background, the stuff wont fit, forcing me to make a new picture as my background. Is there a simpler way to do this? Thats why I thought using frames would be a good idea, that way I would just need to skin each frame as neccessary. Because if I make a background for the whole site, I'd have to make the picture/background bigger if I decide to add more. I mean more as in typing more, making the page longer. Thats why I thought using frames would be a good idea when making backgrounds, but I am new to this, if there is another way, could you please let me know? Thanks