DIY web design, hosting etc

[Colesy]

Need to set up a few websites for various purposes and don't really know where to start so thought I'd see what people would recommend. They'll be basic websites to begin with, one would be for a friend (low volume car dealer) so specific recommendations for this sort of thing would be great. The others just simple websites for small companies.

I'd like to get my hands dirty and learn to do more than the simple wysiwyg type website designs offered by hosting companies really. But don't want to have to learn html from scratch. What's the best software for this sort of thing? I'm sure technology has moved on from the html editors I used back in school and dreamweaver is probably not the best around anymore. So any tips would be much appreciated.

Also recommendations for a good hosting company would be great too?

[prj]

Easiest way will be to use an engine such as wordpress, but you should know PHP and HTML/CSS.
There is almost nothing to learn about CSS/HTML, it's only about looking up what certain elements/selectors do, and the more you use it, the more you will remember by heart.

All the software you need is a web browser basically.

[Christophski]

Look into Loom fruit for hsoting too i think. I dont think its great but is basic and willg et you going. other wise I would say the same as above. At work I use Word press for the company blogging site and then for the actual website I use Expression Engine. Both have all the wysiwyg tools. You may need someone to set up the basic template though as not sure what they start out like as our design and web guys did all that. they then just leave it all with me to carry on with. Thing is though you are best of having dreamweaver to help you as it the wysiwyp functionality is limited and can throw in Junk code sometimes that Dreamweaver can eliminate.

[Val]

All the software you need is a web browser basically.

You forgot text editor with syntax highlighting.

[prj]

You forgot text editor with syntax highlighting.

That's already built into wordpress through plugins, if you like.
I maintain that you really only need a web browser.

[Sonic]

We're not counting the web-server and database behind the scenes then?

[prj]

We're not counting the web-server and database behind the scenes then?

Nope, that's done for you on the host

There's free hosting at wordpress.com and one-click installers make installing wordpress easy.

[Colesy]

Thanks for the input guys.

So is Wordpress the best or is it just good because it's free?

Any other recommendations for uk hosting companies?

[Christophski]

Its quite easy to use. I wouldnt say one is best over another as its what you get used to when you use them. Obviously some will be better or easier than others. Maybe try and use something and see how you go and if its not workign then try another one. May be long winded but it gives you experience and then you can make your mind up. Hth's

[Sonic]

What do you want the website to do?

Wordpress is a very good out-the-box CMS/blog, which you can customise quickly using all the extensions - but it is in that sense limited by them. Writing any kind of custom extension will require further PHP/MySQL knowledge... hence the question, what do you want the website to do?

If you want to customise the front-end (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) then you'll need to know these languages, and know how to structure the new template to work with wordpress. There are lots of free templates already available.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_a_Plugin

[Greg_S]

I used goodluckwithus free hosting to tinker around with a few bits before. I use Django alot for development since I am normally making machine type interfaces and custom products rather than standard websites. Wordpress is very good though and I have used this in the past.

Also worth considering having a play with google app engine which you can run several different front ends on or even amazon webservices since you are able to serve static sites purely from S3 at a low cost and high scalability, or use mix with EC2 if you need it to be more interactive

[speeding-g60]

i dont know anything, absolutely zero, about webhosting and website building, etc.

but i am using godaddy for hosting (its cheap like $75 USD for two years?) and wordpress. its been a learning process, and really i would estimate i know about 10% of what i could know, if that. i try to keep it going, and its about as basic as it gets.

here is mine.

https://www.speeding-g60.com

[1781cc]

have a look at wordpress as previously mentioned, then an opensource image editor like Gimp for photo and processing. If you are stuck for templates then have a nose around themeforest, you can get some really good, well documented customisable templates there.

Good luck with it, and as a heads up, if your theme uses the timthumb.php script make sure it is the latest version or your server could get hacked down to root level because of a vulnerability.

Presumably you bought a domain? if you did, most domain registrars provide affordable basic hosting as well, 123-reg for example, so maybe try that out, it will still be shared, but probably on a decent ISP backbone if you chose well. ie, 123-reg = Webfusion = Pipex backbone!

[Colesy]

What do you want the website to do?

Wordpress is a very good out-the-box CMS/blog, which you can customise quickly using all the extensions - but it is in that sense limited by them. Writing any kind of custom extension will require further PHP/MySQL knowledge... hence the question, what do you want the website to do?

There is very little that I need each website to do really, just look good is the main thing, nothing too "flash". The car dealer one could do with a good inventory system/search function. One could do with a basic quote facility. They would mainly be just websites for the sake of having websites for basic advertising. ie who the company is what they do, where they are etc.