Complete novice wants to create a website

bijou

Hi all,
Mods - I hope it is OK to pose my question here.

I am looking to create a "personal" website that only family/friends can have access to, say by giving them a password to log on to it. I am looking looking to create something where I (and the family) can upload photos/events etc..... to it.

I understand that I need to register a domain (already done that bit) and that I need to look at hosting (looking into that) but it is the actual creation of the website that I am completely green at

Can anyone recommed any website creation software that would be affordable and easy to use/understand. I found a website called www.myfamily.com which is similar to what I want to do, however if I'm honest I would really like to attempt to have a go at this myself and say "I did that!":rolleyes:

Any advice from you guys would be very much appreciated.
Thanks - Bijou

Evil Phil

bijou wrote: »

I would really like to attempt to have a go at this myself and say "I did that!"

Good Stuff!!!

Have a look at w3schools HTML tutorials to get yourself started.

After that have a look at the CSS tutorial.

I might seem a little scarey at first but you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Dunno about software for a complete newbie (nobody say frontpage!) but if you're following the tutorials above then Edit Plus 3 is a great text editor.

Hellm0

Evil Phil wrote: »

Good Stuff!!!

Have a look at w3schools HTML tutorials to get yourself started.

After that have a look at the CSS tutorial.

I might seem a little scarey at first but you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Dunno about software for a complete newbie (nobody say frontpage!) but if you're following the tutorials above then Edit Plus 3 is a great text editor.

Phil's got the right idea, as for the password protection it depends but the easiest way would be to do it through your hosting provider.

steve-hosting36

Most hosts will provide a free website builder tool, where you choose from a bunch of templates, upload your images / photos and click to build a simple site with wizard-like tools - might suit what you're after.

noreds

if you use a mac you can use iPhoto and dot mac storage to create a web gallery which you can password protect.
other people can upload photos and leave comments to the gallery. they dont need a mac to do this. They can use their windows computer, mobile phone or anything that can email a picture to an email address.

try this link:
http://www.apple.com/dotmac/webgallery.html

Also for creating your site there is iWeb, which is very easy to use and doesn't involve learning and coding skills. Basically you just drag and drop things where you want them
http://www.apple.com/dotmac/iweb.html
You can also use iWeb with your registered domain.
You should have a nice little site built within 30 mins- 2 hours depending on how fancy you want it with iWeb.

If you don't have a mac then sorry for wasting your time with the info. But worth considering if you're getting another computer anytime soon.

Gordon

I'd suggest looking into pre-made packages that will do what you want and then slot them together. What exactly do you want? A photo album where people can put up their images? One album for Mum, one for Dad etc? You want a chat function? Building these things from the ground up can be a very steep learning curve, and fair play if you want to do that, that's great.

Otherwise, you could get open source alternatives (check here for some examples - goto the demo menu) and try them out and load them onto your site. Some of these can be plugged in/linked to Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla! or Drupal and can make a very flexible site - if you want a magazine, chat forum, photo gallery, polls, etc.

Good luck either way.

bijou

Thanks guys for your thoughts. I've had a quick look at those links and I think I'll have a go (even if it's just to see how confused I get:o)
One quick question I have is to do with the hosting side. Would it be easier to stay with the company I have the domain with or does it not really matter. Also would I have to have the hosting set up before I start on the actual website?

Cheers from a very grateful Bijou:)

di11on

It's no problem at all to have your domain registered with company A and hosting with company B. Company B will tell you what your domain's nameservers should be and Company A should provide a facility to change the nameserver info to what company B requires.

As for building your website before you have hosting, you could do this by installing a webserver on your local machine. This might be worthwhile if you think you may do more of this in the future. Wamp is a handy package that will install an Apache webserver with PHP and Mysql etc. and works nicely under windows.

This gives you a lot of flexibility and allows you to play around quite a bit and is completely inedpendent of hosting. Once you're happy with your website locally, you just upload your site to your hosting account.

bijou

Hi Guys,

Well I bit the bullet and sorted out my domain and hosting. I decided to have a go a trying to develop my website with Dreamweaver MX and I am very happy with it so far (the w3schools site has been a great help too!). I am using the Dreamweaver in split mode so I can see the codes and learn that way. I have to say that am really pleased with what I have done so far:D

Now, if I may be so bold as to ask for a little more advice please? I want to be able to create a login page so that the family can access the site. I have looked at the help pages in Dreamweaver and I have to admit that I am completely confused and haven’t got the foggiest…..:o) Can anyone recommend a (basic) tutorial for creating a login page that "Joe Bloggs" would be able to understand?

Thanks once again;)

Axwell

Have a look at this or this

I would also suggest that since it is just a simple site for your family to access have a look at blocking access to a page or directory using the .htaccess file.
You should be able to do it through your control panel that came with your hosting if you look at the different options in the control panel. It would just basically stop people going to a certain page or directory and ask them to enter a username and password. Anything else is probably going to require a database to hold individual usernames and passwords and you might not have got this with your hosting package.