Website development

kryptonmight

I'm a bit of a newbie to website development. I'm reasonably familiar with desktop winforms development, but not on the web.

Basically I want to create a plain website to advertise some work I have done. This website won't be too advanced, mostly just screenshots of apps and stuff I have developed, along with links to the relevant app store and probably some sort of contact form or a page with contact details.

I plan to host this on my own domain so I'm not really looking for some sort of blog that is hosted on a 3rd party domain/site.

It will mostly just be a few screenshots, maybe sections of the background with different colours (the section with one app maybe has a green background, the other yellow etc) and maybe a small banner across the top.

What's the best way to develop this? What software should I use? I have Visual Studio but I don't know if this is the best option.

Colonel Panic

If you are familiar with Visual Studio and C#, and have access to a host that runs IIS and supports ASP.Net MVC, when that's the way to go.

ThrowinShapes

For a simple website, I'd see an IDE as overkill. Especially when you're getting started, it might be better experience to focus on the code rather than the tool.

Sublime Text is looking to be the go-to editor right now: http://www.sublimetext.com/2
You can also try Notepad++: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

The Corinthian

Depends on whether you want your site simply to advertise your work or you also want it as way to learn Web development yourself.

If the former, then I suggest you go down the CMS route, use something like WordPress, download a template you like, tweak it and publish.

If the latter, you might look at IIS and ASP.Net development, as has been suggested, given you appear to have a background in Windows development. Otherwise there are numerous other technologies and languages you could look into.

Personally, I don't dislike ASP.Net, but would not recommend it to someone trying to learn Web development. Almost all Web languages (except maybe Perl) hide most of what is actually going on and this can sometimes lead to so-called 'developers' who don't have a breeze of a notion of how even the client-server model works. It's very, very important that you get to grips with these basics, regardless of what you code in.

Only other word of caution is that if this site is going to be a professional one, then you may want to go down the CMS route regardless. As commendable as it may be to use this as an opportunity to learn a new technology - first projects tend not to be the 'prettiest'.

Finally, handling your own domain and hosting should be straightforward, although if you're a complete noob on this, remember to make sure that the hosting you rent supports the underlying Web site technology you're using, and beware domain and hosting combo deals, as many will tie you in by making it very difficult for you to move your domain if you ever choose to move your hosting away from them.

grahamor

I've found Twitter Bootstrap great for throwing a site together in a few hours. Has all the components you need and there's tonnes of themes too.

I'd also recommend using a CMS for this. I'm a fan of CMS made simple and Wordpress.

8eni

I'd recommend http://www.squarespace.com its very clean, and perfect for what your looking for, wordpress is obviously the number 1 go to CMS, however with squarespace you'll have a really nice site up in a day,

kryptonmight

Thanks, I'll have a look at these.

I agree, I think ASP.net might be overkill for what I need. Although the first step is getting this app finished!

kryptonmight

Is there a good ide i can use? I found a nice template I like on Twitter bootstrap but trying to position graphics /images through something like Notepad may become quite annoying!

I do have access to Visual studio.

Overflow

The only way to get your site to look right is to use a text editor to edit the CSS and HTML, whether that be an editor in an IDE or something like Notepad or Sublimetext. I feel you are looking for a sort of drag and drop designer.

If your using a framework like Bootstrap, this will just not work. You need to learn the framework and in order to do that you need to understand CSS and HTML.

Other than that, keep an eye out for Macaw, it lets you design websites graphically. Its released later this month.

http://macaw.co/

carlmango11

kryptonmight wrote: »

Is there a good ide i can use? I found a nice template I like on Twitter bootstrap but trying to position graphics /images through something like Notepad may become quite annoying!

I do have access to Visual studio.

Bootstrap is great for a quick and nice UI. If you want something dynamic you can use Yii Bootstrap (Yiistrap?) which is a PHP framework with Boostrap built in.

You don't really need an IDE. Download Notepad++. That's what I use whenever I'm doing web development.

kryptonmight

I actually found Expression by Microsoft which seems nice and I'm trying it out.

I like the template I found but I think I want to make more substantial changes to it and learn more about html, so I might start out with a blank sheet of paper and use the template to learn what does what.

Banta

If you're used to .NET development and are wondering about a CMS, then Umbraco is a good way to go. I worked with it for more than 2 years and I can't speak highly enough about it for .NET development integration and ease of use. Well, little bit of a learning curve, but once you have the "OH! OK, I get it now" eureka moment, it's a great CMS.

I still miss some of the features and simplicity of it.