Advice on building a webpage

Your computer is way overkill for making a web page (although I guess it depends... you could put something crazy on your page)... so you're good in that department.

I found Macromedia Contribute to be quite easy for people to make basic, non-template web pages. It's almost like creating a document (with a little more pizzazz)... I'd suggest learning a bit with good ol' textedit or some such just to get the basics to learn the underneath part... it's really not that hard to do.

http://www.w3schools.com/ can be useful if you want to learn about all aspects of web development.

Yeah the Macromedia stuff is probably the best if you don't want to learn to do it by hand, but I would reccomend learning to write them from scratch. At least for the basic stuff, then you can use the WYSIWYG stuff to throw some stuff together pretty quickly, so if you need to fix something, you at least understand most of what's going on in there. Lots of books and online courses to help you learn HTML.

Contribute is pretty good (although it has some annoying limitations), and it makes it a snap to experiment with pages or update your site.

Some simple Javascript might also help you make your page really snappy (an image swap, for instance). W3schools.com (already mentioned by kingjr3) has a really easy JS section if you're looking for a little extra something for your webpage.

One thing to always remember: Choose your background color carefully! I once changed the background color on a site I had and got a bunch of "your website hurts my eyes" emails (and, in retrospect, it was a pretty awful color).

I also recommend learning to code by hand. To get started, try this site. It's where I started ages ago, and it did a good job of answering my stupid questions.

After you can do basic web pages, check out CSS. I'd recommend this site as a good primer.

You could then get into JavaScript or CGI or god knows what else. But HTML and CSS are a great place to start. Also, get in the habit early of validating your pages -- even (or especially) if you decide to go with the WYSIWYG editors.

Even if you do decide to use a WYSIWYG program, it wouldn't hurt to bone up on the above links, just so you'll understand a little of the magic going on under the hood.

Finally, when you get something you want feedback on, or you've hit a wall and don't know what to do next, check out the Web development area of this forum. You'll find some very helpful folks that will set you straight.

I found that just experimenting with dreamweaver and following tutorials helped me more than just reading books. Just my 2 cents. Good luck

I started playing with making a website in January, and I find that playing around in Dreamweaver is a great place to start. Looking at the tags, changing things, experimenting really. Then I started copying the sources from other websites, and then loading it into Dreamweaver. That's another good way to be exposed to more. W3Schools is a really good place to learn, as is many other websites. Looking around when you have problems never hurts. The Webdesign part of these forums is also pretty good when you have problems, or want your design looked at. Books are really good if you want to learn hand coding, or more advanced features. Good luck into experimenting! Oh, and do use XHTML.
–Chase

I was using, and happy with, the concept of using Contribute w/.Mac as they were advertising it a while back.

But now I've run into some trouble with it, and it seems I'm not alone.

http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/w...threadid=727149&highlight_key=y&keyword1=.mac

The Apple support boards also have some complaints of difficulty with Contribute & .mac.

I'm moving to Softpress Freeway Express . And if I can't get that to work with .Mac I'm going to throw a major hissy fit.

Open Apple+Option+V

Find a site that you think has a cool design and see how they put it together. It's how I learned, that should get you started on the basics, once you have those down and want to learn a little more about design visit AListApart, which has a ton of great articles that will give you some great ideas on how to get things started.

If you are looking to do more than a static page, you may want to look into Kirupa which I've recently taken a liking to. It's great if you're looking to get into some Flash, which can make for a great looking website. If I were in your shoes I would probably harness some of my musical creativity and play around with Flash. As I'm sure you've noticed almost every major artist has a Flash site, it could be a great way to market yourself.

i'm all for learning to code by hand. i find that using web design programs is like playing the piano while wearing mittens. you'll have total control over the site, create less code, and be able to write in a form that's human readable (not like the garbage those programs spew out). i learned xhtml in about 2 days using the tutorials on http://www.w3schools.com and grabbed the basics of stylesheets by the end of that week.

w3schools and Taco HTMLedit are the only tools you need for starting out.

My POV...

I am a self-taught website programmer. I built my first website at age 14 because I thought it would be fun. Little did I know that five years down the road, I'd be going to college to study graphic design and computer programming and making a career out of it.

So, here's how I got my start.
Software is good. Macromedia is my favorite--contribute is good, Dreamweaver is better if you have the $$ for it. (Student discounts make it almost affordable, if you're in the position to get one...) Of course, you could code by hand using TextEdit or BBEdit lite, but that takes so much longer...
To make it pretty looking you'll also need some graphic software. Photoshop Elements is my favorite for beginners and uber-affordable, Macromedia Fireworks is cool too but not quite as useful in my opinion.

One website I've found extraordinarily useful is webmonkey.com. It has good tutorials on everything from basic HTML to CSS.

And books--books were by far the most helpful resource for me. Hit the local library, that's what I did. First you need to know the nitty-gritty on how a website is put together. While modern software makes it possible to make entire sites without knowing a lick of HTML, it's still extremely helpful in the long run to know how things are put together mechanically. My favorite book on this was "The Complete Idiot's guide to Creating a Website" it's written in an easy-to-understand, non-geekspeak conversational style and walks you through the whole process, from initial HTML nitty-gritty coding to graphics to uploading your page to your host. Try it. You'll like it. A basic html reference is also helpful if you want to try your luck at hand-coding.
Once you know the code, you also might want to get some books on the software that you choose to use--the "Visual Quickstart" books for PSE and MDW are pretty basic but they do get you up and running fairly quickly. There are also lots of great books out there on effective, user-friendly website design, more advanced photoshop techniques, etc.

Hope this helps--good luck with your efforts and don't forget to post the url when it goes live!
Britt

Experience teaches the best.

Start coding pages with anything you got - TextEdit/Notepad, Dreamweaver, etc.

If you want to do something, then learn how to do it. Eventually you will be quite the expert.

Good luck,

scem0