I just thought I would create this thread to help all the people out there who are not as knowledgable about sites as some of us. I also want to prevent any horrible free site designer sites that come free with hosts like freewebs and geocities which look horrible, and have terrible space/bandwidth limits.
1. SITE TYPE The first thing you will have to do is decide what your site is going to be like. Is it a resource site? A clan site? A bit of both? This is important becase the type of site changes the way the design should look. A resource site has to be clean, easy to navigate, and very user friendly. A clan site on the other hand should have darker colours and have more contrast than resource sites, however this can change dewpending on what type of clan you're making, if you are a fun clan, or if you just want a lighter, cartoony site be my guest. Remember, Im just giving you guidelines, do whatever you think fits.
2. MAKING THE SITEOnce you have decided which category your site falls into and what type of design you want for your site you either have to create it from scratch, or find a template you like.
- Creating a site from scratch: This is the harder and more complex way to get your design. You need to be confident in html and have a site making program such as frontpage or dreamweaver, if you have both, use dreamweaver to create you're site as its a much better tool. If you want to learn HTML, go to
www.w3schools.com, it is very useful. Now obviously im not going to take you through making your site but there are a few things to bear in mind. If you are coding directly into HTML plan your website layout on paper before coding it, this makes it a lot easier. Keep to one or two colours (red and black, green and white, for instance). Use photoshop or paintshop pro or a program like that to make all your graphics,
www.goodtutorials.com has tons of good tutorials for this.
- If you want to take the easier route or do not wish to learn a complicated program, you can use a template. Probably the best site for templates is
www.clantemplates.com. Select one you like (keeping in mind what type of design your site wants) and download it. They usually come in .zips so unzip the folder to a place you'll easily remember (my webs, for instance). Edit the banner with a graphics program and the text with notepad or a website program (frontpage/dreamweaver/etc.)
3. FINDING A HOSTNext you need to find a good host for your site. Luckily a thread has already been made here,
http://forums.soldat.pl/topic.asp?topic_id=20976 which lists some of the best free hosts out there. Bear in mind if you're template uses php, you're host has to support php and mysql. You could ofcourse get a paid host but I wont get into that.
4. HOSTING THE SITEOnce you have decided on the host most suited to hosting your site you have to upload the whole of the template folder to the internet. Find out how your host uploads files, usually through ftp so find a good ftp program on google, aceftp is a good one. Once you have connected to your ftp you can upload your files and go to the url of your host (myhost.com/myusername or myusername.myhost.com usually) and it should display your site as long as you include an index.htm or home.htm in the root folder of the site. If your host doesnt use ftp, find out what it does use and upload your files that way.
5. GETTING A REDIRECTORIf you want to shorten you're url you can get an url redirector such as .tk (
www.dot.tk) which redirects your browser to your site when yoursite.tk is typed in, as long as the domain isnt already taken.
Warning: Grumpy old internet people like FliesLikeABrick strongly discourage the use of .tk. It is not recognized by many ISPs and DNS servers around the world, and a lot of people will not be able to get to your site if you use .tk. You have been warned
So that concludes my guide to getting you're site up and running, if you have any questions dont hesitate to ask. If a mod would make this a sticky I would be honored for the rest of my life
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USEFUL LINKS:[yellow]Templates[/yellow] [orange]Tutorials[/orange]
Both[yellow]-
www.clantemplates.com[/yellow]
- www.zymic.com[orange]-
www.good-tutorials.com[/orange]
[orange]-
www.w3schools.com[/orange]
[orange]-
www.pixel2life.com[/orange]
[orange]-
www.n-sane.net[/orange]
Remember,
www.google.com is you're friend.
Topic originally created by Sam.
