Fukushousha Posted December 14, 2006 Share Posted December 14, 2006 Hello all,First a very big thanks going to w3schools for their tutorials which I read all and must admit they are quite informative.The reason I read them was because I am making the site for our gamedevelpopment team.But it will be my first site ever and I would like it to be nice if not just decent. So after having read the tutorials how do you think I should proceed?View some page's source and change it?Start writting code form scratch ?What would be the best approach on this?I am good at coding c++ and java but web building will be my first time now.Thanks in advance for any advice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aspnetguy Posted December 14, 2006 Share Posted December 14, 2006 Your first step shpuld be to decide on a topic for your website and what you want the website to do.Then design a layout in Photoshop or draw it on paper. Then set to work trying to code it in XHTML and CSS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boen_robot Posted December 14, 2006 Share Posted December 14, 2006 If you're short on time, you'll be best off with a CMS. In other words: a premade template, along with a managing menu for manipulating content. You may tweak the CMS' template to meet the look and feel you want.If you want to be better though, it's always best (excuse the pun) to start from scratch. The best approach... well.... the opinions on this differ and it's really a question of timing, environment and targeted audience. Scince you'll be making games, formal things like "accessability" are probably not relevant to you, as people with disabilities won't be your targeted audience. And unless you're making games for cell phones, "device independancy" won't be a priority either.So in your case, it's safe to use WYSIWYG editors and tweak the code they produce. If you're choosing this option, I suggest Dreamwaver 8 though. Don't even think about using MS Front Page.My practice on the other hand is to first make the content and mark it up, depending on it's semantics (meaning, reasons to be there).Then make a sort of "framework" to bind this page's content to a common content, such as navigation, as well as for the device independance factor. The simplest sort I would advise you to use for a first site is any sort of SSI (Server Side Include) that is available at your disposal.After that is done, I design the CSS of the page. CSS, incase you haven't read about it, is a language used to descibe the appearance of a web page. It's a lot better to use it then HTML's presentational attributesa and elements. However, I must warn you that designing CSS based layouts is hard work. You might actually be better modifying an existing one. Google for "CSS layouts" if you want to find an existing one.After the positions and all of that in the layout are done, I may also threw a few images in the CSS for attractiveness' sake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ste Posted December 14, 2006 Share Posted December 14, 2006 View some page's source and change it?dont do that.first off plan the site. Aesthetics:what kind of look/feel should the site have? this will make all kinds of choices for you like color scheme, font choice and layout.Content:how much will there be? this will influence the type of navigation (drop-downs for large sites etc.) the amount of content and how regularly it will be updated also gives us an idea of technologies we may need. (database? server side scripting?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 14, 2006 Author Share Posted December 14, 2006 Very nice and constructive replies and for that thanks.I will try and follow everyone's advice and start planning/building the site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ste Posted December 14, 2006 Share Posted December 14, 2006 great, good luck with it Again, i know it sounds boring but i cant stress how important it is to plan. Ive seen guys with 4 page websites using a css drop down menu just because they thought the menu was cool only to realise it was unnessecary for a micro site. At the other end of the spectrum a friend making a clan site with hundreds of pages in plain html. he had a nightmare trying to control all that content and eventually had to redo the site with a cms and re-enter all the posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 14, 2006 Author Share Posted December 14, 2006 It is almost certain that I will do some mistakes or do things the hard way while I could have done the easy way , even with planning.But that is all involved in the process of learning I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted December 14, 2006 Share Posted December 14, 2006 Don't sacrifice a good site because you don't know how to build it. Design your site the way you want it to be like aspnetguy said, in Photoshop or something. Once you have something looking good, then you can figure out what the best way is to put it on the web, and we can help there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 14, 2006 Author Share Posted December 14, 2006 Ok I will do it , but well since I do not own a licensed photoshop I will go for inkscape.Not that I know how to use it better but I heard pretty nice things about it.And I do not think that a site to present our team's current project/s would be something really complicated.Later I might want to add a forum but the whole site layout won't be very complicated.Unless something else comes to mind in the coming days I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonas Posted December 14, 2006 Share Posted December 14, 2006 inkscape is one option. You can also try the GIMP for an image editing software. If you try GIMP, you can get help here:http://www.gimptalk.com/and on the forum:http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 22, 2006 Author Share Posted December 22, 2006 Hey all , after some time off from this I have some very basic layout done .... nothing is for sure yet and by the way designing a site layout is a lot more challenging than I originally thought So it has a logo on the top left corner of the site.Under it 5 Buttons.Next to the buttons the place where each thing you select from the menu of buttons will be shown. The buttons are :Home , Projects , Forums , Our Comic , About Us .Home will have the news of the site .... general news stuff the place I would like to update often.Projects will speak of our teams project (one for the moment )Forums will have a forum which I am planning to code later on php .... that is left for later ... I thought to use an already made one like ezboard or something ... but I think it would be challenging to make on myself ... if and when I have the time:)Our Comic will have a frequently updated archive of a certain comic I would like to put in the site.Now ... you might say and with good reason .. what the heck does a comic want in a game developing team's site?I think it would give me one more way to express myself , one more reason to update the site frequently and ofcourse .... maybe .. just maybe more dedicated traffic !And in the end the About Us button will .. be the usual About Us/FaQI am also considering google ads on the top and maybe something neat .. if something comes to mind later in the right side of the site.So if you read this post you might have gotten a general idea of what I am talking about.How do you think I should start implementing this one?Any help would be useful.Just point the way and leave the studying to me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sniffy Posted December 22, 2006 Share Posted December 22, 2006 Start off by creating about two comics, a flashy layout, and an easily navigated, clean site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 23, 2006 Author Share Posted December 23, 2006 Yeah I got that almost , that is why I asked again in the post.By "How should I implement it " I meant :Should U just code it in html?Any php scripting?What tools should I use?(php , html , xhtml e.t.c.) ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ste Posted December 23, 2006 Share Posted December 23, 2006 it looks like you have 4 fairly static pages (Home , Projects , Our Comic , About Us) and then the forum. i would probably code it like this:make the basic html template, split this into individual php files (header.php, footer.php etc) build the site with php includes then use third party software for the forum (whichever you prefer phpbb?) and try and style the forum to match the look of your site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 23, 2006 Author Share Posted December 23, 2006 Aha ! And here I was wondering ... I thought I had the grasp of css styling .... but I realized that with css I can't show the same images (menu images e.t.c.) in every page.So I should put those in a separate php file which I should include in every page I guess eh ? Now let's see ... gonna re-read the php tutorial of w3c to see how I can accomplish this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlhaslip Posted December 23, 2006 Share Posted December 23, 2006 I realized that with css I can't show the same images (menu images e.t.c.) in every page.Oh yes you can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 23, 2006 Author Share Posted December 23, 2006 Oh yes you can.I am a noob But how do you do it then?I can't understand how I could do it with css.Could you explain it a little more in detail please?Thanks in advance.I have already done it in php , but I would really want to know how I could do it with css.Also , which approach would be better?So the very general view of the website is done and uploaded.It is very basic and many things I have not thought of or designed yet ... but please do check it out and I would appreciate any feedback , tips or comments.Since this is the first time I ever attempt to create a website these are new fields for me so be Lenient Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reportingsjr Posted December 23, 2006 Share Posted December 23, 2006 Use a static path. Say the images were in the folders includes/images. Includes is in the main root, and to specify the main root in a path it is just a slash: /. So if I wanted to access that includes/image folder I would do /includes/folder.EDIT: looks like the images are all working, but not to be mean. The colors hurt my eyes. Its the blue, I dont know why but it does! Try changing the colors a bit? Oh yeah, on home you said it was 23/5/06, its not the 5th month its the 12th . Other than that it looks good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 23, 2006 Author Share Posted December 23, 2006 No no , that is why I asked to see reactions.Thing is blue is kind of a "strict" colour and the whole idea of the site desing was "strict" colours and "strict" geometrical shapes.And I love blue , but I will think on it , comments like this is what I need Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ste Posted December 23, 2006 Share Posted December 23, 2006 Aha ! And here I was wondering ... I thought I had the grasp of css styling .... but I realized that with css I can't show the same images (menu images e.t.c.) in every page.So I should put those in a separate php file which I should include in every page I guess eh ? Now let's see ... gonna re-read the php tutorial of w3c to see how I can accomplish this i think you misunderstood. What i meant is you design the site with html & css you then seperate the html into php files e.g. header/footer this way you can make changes to just a few files and having those changes propagated throughout the entire web site without having to edit every single file. So basically the css is controling the layout and the php includes are like a way to organise the html. I hope this is clearer now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fukushousha Posted December 23, 2006 Author Share Posted December 23, 2006 Yes I understand what you meant.And also very warm thanks for the help So far for the site design ( graphics so far , style e.t.c.) I got two types of comments from friends or people I asked. One is like reportingsjr's who says the colours are too harsh.The other was they loved it... wondering what to do now.Maybe keep those while experimenting with more combinations which might look better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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