Hi guys, can anyone lend me a hand?

[mediaunc]

Hey everyone, I'm Ray and I'm building a website for my first time. I'd like to say hi to everyone and also ask a couple of questions.

You see, my friend is a hip hop DJ and I'm helping him out by building this website. The website is called Media Uncensored and it's going to be somewhere where he can have pictures and artwork, as well as music and videos. I'm writing the thing by hand with HTML and I'm creating most of the graphics myself using Photoshop. I've already got it started, you can go ahead and check it out mediauncensored.x10host.com. It's not much right now, just the basic layout, though I hope to have it completed within a couple of months, depending on how smooth things go.

I'd just like to know, is there anyone out there who has some experience with HTML that would be willing to answer a few questions here and there? Kind of guide me along a bit and show me some stuff when I get stuck on something. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Once again, I'm Ray, hey everyone. Building my first website, wish me luck.

 

[djmontan]

Hello there, I took a look at your site & I see its coming together.

Have you tried any of the platforms in Softculous in your Cpanell?
Some of those might be easier with setting up a whole platform you can just change all the info & modify each page freely.
What are you using to create your page are you using adobe dreamweaver?
I know a little bit of HTML im not super into it but I may be able to help you in some ways.

One suggestion though the nav at the top Media Uncensored should be smaller & not as wide as the navi itself it just makes the name look too stretched out its throwing off the page's look.

Like This!

 

[mediaunc]

Hello there, I took a look at your site & I see its coming together.

Have you tried any of the platforms in Softculous in your Cpanell?
Some of those might be easier with setting up a whole platform you can just change all the info & modify each page freely.
What are you using to create your page are you using adobe dreamweaver?
I know a little bit of HTML im not super into it but I may be able to help you in some ways.

One suggestion though the nav at the top Media Uncensored should be smaller & not as wide as the navi itself it just makes the name look too stretched out its throwing off the page's look.

Like This!

Hey,
Thanks a lot for checking out my site, I really appreciate the response. Listen my man, I don't know what Softculous is but I'm putting this this together comepletely from scratch using notepad. The only other thing I use is Photoshop to mess around with my graphics. Other than that, I'm going to write this thing using code completely by hand. I think I want to do it that way so I get a better understanding of web pages. I want to have complete control and also learn more about code and hopefully become better in the long run.

I'm going to go ahead and try what you said, to see how it looks and I'll also run it by my bro. I don't mind you making suggestions like that though, that's exactly what I want. I appreciate having someone kind of critique and maybe help me make it better.

I'm thinking some of the areas I'm going to run into problems are going to be the more technical pages, such as the forums. I need to have that working as well as a kind of gallery feature that I'll be able to use in the 'photos' section and also 'artwork' and pages like that. Another thing will be on the video and audio pages, I'll need to have that all working so people can just click play and be able to hear songs and watch videos easily.

Thanks again for the response bro. See you next time

 

[wpkingel]

Hello Ray,
I have had a look at your site and it's not bad for a first attempt. A very long time ago I used to be in your place, but now I work for a Creative digital agency that builds fully content managed websites.
I can give you a couple of pointers:
1) Please use software like Dreamweaver if you really want to code things from scratch. Dreamweaver will actually help you learn code. It helps to use an editor that can highlight CSS and Html tags so they show as different text colours. If you have a lot of code then it becomes easier to read. So choice of text editor is very important.
2) If you really want to do a favor for your friend, please try and looking into installing a CMS like WordPress, not only it will take care of all the hard functionality sections of the site it will also make it easy for you and your friend to edit the content on the site. I think once you have something like WordPress running you can go into the code and start modifying it. This is how i learned how to code. No one really makes things from scratch anymore, code can be reused.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Shaz

 

[leafypiggy]

Hello Ray,
I have had a look at your site and it's not bad for a first attempt. A very long time ago I used to be in your place, but now I work for a Creative digital agency that builds fully content managed websites.
I can give you a couple of pointers:
1) Please use software like Dreamweaver if you really want to code things from scratch. Dreamweaver will actually help you learn code. It helps to use an editor that can highlight CSS and Html tags so they show as different text colours. If you have a lot of code then it becomes easier to read. So choice of text editor is very important.
2) If you really want to do a favor for your friend, please try and looking into installing a CMS like WordPress, not only it will take care of all the hard functionality sections of the site it will also make it easy for you and your friend to edit the content on the site. I think once you have something like WordPress running you can go into the code and start modifying it. This is how i learned how to code. No one really makes things from scratch anymore, code can be reused.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Shaz

Eww. no. Don't use dreamweaver. That's the worst suggestion ever.

Dreamweaver doesn't teach you to write code, it teaches you to write crappy code.

 

[wpkingel]

lol, anything is better than standard notepad which is what I'm trying to say there. If Ray is just starting out why not use at least notepad ++ it will help him to see the syntax.
We let all our interns who don't know much about code use Dreamweaver to begin with since it has code assists, it saves time to learn the syntax etc. Personally I did not like using it but it helped me learn/view the code structure better and in hindsight it was a good introduction to html/css coding. But better would be something like netbeans or phpstorm.
Conclusion, Dreamweaver will help you get things done faster but if you really want to learn coding then use something like notepad++ or netbeans etc

 

[petesart]

Hi Ray You seem to be taking the hard route using notepad. There is a lot of website design software out there but I would suggest using a WYSIWYG software starting out. Dreamweaver is good. There is the design panel which shows you your lay out as it could appear in a browser. There is also the design panel where you access the code and check it out as you write. Alternatively you can use the split panel which shows both. Dreamweaver also lets you dive straight in and using HTML or CSS. There are older versions on E Bay such as Dreamweaver 8 but this has HTML4. If you us a later version it should have HTML 5.rontpage. Steer clear of Frontpage at all costs. If you are determined to use dedicated HTML software there should be Adobe Golive available. What ever you do stop using Notepad

 

[mediaunc]

Listen guys, I want to thank you all for your suggestions. I'm going to get to working on this again soon. I know a lot of you are making the same kinds of suggestions, that I should find some kind of program, other than notepad, to use. I'm going to get into this in the next few weeks hopefully and I'm going to maybe try a couple of those programs you guys are suggesting. I really appreciate the response, you guys are great, I'll be sure to let you all know how I make out with my next update.

Thanks again, you guys are the best

 

[jensen]

Starting off with notepad is not too bad. Yours truly also started via notepad. It felt really cool back in the 1990's designing websites with just pure codes.
It teaches one the basics and understand how a line of code works/appears on a site. Well that was back then.

 

[superma9]

Starting off with notepad is not too bad. Yours truly also started via notepad. It felt really cool back in the 1990's designing websites with just pure codes.
It teaches one the basics and understand how a line of code works/appears on a site. Well that was back then.

That's a good time back! Lol. I think I started a bit earlier, but I still enjoy the traditional html til this day. Though using an offline editor has been
My means these days. ..my problems are actually simple now. I sometimes forget how to point a subdomain to a new added domain, lol.
P.S. Great verse!

 

[ken.gervais89]

Hey everyone, I'm Ray and I'm building a website for my first time. I'd like to say hi to everyone and also ask a couple of questions.

Hey there Jay... I checked out the site and from experience, I should tell you, that unless your friend wants to do mostly heavy metal type gigs, I would suggest you change the fonts you're using. If he wants to make himself more appealing to a wider audience, for your menus, use a more easily readable font on your buttons. I'm not saying use boring normalized Ariel, or Times types fonts, but something that would appeal to a large target area.

If I was you, I would make several mock up pages, take a screen shot of each (Using Alt-Print SCRN in Windows, will give you just the active open window). Once you have several samples, show them to people of different age groups, and if possible different ethnic backgrounds. That way you'll have feedback giving you an idea which samples was liked by the largest group people, which will result in your friend getting more gigs. Consider using a cursive or script type font for you buttons and a fancy but more readable font for the banner. If I may, maybe try replacing the O in uncensored with an image of an LP, maybe even one that rotates. Anyway slowly. I love the background you used, because it makes the visitor think party, and since that's part of the idea you want to come across.

As suggested, using something like Dreamweaver would be your best option, but if you are on a tight budget, you could always give something like KomppZer. It's not a bad starting point for someone starting out. You can work with source mode, which will help you learn HTML coding, and it also has a preview tab that helps give a quick peek at what your coding looks like. When I first started in HTML I used Nvu, but that was ages ago. It later became KompoZer, and it helped me learn coding much faster and as I said, for a beginner, it was perfect, at least for me. That said, consider moving up to Dreamweaver. If you want to check out KompoZer, you can give it a look at kompozer.net

BTW, a good place to look for helper tools to download would be snapfiles.com. They have a freeware and shareware section, and both have some cool (or interesting) items, some with multiple reviews from users, and all with at least one screen shot.

The most important thing about coding HTML, is to have fun, because that way you'll not only learn faster, but potentially open up a new career.

 

[longbich]

G'day Ray, If I was you I would take petesart's advice. "Dreamweaver is good. There is the design panel which shows you your lay out as it could appear in a browser. There is also the design panel where you access the code and check it out as you write. Alternatively you can use the split panel which shows both. Dreamweaver also lets you dive straight in and using HTML or CSS."
You can learn html as you make your site alongside the WYSIWYG part. Photoshop for getting all your graphics and script ready for the Web and then Dreamweaver to put it all together.
Good Luck

 

[caftpx10]

When I've used Dreamweaver CS5, it was nice but also horrible. The first reason would be that it would show some outdated options (not compliant to HTML5) and the layout viewer doesn't work with properties (I think that's what it's called) such as border-radius.
I'm not sure of this changed in the future versions but I personally stick with Notepad++ as it helps you search for any errors in your script such as missing openings/closings, pretty light, syntax highlighting, themes (can be also customised to how you want it), and more. It's also free.

I could be wrong, but I do still prefer the Notepad++ layout more than Dreamweaver CS5.