Anyone make their own website?

jesso · Post by **jesso** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:51 am

Hey people,
How many of you have designed and posted your own websites on the net?
(Im not talking about myspace or similar sites)
Im going to have a go at doing my own bands site.... unfortunatly im what they call html retarded, and i dont even know what the best programe is to use for the job....

Any bits of advice from the geekier amongst you? (good books, sites, programes etc...)

Tommy Bruise · Post by **Tommy Bruise** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:59 am

i recently made my own withouit any prior knowledge its a really simple site just used notepad and an online html guide

other than that dreamweaver is one of the industry software packages

http://www.northerntempo.co.uk

Rokko · Post by **Rokko** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:13 am

I just made mine with iWeb, it's pretty basic software but you can make a really nice looking site very easily. I don't have the time or the urge to learn how to use dreamweaver, so it's perfect for me.
It is just as simple as dragging and placing images and text, then hitting the publish button. It optimizes all your images for the web and converts everything to html for you. It's really easy to do a blog or a podcast too.
The address is motionunit.co.uk -although I haven't really updated it for ages - too busy using ableton! You could make a similar site in an hour or 2.

compositeone · Post by **compositeone** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:34 am

I do actually do web/graphic design for a living and use dreamweaver mostly. You need to know a fair amount of html though but its a fairly easy package to use.

If your are into graphics packages at all then fireworks could be an option as its again fairly easy to design something in that and then get it to slice up your image into a html page.

hislifenotmine · Post by **hislifenotmine** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:37 am

find a page that you like, then crtl click (on mac) or right click (on pc). go to view source. that is the html code. modify it to your heart's content.

it might be considered thieft of intellectual property, however, i have objections to this decree

1. intellectual property requires the use of a level of intellect (or skill) that yeilds a creation that is not readily or easily repeatable. ie, if you are a bomb artist, and i get the tools you use, and all i can do is stuff that looks like your stuff, the talent is in the tools, not in you. if all i need is your tools to do what you do, your skill (intellect) isnt developed enough for you to claim the creation as intellectual property. (that is an example of why ableton is so great!! there are so many possibilities, that it doesnt nessicarily define an artist's musical identity, thereby making it nessicarily easily repeatable, it augments the artists pallate of textural, musical, and audio engineering possibility).

2. "its like having to ask permission to keep a rock that someone threw at your head"-- banksy. (if you know banksy's work, you know why this is relevant).

challenges to this logic are welcome. it is productive for me to be forced to re-evaluate my ideologies. in the mean time:

rightclick, steal, change, upload.

info_warfare · Post by **info_warfare** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:34 am

hislifenotmine wrote:find a page that you like, then crtl click (on mac) or right click (on pc). go to view source. that is the html code. modify it to your heart's content.

it might be considered thieft of intellectual property, however, i have objections to this decree

1. intellectual property requires the use of a level of intellect (or skill) that yeilds a creation that is not readily or easily repeatable. ie, if you are a bomb artist, and i get the tools you use, and all i can do is stuff that looks like your stuff, the talent is in the tools, not in you. if all i need is your tools to do what you do, your skill (intellect) isnt developed enough for you to claim the creation as intellectual property. (that is an example of why ableton is so great!! there are so many possibilities, that it doesnt nessicarily define an artist's musical identity, thereby making it nessicarily easily repeatable, it augments the artists pallate of textural, musical, and audio engineering possibility).

2. "its like having to ask permission to keep a rock that someone threw at your head"-- banksy. (if you know banksy's work, you know why this is relevant).

challenges to this logic are welcome. it is productive for me to be forced to re-evaluate my ideologies. in the mean time:

rightclick, steal, change, upload.

Are you kidding? First, if these people had the skill they wouldn't be here asking how to do a web site. And I know plenty of people with all the best "web building" tools in the world that still do crappy web sites, so yes, it takes much more than just having the tools. But according to your backwards philosophy, I should then be able to just take your song that you've created and put it out there as my own (with slight modifications.) What's the differwence between that and taking someone's website that they created with their skills?

In other words, it is obviously not an easy thing to recreate a web site without some measure of skill, regardless of the tools you have, so you shouldn't blantly steal someone else's site. I don't think there is anything wrong with looking at the code to see how they pulled off a particular technique, but to blantly steal a whole site!? Not cool.

genshi · Post by **genshi** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:54 am

If you have a Mac with iWeb, that's definitely the easiest way. The other way to go is using blog-based template sites like WordPress where you can modifiy templates to get the look that you want.

I personally create all of my own sites (I have about 7 of them) and use a variety of things from Flash, to Dreamweaver, to straight HTML coding in a text editor. IF you want to have a completely unique site that's all yours, then you will have to learn to do this from scratch. And I agree it's not very cool to just outright steal someone's code from their site. It's a great way to learn (by looking and other's code) but you should then apply that using your own skills and with your own aesthetics (if that makes sense.)

Some sites I recommend if you want to go the easy way is:

http://www.blogger.com/start

http://wordpress.org/

...and I'm sure that there's many more and better ones than these, just can't think of them at the moment. But if you are planning on doing an original site from scratch and want to know about the philosophy of design (development, coding, layout, aesthetics, etc.) Then check these out:

http://www.alistapart.com/

http://www.coudal.com/

http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html

creature · Post by **creature** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:55 am

I made my own website for my new label www.hauntedhouserecords.co.uk

I used dreamweaver mainly for the html editing. html is easy to pick and there are lots of beginners books on the subject. Once you have grasped the basics, I recommend reading up on CSS stylesheets as these seperate layout from content. My site uses a stylesheet to control colors, fonts, layout etc

You don't neccesarily need Dreamweaver, infact there are lots of free html editors out there if you google. I do recommend using a visual editor though as you can edit the pages as if your writing a word document, which means you dont have to type most of the html directly, and if you beginning then this is a godsend.

Good luck

Steve

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 12:07 pm

go here:
www.wordpress.org <- this is so easy, it's almost funny.

stallos · Post by **stallos** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 12:10 pm

I did mine using flash mostly, I was a completely noob to web design before I started and still am to a great extent.

the good news is theres plenty of on-line help and tutorials to guide you through the process. The main thing is to know what content you want.
Take a piece of paper and sketch out a few ideas

best of luck

http://www.stallos.com

jesso · Post by **jesso** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 12:31 pm

thanks guys!
Lots of bedtime reading there for me... much appreciated!
I have a mac... do i have to pay for iweb or do i have it already? (sorry thats a bit lazy... ill just check myself now)

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 12:32 pm

sorry, forgot to mention: www.wordpress.org - wordpress is free, and works for both macs and win-pcs.

jesso · Post by **jesso** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:11 pm

ok just checked out iweb on my girlfriends new mac, i dont seem to have it on my year old G4. I have a suspicion that if you use it, your site has to end in dot mac, but i could be wrong?.....

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:15 pm

I made my own, and it was frustrating at first. Definitely a lot to learn, though Dreamweaver USUALLY made this easier. Helps that I have some friends to call who do this for a living though.

jeskola · Post by **jeskola** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:27 pm

i design them for a living.
Id say before you even worry what the thing is going to look like, think about what it is the purpose of the site should be. If its to drive people to an online shop to buy your music, or perhaps you have some of your music on your site you want people to download, or maybe some mixes - maybe its simple self promotion. This insight will give you your focus for your main homepage. The scond levels should all be consistant "templates" of each other in terms of navigation, footer and header/logo. These should NOT change to ground the userwithin your web environment so they become comfortable moving around.

Id sit down and write a list of key features/sections you have on the site, then id put together some skinless wireframes - that means dfraw a rectangle representing the screen, and then place boxes withiin it that represent differen tcontetn - maybe you ahve a mp3 player streming your tunes, maybe a module to collect email addresses, or maybe somthing focussing on advertising your music - the last thing you should do is work on the look and feel - once you know roughly what the focus and purpose of the site is 0- content is king online, and how you access it/ sign post it and push people to it is the most important part of the site, not how it looks - totally pointless having a 10 page site with every page saying coming soon, or every page looking exactly the same. also keep your content fresh - this will keep you up google, but make the site sticky (users keep returning). Try to never create a deadened on your site, always make availble related content, or "mini" adverts for other sections of your site to pull them through the content.

Design wise - the sky is the limit, though always keep your end user in mind. Although it first appears slick - music on a site , and heavy flash use for the sake of it really should be avoided - if you got to use flash make sure it has a purpose and you have a back up for people without flash - always design for the lowest common denomonator - if your selling your music , do you really want to turn away X% because they dont have flash??
Also navigation is ultra important. Clearly signpost at all time where the user is, using a consitant hierachy. Colour coding is also importantto show what a link is - For consitancies sake make anything that clickable or interactive the saem colour site wide - users will subconsiouncly pick this up , and itll become second nature - Your real mission building a website is deliver the content as easily as possible!

Web design is a difficult one, just about anyone can coble together a web site, but very few can pull it off well. Id also have a look at coding your site with CSS - in the long term itll be easier to change in future, itll make your pages less heavy to download and is a more compliant way of building sites - think about the poor blind people using the internet! Instead of using images - uses inline text where possible - even headers, or messaging that is ontop of a grahpic should be in a <h> tag - but using SIFR, you can now use some slick flash/css to create type in any typeface - a very cool tool!

Lots to think about !

PM me if you have any questions or wish to see some examples of my work.

Oh and excuse my own site

ive not had time to do anything to it, but for what it is - it serves it's purpose!