webpage for a begginer

November 12, 2005 5:33 PM

Help me to start making web pages. (I've done the search but my results, lately, are just silly.)

I have XP on the rig, I have Cox Cable. If I had the money, I would use the Macromedia stuff. But I don't. Any ideas about a tool that is similar and free? I'm just a guy with some built up content with a need to share with my friends via a website.

Mefites, I know you can hook me up so that someday I might at least feel the temptation to self-link. (Although I never would!:)

posted by snsranch to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Nvu is a free alternative to Dreamweaver and will help you get started coding in HTML.
posted by Rothko at 5:36 PM on November 12, 2005

Google and Notepad are all you need, and in my opinion much better to learn with.
posted by 31d1 at 5:47 PM on November 12, 2005

31d1, I appreciate the sentiment, but consider that I am an old man with many responsibilities and very little time. (It's difficult for me to even make the time to compose a decent AskMefi question!)

Rothko, thanks, I've downloaded it and I'm checking the tutorial. Is it pretty much mysiwyg?
posted by snsranch at 6:03 PM on November 12, 2005

Second Nvu. I've been making webpages for several years using mostly Notepad. Never liked any of the free HTML editors until I discovered Nvu. I still do most my coding in notepad but Nvu is pretty sweet. Especially if you don't know what you're doing.
posted by panoptican at 6:12 PM on November 12, 2005

Not perfect, but pretty close for what you'll be doing. It will certainly help ease the learning curve in that it will help show you how the HTML language gets turned into a webpage.
posted by Rothko at 6:12 PM on November 12, 2005

The good thing about Nvu is that you can use it as a pretty much wysiwyg thing to get started, but you can also edit the code directly and learn the way you would if you were just using Notepad. Best of both worlds.
posted by nowonmai at 6:15 PM on November 12, 2005

HTML Dog's HTML Beginner's Guide is a good place to start, and their CSS Beginner's Guide is a good intro to CSS. Once you get the basics down, they also have intermediate and advanced guides.

W3Schools' HTML tutorials is OK; their examples let you edit their HTML code and see the results of your changes in a separate frame.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:19 PM on November 12, 2005

I was half expecting to be run out of town on an html rail. Thanks guys! I'll see if I can hook this up. Good info for a beginner like me.
posted by snsranch at 7:03 PM on November 12, 2005

An amazing piece of software is DerekWare. Simple interface and truly easy-to-learn. Can't do a lot of the fancy stuff, but I highly reccomend it.

-
posted by Independent Scholarship at 7:04 PM on November 12, 2005

A good encyclopedia/dictionary type resource is Blooberry's HTML and CSS pages (please ignore the horrible colors on the intro page - subsequent pages are pleasing to the eye). Each directory lists all the stuff you can do, along with what you can expect in the way of browser peculiarities. It's very nice for the times you know what you're looking for, but you don't know what it's called, exactly.
posted by odinsdream at 8:27 PM on November 12, 2005

You might try CityDesk (it's free).
posted by WestCoaster at 10:14 PM on November 12, 2005

I used to write my own html / use html creators, but updating every site by hand is a pain in the bum.

If I had to make a new site today, I'd install a content-management system like wordpress. Spend the time adding content, and maybe making a fancy theme, rather than worrying about code.
posted by Popular Ethics at 11:34 PM on November 12, 2005

Second the CMS suggestion.
I recommend trying out Joomla! / MediaWiki / Nucleus CMS / WordPress and see what fits your needs best.
You can try them all out in OpenSourceCMS.
posted by Sharcho at 8:00 AM on November 13, 2005

if you wanna hack out your own code, i wrote a nifty little page (firefox only) for notepad cowboys.

rendar

it renders your mark up as you type. also allows you to define CSS (id, tag, class definitions etc) on the fly so you aren't stuck with a bunch of inline CSS.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 12:01 PM on November 13, 2005