Comments on: Started My Own Blog: Need Advice on CSS, Non-FTP Updating & Automated Archiving

Question: Started My Own Blog: Need Advice on CSS, Non-FTP Updating & Automated Archiving

anastasiav — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:22:50 -0800

I'm in the process of starting my own weblog (it launched on Thursday). I can write pretty decent basic HTML by hand (in notepad), but CSS wrestled me to the ground and stepped on my head and a lot of tech jargon passes me right by (I'm a designer and a writer, not a programer, I guess). What advice does Metafilter have for me?

I should also mention, I guess, that I've looked at Blogger, but (I know this sounds stupid) I can't quite figure out how to make it work in any way that doesn't look like I'm using Blogger. My big problem at the moment is that I need a way to update from work without using an FTP client, and I know I'm going to need an automated way to archive things eventually.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:30:37 -0800

mine's very simple, but i use blogger (i just experimented and took away a lot of the blogger template things)...what do you want it to look like?

By: Witty

Witty — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:34:48 -0800

I would start with a nice bottle of scotch.... and go from there.

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:35:53 -0800

amberglow, its linked to my user page, but it seemed, er -- self-promoting to actually link to it here.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:42:55 -0800

nah...here it is
do you want those rules and the color bar on the links? and I would fix the margins : >

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:45:19 -0800

What's wrong with the margins?

By: Hackworth

Hackworth — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:46:32 -0800

well, if you don't want to do the design yourself, there is always open source web design for some easy templates.

By: riffola

riffola — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:48:29 -0800

W3Schools is fairly beginner friendly, and it also has all the attributes listed, so you can keep referring to it all in one handy place.

If you need more hands on help, I'll be glad to help you out when you drop by #mefi later.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:52:11 -0800

Did I miss something? Is "pretty decent basic HTML" dead or something?

By: The God Complex

The God Complex — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 15:04:08 -0800

Hey, someone e-mailed me awhile ago and asked if I wanted to start a blog because I'm so interesting or because I'm a trainwreck, but I'm a glass-half full guy--actually, I'm a glass-has-water-in-it guy, but I digress--so does anyone want to design some graphics for me--since I have no artistic ability to speak of--and then maybe design the site for little or no reward?

I'm anxiously awaiting your response.

Sincerely,

Edward Nipntuck.

Seriously, though, I gots things to says and nowheres to says them.

-----

Did I miss something? Is "pretty decent basic HTML" dead or something?

I don't know. I learned basic html when I was in grade 11 (five years ago) and then I taught myself stylesheets by stealing them off people's sites and altering them. Then everything passed me by and now I feel like an old man. If I actually ever started a site though, I think I'd probably be forced to go the simple route, but I'd probably market it as some gimmicky return to minimalism in an effort to get Nike sponsorship.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 15:17:46 -0800

See on the front page for MeTa how there's a little air between the edge of the browser window and the text, and between the main text and the blogroots box and even inside the blogroots box itself (altho I would add a little more space there)? that's what I mean, margin-wise...It's a table thing. : >

By: poopy

poopy — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 15:40:27 -0800

A List Apart is a great resource. Beyond that, I've always found it best to 'steal' stylesheets, break them down to their most simplistic parts and try to learn from that.

By: Skot

Skot — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 15:57:30 -0800

Sheesh, just do what I did and persuade a ~~sucker~~ friend to jimmy one up for you.

By: y6y6y6

y6y6y6 — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:42:15 -0800

The w3schools css tutorial is really very good. Use the "Try-It-Yourself!" link under css examples.

Other than that, looking at other's stylesheets is a good idea. Theory is one thing, but it's good to look at what people are really using.

I've found that I carry around a fairly static core style sheet the I use on all my sites.

And unless I'm missing something about the Blogger configuration, you don't *need* css. Tables and font tags will get you 90% of what you'll use css for. So one way to get started with css is to code the whole page without it and then introduce one block at a time.

By: holloway

holloway — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:50:29 -0800

Can you post a screenshot of what you want it to look like?

By: the aloha

the aloha — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:55:01 -0800

if he could post a screenshot of what he wanted it to look like, he would've been able to make what he wants.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:57:29 -0800

you could mock it up in photoshop or something--even quark.

By: poopy

poopy — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 17:05:55 -0800

actually anastasiav, if your site is new and you're serious about jumping into css, i would recommend scratching your current tabled layout and go with css instead. it really isn't that difficult, especially for a structure like yours, and it will be so much easier for you to make changes in the future. just my 2.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 17:25:11 -0800

Here are some great css resources that are really more like templates or generators - you can download them and play around with them and hone them and learn a lot while you do: Glish, Little Boxes, The Layout Reservoir, ListOMatic.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:16:55 -0800

Everything I know about CSS I learned from the source @ sixfoot6.com (1 | 2) .

By: poopy

poopy — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:21:46 -0800

*off-topic* since anastasiav brought up the programming issue, is this the right place to post Perl questions? i've just recently acquired my own domain and am completely bewildered by perl/cgi.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:23:05 -0800

You can post any q you like, poopy. Matt said he'll fine-tune the categories (for lack of a better word) later.

By: poopy

poopy — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:33:03 -0800

thanks iconomy. oh, and anastasiav, iconomy has provided you with all the nice lil goodies you'll need, wrapped up in succinct sound package. merry xmas!

By: wobh

wobh — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:35:20 -0800

What you want is to make your webpages look like they're being displayed in lynx. Here, I've done some of the work for you, see for yourself.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:37:56 -0800

iconomy's recommendations are very good for templates - I use blue robot all the time as a starting point when I do layouts for people.

I know this sounds stupid to style-o-riffic types out there, but I've only just discovered how useful ALA is for finding out how to do cool stuff/do things right.

I'm considering yet another redesign of my site at the moment, or at least finishing the damn thing so it looks like I intended...

With regards to learning, I just fiddled around with the making-things-pretty css (fontography, colors, borders, etc) for a while before I started trying to mess with full layouts. They can be a little tricky, still (though not as bad as in years past) using css-only...

If you see something you like, hoick the css and fiddle with it, as with HTML. Best thing for learning.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:11:28 -0800

By the way, Topstyle is an excellent tool for doing the fiddling, I've found.

By: mischief

mischief — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 20:05:54 -0800

CSS for Dummies

No, really.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 20:19:25 -0800

I learned basic html when I was in grade 11 (five years ago) and then I taught myself stylesheets by stealing them off people's sites and altering them. Then everything passed me by and now I feel like an old man

Lengthen that up a bit and you've got the bildungsroman novel for our generation.

By: bragadocchio

bragadocchio — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:51:26 -0800

CSS Zen Garden is a great place to get fired up about what you can do with CSS.

It's founder, Dave Shea has some nice stuff in his blog, mezzoblue, including a really nice CSS Crib Sheet.

Iconomy's most excellent set of links didn't include the very easy to use Layout-o-Matic to go with her posted very easy to use listamatic from Accessify.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 22:03:43 -0800

I also like the W3Schools mentioned above.

In addition, I think pMachine kicks Movable Type and every other blogging software's ass. The support (for paid users) is phenomenal. I've put requests on their support board and the staff has written me custom php code within hours.

By: arto

arto — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 22:59:54 -0800

I'd also recommend CSS Edge for some more advanced examples (warning, though, some of that stuff doesn't work in IE, so it'll look like ass for 90% of your viewers), Quirksmode for browser compatibility info, and for some simple, beginner-friendly layouts to modify, BlueRobot's Layout Reservoir. Mostly, though, just experiment a lot.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 22:59:58 -0800

Another vote for w3schools. That's how I learned how to get by with css. I'm not very tech-savvy either, but I think css is considerably easier than using tables and suchlike, for most things. Does requires an adjustment in how you look at designing the page, though, I suppose.

I like css, Anastasiav, and you will too.

By: holloway

holloway — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 23:27:56 -0800

I'm pretty sure that the technique of hiding foreground in a box and then showing a background image (so you can have an H1 in a cwazy font) has all kinds of accessibility problems, which much of the designs on zen garden do, so don't do that.

By: Vidiot

Vidiot — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 23:45:20 -0800

I bought a CSS book. It promptly made my head hurt. So I went with TypePad, which I love. Before I started, I had a rough idea of how I wanted my site to look and behave, and I could do that in TypePad with a minimum of hassle. (And I didn't have to know any HTML beyond the very basic tags.) I love TypePad and it suits my purposes very well...clean interface, no need for an FTP client, etc. (I say all this as a onetime beta tester and satisfied customer -- I don't have any other kind of business relationship with 'em, other than deep fuzzy adoration.)

If you're thinking of going with TP, e-mail me. I have some discount codes which may still work.

By: bragadocchio

bragadocchio — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 03:59:28 -0800

I'd second holloway's caution about the image replacement technique practiced at zen gardens. You might want to mess with other aspects of CSS before you turn to that.