Does anybody have any experience designing personal web sites? I'm working on mine, and I'm in way over my head. I'm not trying to do anything utterly fantastic, just nice. Any pointers or suggestions would be very gratefully received. http://zyzyx.address.com Thanks in advance.
Web pages
- Thread starter April
- Start date
Never
Come What May
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Um. Some content would be nice hun..
*chuckles*
Just put the word 'Sex!' in the background and put in some quotes by ernestlover and your webpage would be a freaky headtrip.
I'm creating a webpage myself about nothing at the moment so I shouldn't speak.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*The greatest story ever plagerized*
*chuckles*
Just put the word 'Sex!' in the background and put in some quotes by ernestlover and your webpage would be a freaky headtrip.
I'm creating a webpage myself about nothing at the moment so I shouldn't speak.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*The greatest story ever plagerized*
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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Woo hoo!
Right on, April! Everyone should have a place on the web... Here's some links that may help. Some of it may seem way too simple, and other parts - like Javascripting, etc - may be way more deep than you want to go, but if you search around you're bound to find something helpful:
http://www.pageresource.com/ - HTML tutorials, design advice, great articles, plus free backgrounds and graphics
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ - Yale Web Style Manual
http://www.coolhomepages.com/ - CoolHomePages: scan through hundreds of cool home pages and find ideas that will work for your page.
http://www.earth.com/bad-style/ - The Don'ts of web design
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ - learn good design by looking at bad design
Right on, April! Everyone should have a place on the web... Here's some links that may help. Some of it may seem way too simple, and other parts - like Javascripting, etc - may be way more deep than you want to go, but if you search around you're bound to find something helpful:
http://www.pageresource.com/ - HTML tutorials, design advice, great articles, plus free backgrounds and graphics
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ - Yale Web Style Manual
http://www.coolhomepages.com/ - CoolHomePages: scan through hundreds of cool home pages and find ideas that will work for your page.
http://www.earth.com/bad-style/ - The Don'ts of web design
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ - learn good design by looking at bad design
It's tough to give general advice on something like this, but if you want ideas on how a personal homepage should look - take a look at Endlessly's site. I haven't looked at too many personal homepages, but it's about the best I've seen.
For website building in general, the first thing I tell anyone is to learn HTML code. It's pretty easy stuff (if I had a box of bananas, I could teach it to a monkey in 3 days), and it's really the only way you're able to do anything unique on the web. All the cookie cutter sites from places like Homestead or Angelfire end up looking the same - and those hokey backgrounds they make you use always load funny and make the site look like shit. I taught myself HTML in about two days at this site:
http://www.htmlgoodies.com
Now, you won't learn all the really neat tricks there, but it'll give ya a good enough background that you can figure out the rest.
If ya have any specific questions, I'm always happy to help.
For website building in general, the first thing I tell anyone is to learn HTML code. It's pretty easy stuff (if I had a box of bananas, I could teach it to a monkey in 3 days), and it's really the only way you're able to do anything unique on the web. All the cookie cutter sites from places like Homestead or Angelfire end up looking the same - and those hokey backgrounds they make you use always load funny and make the site look like shit. I taught myself HTML in about two days at this site:
http://www.htmlgoodies.com
Now, you won't learn all the really neat tricks there, but it'll give ya a good enough background that you can figure out the rest.
If ya have any specific questions, I'm always happy to help.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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Oooh! HTMLGoodies - that's where I learned HTML! There's also http://www.javagoodies.com/ , which is *surprise* a Java tutorial. That guy explains thing soooo well, and soo clearly...
I agree with Lasher in that the best way to design ANYTHING is to look around, find pages that work for you, incorporate the ideas into your own page (note: this does NOT mean you steal their content, images, or logo! Contrary to popular belief, images on the web are NOT public domain).
I agree with Lasher in that the best way to design ANYTHING is to look around, find pages that work for you, incorporate the ideas into your own page (note: this does NOT mean you steal their content, images, or logo! Contrary to popular belief, images on the web are NOT public domain).
I'm using address.com which uses the Homestead program. I started working on this a couple days ago, and haven't gotten very far with it. I've tried to import jpg's from my scanner and a kodak picture cd, but it didn't turn out too well. And yes, Never's right. Some text content would be nice. Will work on that tomorrow. Thanks you guys. Will definitely check out the webpagesthatsuck.com! I don't want to end up there!
Laurel, almost forgot. I would like permission to link to Literotica from my site. May I? And how do I?
[Edited by April on 07-18-2000 at 10:39 PM]
Laurel, almost forgot. I would like permission to link to Literotica from my site. May I? And how do I?
[Edited by April on 07-18-2000 at 10:39 PM]
Svedish_Chef
On Walkabout
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April hope we dont need permission cause mine has been linked for a while...
If so really sorry Laurel et Manu .... but can I keep the link?
Da chef
If so really sorry Laurel et Manu .... but can I keep the link?
Da chef
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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Oh wow! (blushes) That's very flattering! Um, you can make a simple text link and have it go to http://www.literotica.com/ . If you'd like to put a button on your site with our name on it, email me & I'll send you one.
As far as page layout programs, I'd recommend getting either Front Page or Dreamweaver. Both are pretty straight-forward. I haven't used Homestead - does anyone here use it, and have suggestions for April?
As far as image manipulation programs, Photoshop is the best but it's probably way more than you need. Its original focus was print work, so it'll do all sorts of things that you'll never ever need to do. Therefore, I'd suggest using Fireworks (I forget who makes it). I believe you can scan images straight into it, and then crop them, fix the color, size them, and them compress them down so you get the highest possible quality for the lowest size, and you do want your images to be as small as possible so people oming to your page don't have to sit there for an hour waiting for them to load.
You're off to a nice start! I like the "Welcome" graphic. My only real suggestion would be to lose the background. Backgrounds distract from the text, and make your layout look cluttered. If you want to use that texture, you can always use just a strip of it down the left side. You do this by going into your graphics program, making a document that's about 800 pixels wide and as high as your background texture square is. Then, you position your background square to the far left and leave the rest white. This is where Fireworks or Ulead or some other compression program can be helpful - it can cut that graphic down many K, and it'll load much quicker.
As far as page layout programs, I'd recommend getting either Front Page or Dreamweaver. Both are pretty straight-forward. I haven't used Homestead - does anyone here use it, and have suggestions for April?
As far as image manipulation programs, Photoshop is the best but it's probably way more than you need. Its original focus was print work, so it'll do all sorts of things that you'll never ever need to do. Therefore, I'd suggest using Fireworks (I forget who makes it). I believe you can scan images straight into it, and then crop them, fix the color, size them, and them compress them down so you get the highest possible quality for the lowest size, and you do want your images to be as small as possible so people oming to your page don't have to sit there for an hour waiting for them to load.
You're off to a nice start! I like the "Welcome" graphic. My only real suggestion would be to lose the background. Backgrounds distract from the text, and make your layout look cluttered. If you want to use that texture, you can always use just a strip of it down the left side. You do this by going into your graphics program, making a document that's about 800 pixels wide and as high as your background texture square is. Then, you position your background square to the far left and leave the rest white. This is where Fireworks or Ulead or some other compression program can be helpful - it can cut that graphic down many K, and it'll load much quicker.
Svedish_Chef
On Walkabout
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- 9,937
If I knew how to put buttons on my website Laurel I would but yeah I just have the text link... and thanks for allowing it, now tell Manu to give you a big hug, K.
ta from Da chef
ta from Da chef
Endlessly
Corrupted Innocent
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*blushes* Thanks for the plug, Lasher. I've been designing websites for the last four years, and am always taking on another project or two. I love HTML.. It's sick, and I know I'm a nerd. My homepage URL is in my BB profile if anyone wants it.
Laurel, I swiped your banner for my page, it's on the bottom of the main page, a smaller graphic from the banner is linked on the page I have ABOUT Literotica, and then I've got a text link in the links section.. Do any of those violate any rules?
Laurel, I swiped your banner for my page, it's on the bottom of the main page, a smaller graphic from the banner is linked on the page I have ABOUT Literotica, and then I've got a text link in the links section.. Do any of those violate any rules?
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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No, of course not! I saw that a while back and was flattered as all hell... It surprised me - I was trying to figure out where you got that banner!
And Chef, all I can say is skernda vernd a verna skern na vern... (for the rest of you, that means "you're a helluva cool guy, thanks for the bottom of my cold little heart, and may all of your camels have two humps and give much milk.")
And Chef, all I can say is skernda vernd a verna skern na vern... (for the rest of you, that means "you're a helluva cool guy, thanks for the bottom of my cold little heart, and may all of your camels have two humps and give much milk.")
Hecate
Lady Hecate will do
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I assume it isn't spam if ...
April, if you want to check out my site and like my stile feel free to get in touch. I will gladly share my humble knowledge of these things with you. I did design (and program - if you can call it that using some design software like frontpage) several different private sites already, some for forums, some for organising meetings, role plays, and even one for a friend who started to sell his sculptures over the net ... so maybe I can be of assistance?
I think some of the success of a private/personal site really lies not in the "doing" itself but in the general design of what you want to present there.
So BEFORE you get into any detailed working out of the codes etc., decide about the things you want to share with the public. I call that "drawing a map" of this little place on the web you will make your home, as if you were putting down a plan of a house with different rooms for different purposes (hope that did make sense).
Some written info about yourself would be nice of course, family pictures? Holiday fotos, your pets if you have them ... just remember that once those are on the net there is no way to control who will look at them and where they will be ending up! (sorry - that is one of my major paranoias *s*)
Then maybe you have some other talents you want to show - like writing stories, poems, paintings you want to share ... whatever...
Make sure to categorize them a little and don't put it all on ONE page (imho anyway) - the time it may take for loading, specially when pictures or sound files are included may scare away your visitors even before they have seen anything.
I for one am an avid defender of frames for menue purposes(call me even lazy maybe) but I just like it when I have one main menue for orientation that stays with me and lets me explore another corner of a site without using my back and forth buttons ...
Last but not least - I recomment to "design" your page to look best in a 600x800 resolution since this STILL seems to be the most common one. I do find it very annoying to open a site and only have 3/4 of the content displayed on my screen and need to scroll left and right all the time to read a text or such.
*lol* OK - now see what you did - got me all rambling and babbling about web pages. Geeeze , I could go on for hours on this subject *g*.
That much for unsolicited advise - since I admit I haven't had time to pay a visit to your site yet, April, but I sure will ASAP s* Anyway - if you want to give my site a look, link is below, and else feel free to get in touch for any specific questions you may have.
PS: Laurel - I think you would be surprised how many of us Literoticans have links from our pages to this site
April, if you want to check out my site and like my stile feel free to get in touch. I will gladly share my humble knowledge of these things with you. I did design (and program - if you can call it that using some design software like frontpage) several different private sites already, some for forums, some for organising meetings, role plays, and even one for a friend who started to sell his sculptures over the net ... so maybe I can be of assistance?
I think some of the success of a private/personal site really lies not in the "doing" itself but in the general design of what you want to present there.
So BEFORE you get into any detailed working out of the codes etc., decide about the things you want to share with the public. I call that "drawing a map" of this little place on the web you will make your home, as if you were putting down a plan of a house with different rooms for different purposes (hope that did make sense).
Some written info about yourself would be nice of course, family pictures? Holiday fotos, your pets if you have them ... just remember that once those are on the net there is no way to control who will look at them and where they will be ending up! (sorry - that is one of my major paranoias *s*)
Then maybe you have some other talents you want to show - like writing stories, poems, paintings you want to share ... whatever...
Make sure to categorize them a little and don't put it all on ONE page (imho anyway) - the time it may take for loading, specially when pictures or sound files are included may scare away your visitors even before they have seen anything.
I for one am an avid defender of frames for menue purposes(call me even lazy maybe) but I just like it when I have one main menue for orientation that stays with me and lets me explore another corner of a site without using my back and forth buttons ...
Last but not least - I recomment to "design" your page to look best in a 600x800 resolution since this STILL seems to be the most common one. I do find it very annoying to open a site and only have 3/4 of the content displayed on my screen and need to scroll left and right all the time to read a text or such.
*lol* OK - now see what you did - got me all rambling and babbling about web pages. Geeeze , I could go on for hours on this subject *g*.
That much for unsolicited advise - since I admit I haven't had time to pay a visit to your site yet, April, but I sure will ASAP s* Anyway - if you want to give my site a look, link is below, and else feel free to get in touch for any specific questions you may have.
PS: Laurel - I think you would be surprised how many of us Literoticans have links from our pages to this site
Again, thanks everybody who posted. I've done some work on it, and I hope it looks better. More work will be done this evening. For those who haven't posted here, I invite you to give me your thoughts and suggestions about my humble little web site. And for those who have posted before, keep the ideas coming.
funny_guy
Really Experienced
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2000
- Posts
- 256
Umm, I actually work as a Webpage designer (I know, I'm a geek), and I would give you my homepage, but, I really don't want everyone to know about it. If you really want it, email me. But, I use a Flash 4 interface because it looks cool and it loads quickly. Of course, Flash 4 costs 300$ to buy, so I wouldn't recomend that. HTML is quite easy to learn, and really fun to play around with. Just a question to Laurel, what program do you use for your editing? Or do you do it all by hand? I like Homesite, because you can do it using text (I hade WYSIWYG editors--so stupid), but you can see it in a browser really easily. Anyway, April, you can download a free trial version of Homesite and then just upload your pages. Have fun, email me if you need specific help.
ShyGuy68
The Dane with a cane
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- Mar 12, 2000
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- 24,398
I haven't done much work with webpages myself. I do have a homepage that I've done myself.
First when I started to do it, I used MS Word 97, and composed it in there. But when I got MS Office 2000, I changed to Frontpage. I can't do a lot in it, and I just keep my homepage simple, at least I try to, and hope people like it.
ShyGuy
First when I started to do it, I used MS Word 97, and composed it in there. But when I got MS Office 2000, I changed to Frontpage. I can't do a lot in it, and I just keep my homepage simple, at least I try to, and hope people like it.
ShyGuy
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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Just a question to Laurel, what program do you use for your editing? Or do you do it all by hand?
LMAO! No, I use Dreamweaver... Hand-coding some 4500+ pages (and growing every day) would make my head explode. Ah, I remember back in the old days when building a page was akin to programming - I used HotDogPro, and you had to put in your tags, then "compile" it with HotDog and see if it worked. What a pain in the ass!
Right now, as I said, the site is a collection of thousands of stagnant HTML pages. As we speak, Manu and are are busily converting the site over to a PHP/MySQL solution, so that all the stories/authors/categories/etc. are stored in a database and the necessary data is accessed whenever a page is requested by a user. This will enable us to do all sorts of fun things we've been wanting to so... It won't be a completely dynamic site, as that would be slow as hell - we have it so it's semi-static (it's hard to explain). But it's gonna rock! By the end of the year - when we have the script (that'll be up within a month or so) and all the major script mods in place, Literotica will kick serious ass, IMHO.
Hecate - I love you, you lil page-linker. Your site rocks, too.
LMAO! No, I use Dreamweaver... Hand-coding some 4500+ pages (and growing every day) would make my head explode. Ah, I remember back in the old days when building a page was akin to programming - I used HotDogPro, and you had to put in your tags, then "compile" it with HotDog and see if it worked. What a pain in the ass!
Right now, as I said, the site is a collection of thousands of stagnant HTML pages. As we speak, Manu and are are busily converting the site over to a PHP/MySQL solution, so that all the stories/authors/categories/etc. are stored in a database and the necessary data is accessed whenever a page is requested by a user. This will enable us to do all sorts of fun things we've been wanting to so... It won't be a completely dynamic site, as that would be slow as hell - we have it so it's semi-static (it's hard to explain). But it's gonna rock! By the end of the year - when we have the script (that'll be up within a month or so) and all the major script mods in place, Literotica will kick serious ass, IMHO.
Hecate - I love you, you lil page-linker. Your site rocks, too.
Endlessly
Corrupted Innocent
- Joined
- Dec 26, 1999
- Posts
- 1,267
Funny guy, would you mind getting me a pirated copy of Flash? One of my best friends is building her dream and wants to use the web for part of it.. We could really use it. *L*
*Cackles* PurplePlanet, which is in my opinion my crowning achievement of web design (It's all my poetry, and stuff pertaining to my poetry.. I know that doesn't sound like much, but when you realize it's over 200 poems plus footnotes plus digital greeting cards and whatever nifty stuff I've felt like adding over the last 4 years.. well, yeah), still has about half the pages I haven't tampered with in the last year or so.
Know what program I used to program all eight of the webpages I run originally, up until about a year ago?
Notepad.
OH, I am the fucking man!
*shudders and wanders off, muttering about what a nerd I am* Or not..
*Cackles* PurplePlanet, which is in my opinion my crowning achievement of web design (It's all my poetry, and stuff pertaining to my poetry.. I know that doesn't sound like much, but when you realize it's over 200 poems plus footnotes plus digital greeting cards and whatever nifty stuff I've felt like adding over the last 4 years.. well, yeah), still has about half the pages I haven't tampered with in the last year or so.
Know what program I used to program all eight of the webpages I run originally, up until about a year ago?
Notepad.
OH, I am the fucking man!
*shudders and wanders off, muttering about what a nerd I am* Or not..
My thanks again to everyone who posted. I'm still working through the suggestions. The site's been updated massively (in my opinion), so check it out if you feel like it. Oh yeah, there are pictures now.
Never, there's text now! I did it just for you, sweet cheeks! LOL
Xander, I reeeaaaalllllyyyyy appreciate you signing my guestbook! I can't tell you how happy that made me! Guess I'm just a sucker for validation.
Never, there's text now! I did it just for you, sweet cheeks! LOL
Xander, I reeeaaaalllllyyyyy appreciate you signing my guestbook! I can't tell you how happy that made me! Guess I'm just a sucker for validation.
Hecate
Lady Hecate will do
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2000
- Posts
- 1,657
Booohoooo
April - I did sign your guestbook as the very first person ... and now it isn't there anymore ... I even silly enough double-"posted" (or however you call it on a guestbook)
Anyway - just went back and you really did do a great job since ... I like that background a lot better, it is easier to read *s* - keep up the work! And I'll be heading over to sign that guestbook again , knowing Xander being the No.1 signature is more appreciated anyway *winks*
April - I did sign your guestbook as the very first person ... and now it isn't there anymore ... I even silly enough double-"posted" (or however you call it on a guestbook)
Anyway - just went back and you really did do a great job since ... I like that background a lot better, it is easier to read *s* - keep up the work! And I'll be heading over to sign that guestbook again , knowing Xander being the No.1 signature is more appreciated anyway *winks*
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
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- 20,692
LOL. I love notepad. In fact, I would much rather use notepad than Front Page. Front page is just so, icky.
Yeah, Front Page sucks serious ass. It makes really clumsy HTML, and adds in all sorts of ugly comments in the header. But instead of notepad, you kids should use UltraEdit32. It's a teeny little program not much bigger than notepad, and it's made for writing code. It's go awesome features, plus like 8 levels of copy/paste... so you could copy 8 things in a row and then paste them all without going copy/paste, copy/paste...
Dreamweaver's the best program program I've found as far as HTML layout programs. It still doesn't produce perfectly clean HTML the way you could by hand - it forms some things clumsily - but it's the best I've found thus far. The thing is that the only way to get perfectly streamlined HTML is to write it all yourself, but that's a major bitch and a bother for a site this size. In Dreamweaver, you can set up templates, keep libraries of commonly used images and text, and do all sorts of stuff that speeds up the page-building process. If I had to open an HTML page in UEDit & manually make all the author , story, poem, and amateur pics pages like that, it'd take me hours and hours to update the site every day. Plus, I worked with Illustrator, Photoshop, & Freehand for 7 years, so I'm really spoiled as far as interfaces go. Staring at lines of HTML make my brain hurt. I had to take two semesters of C++ in college and those hours were the most totally hellish hours of my entire college existence. HTML isn't actual programming, but it's too close for my head...
Yeah, Front Page sucks serious ass. It makes really clumsy HTML, and adds in all sorts of ugly comments in the header. But instead of notepad, you kids should use UltraEdit32. It's a teeny little program not much bigger than notepad, and it's made for writing code. It's go awesome features, plus like 8 levels of copy/paste... so you could copy 8 things in a row and then paste them all without going copy/paste, copy/paste...
Dreamweaver's the best program program I've found as far as HTML layout programs. It still doesn't produce perfectly clean HTML the way you could by hand - it forms some things clumsily - but it's the best I've found thus far. The thing is that the only way to get perfectly streamlined HTML is to write it all yourself, but that's a major bitch and a bother for a site this size. In Dreamweaver, you can set up templates, keep libraries of commonly used images and text, and do all sorts of stuff that speeds up the page-building process. If I had to open an HTML page in UEDit & manually make all the author , story, poem, and amateur pics pages like that, it'd take me hours and hours to update the site every day. Plus, I worked with Illustrator, Photoshop, & Freehand for 7 years, so I'm really spoiled as far as interfaces go. Staring at lines of HTML make my brain hurt. I had to take two semesters of C++ in college and those hours were the most totally hellish hours of my entire college existence. HTML isn't actual programming, but it's too close for my head...
