Suggestions for website creation?

[JeckeL]

My brother-in-law is an attorney of some sort with a sole proprietorship business and was interested in having me create a website for him. I told him that I’ve only got little experience with websites as I am more on the network/systems side of the spectrum, but I’ve messed around with MS frontpage and I’ve got a decent understanding of HTML so I could probably put something basic together like a homepage with links on the side to separate pages like About, Contact, etc (which is all he really wants)

My question is; what would be the best way to go about this? Use something like microsoft frontpage and use photoshop for images/links? Or possibly try one of these do-it-yourself website creation websites like wix, which I am not very familiar with and it seems like they cost money regardless of what their advertisements claim…

 

[Wisecracker]

The SeaMonkey Suite has an integrated HTML editor (a revamped version of the original Netscape Composer) which is really handy and includes CSS support.

AIT Web Hosting has a series of plans and options which is quite good.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Your main concern is really going to be hosting. The site that you get to host your web site will determine what functions/languages you're able to post. My personal thoughts on a professional web site would be to host your own web server and register your own domain with a DNS hosting service. That way you control what can and cannot be published on the site which, in my opinion, offsets the higher cost of hosting your own site.

-Wolf sends

 

[JeckeL]

AIT Web Hosting has a series of plans and options which is quite good.

So as long as I create the basic HTML pages in something like frontpage, we could rent the space from AIT, have them register a domain name for us, and then upload the HTML pages? I just don't want to run in to any unforseen problems and end up wasting both his & my time

My personal thoughts on a professional web site would be to host your own web server and register your own domain with a DNS hosting service.

That would probably be the smart thing to do, and if the website was for myself I'd probably go that route... but I don't want to get any deeper in to this endeavour than I have to. I plan on creating the html pages, uploading them to the host, and maybe showing him how to edit certain things

 

[Wisecracker]

FrontPage is really long-in-the-tooth (like me). Composer in SeaMonkey is the same "WYSIWYG" format as FrontPage and will create a CSS (or Cascading Style Sheet) text file. I believe Composer is HTML4 compatible (and suspect they are working on HTML5).

The CSS text file is uploaded into the root directory of your web site. Instead of having to plow-through all of your page code to change font & link styles, colors, sizes, titles, headings, etc., you simply edit (or upload) the new CSS text file. It looks something like this:

.title { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; color: #963A46}
.links { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; color: #660000; text-decoration: none}
.subtitle { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; color: #A75963}
.bullet { list-style-image: url(images/bullet.jpg)}
.text { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px}
a:hover { color: #660000; text-decoration: none}
.footer { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; color: #FFFFFF; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none}
.links:hover { color: #660000}
.footer:hover { color: #FFFFFF}
.input { color: #963A46; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;}
.header { font-family: Denmark; font-size: 27px; color: #FFFFFF}
.menutext { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: #FFFFFF; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none}
.menutext:hover { color: #FFCC99}
.menutext2 { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; color: #000000; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none}
.menutext2:hover { color: #FF000f}

AIT will pretty much handle everything. They have great tutorials and likely many page templates for you to choose from. They have a control panel to manage simple to complex tasks, and can run nearly any script ... Perl, pHp, etc., and you can choose a Windows or Linux server.

They also have an integrated email alias function whereby your Bro can keep his current email addy but alias it through the web site with 'MyBro@MyBrosDomain.Com' without exposing his current (and private) email address. You may set up multiple alias addresses and essentially send them all to him:
'RealEstateClosings@MyBrosDomain.Com'
'CorporateLaw@MyBrosDomain.Com'
'Appointments@MyBrosDomain.Com'

edit: I fergit ...

SeaMonkey Composer has an integrated FTP function that you simply upload directly to your web space ... I can't remember if FP had anything like that. I do recall using WSFTP alot to do so with FP (but that was a lonnnng tima ago)

 

[JeckeL]

Awesome, thanks... I'll check out seamonkey