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OT: Book for beginner's web design

post #1 of 14
3/4/06 at 8:39pm
Thread Starter 
Hey folks,
Im pushing forward with my personal training business, and Im getting pretty busy so I want to develop a webpage. Problem is, I know nothing about web design. I dont need anything fancy, just a simple page where customers can browse my services and maybe download an on-line brochure and price list, maybe a few before and after photos. Basically just a simple resource tool. I also need the e-mail addresses with my domain name attached i.e. info@adonisfitness.ca Anway, is there a good book or dvd out there that teaches the basics of webdesign to beginners like me? As of right now, all I know is I have to "register" my domain name with a "webhost" if thats right. Man I feel like and idiot.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot,
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post #2 of 14
3/5/06 at 12:10am
well my advice is to either goto college for 4 years or hire a professional. I would say it is analogous to designing and building other complex things like a house. You might no what you want in a house but most people wouldn't become their own architect and builder!
what you will need to do:
-decide and register your domain name (if its still available)
-decide on a provider to: design, host or both for your website.
as far as I know thats the minimum to get you up and running Im sure many other people on here are more knowledgable about the topic.
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post #3 of 14
3/5/06 at 12:55am
You would need a server, search webhosts on google. A domain name, one of the best price wise is godaddy.com. As for building your site, google is ur best friend. Search for things like html coding, building a website, php coding, how to creat a website, etc. And you will be well on your way. Also, templatemonster.com has pro templates you can use on your site
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post #4 of 14
3/5/06 at 1:07am
Thread Starter 
thanks guys.

As far as registering my domain, if i pay the yearly fee (which includes 200mg disk space, 10 e-mails, etc etc.) then do I have to put something up right away? Or does it just reserve it for me, and I can develop it whenever I want?

Thanks
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post #5 of 14
3/5/06 at 1:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adonis Fitness
thanks guys.

As far as registering my domain, if i pay the yearly fee (which includes 200mg disk space, 10 e-mails, etc etc.) then do I have to put something up right away? Or does it just reserve it for me, and I can develop it whenever I want?

Thanks
whose quoting you the fee with 200mg disk space???? either its 200mb or 200gb. Anyways some sites like register.com just charge you for the domain name. Other sites (perhaps godaddy.com) I don't have any experience with that one might charge you a yearly fee for various packages (e.g. one fee for domain name registration, another higher fee for name registration+hosting on their servers and emails etc. finally a complete package that includes all of the prior plus design and coding of the site.) Anyways perhaps with some of the tools the other guy mentioned you can do it mostly yourself. I was going on the assumption you were mostly concerned with the building of your business and wouldn't really want to get into the trouble and distraction of building your own site.
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post #6 of 14
3/5/06 at 2:41am
You have the right idea, reading books will get you far in life. Some recommendations off the top of my head include macromedia dreamweaver 8: training from the source and web design made easy. Knowing php and html is necessary to understand what you are doing when you do something in dreamweaver, but dreamweaver is really the standard for web site design. These books will include sections on how to get a domain and hosting. If you want your own server you can look that up as well.
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post #7 of 14
3/5/06 at 3:04am
while i agree reading will get you far in life, buying 50-60$ books will only get you broke.

use google.

and if you do wanna buy books. use borders.com and buy used. 90% of my books were used and looked almost new.

except one had a penis scribbled in it
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post #8 of 14
3/5/06 at 12:37pm
Don't trouble yourself with coding books/tutorials. You need all your time/energy for your business.

Get some content management system like mambo (www.mamboserver.com/) or joomla (www.joomla.org). Many webhosts offer it as a free option and can install it for you with a click of a button (pretty much a guaranteed option if you buy a commercial hosting package anywhere)

Once it's installed, it's just a matter of finding/choosing a template you like and providing it with your custom graphics and text content. Easier and more professional results than messing with raw html code these days.

edit: Most commercial hosting packages also provide shopping cart systems that integrate seamlessly into the above mentioned CMSs.
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post #9 of 14
3/5/06 at 12:44pm
If you're just looking for something simple, I'd agree with awingedpig. Get a CMS and go from there, it'll allow you to update and do stuff without really knowing HTML, PHP, CSS, JS at all.

On the other hand, I'm finding HTML and CSS the most essential languages (can they even really be called languages?) for simple web design. I actually just started doing this stuff as well. I've used w3schools as a reference quite a bit. They've got some awesome guides and references there. Also, learn by example. Find a page you like, hopefully it'll be available open source and deconstruct the code.

On the other hand, you may find that Joomla/Mambo gets very constrictive after a while. I'm currently using Joomla for my main site (in sig) while the blogs are running on wordpress. I've found Joomla a little too modular, I mean it seems like I can't easily change the actual content of the modules, without writing a module myself. As a result, I'm going to be evaluating Drupal. It sounds almost like the linux of CMSes. It's a steeper learning curve, but is extremely customizable and powerful.
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post #10 of 14
3/5/06 at 10:29pm
Quote:
On the other hand, I'm finding HTML and CSS the most essential languages (can they even really be called languages?) for simple web design.
Well, HTML means Hyper-Text Markup Language, so I can only guess.

That said, it's not worth it to study and learn all that stuff if you're only interested in making a single website. It'll take some time (not to mention effort) for you to get any impressive results and time is money.
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post #11 of 14
3/8/06 at 12:59pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks guys, appreciate all the help!
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post #12 of 14
3/8/06 at 2:59pm
Hey Adonis Fitness, I am going through the same thing right now, just a travel site instead. If you go the route of a CMS, look at there "sample sites" first if you plan to use them, because I don't like the one I have and only using it till I can get my site up. it's embassadortravel.com if you want to see what I am saying, if doesn't look to pholish to me.
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post #13 of 14
3/8/06 at 10:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by macpk01
Hey Adonis Fitness, I am going through the same thing right now, just a travel site instead. If you go the route of a CMS, look at there "sample sites" first if you plan to use them, because I don't like the one I have and only using it till I can get my site up. it's embassadortravel.com if you want to see what I am saying, if doesn't look to pholish to me.
I just had a quick look at it and I can tell you why it doesn't look 'polished'. The header image is way too low resolution (it's stretching it and skewing it) and the color scheme isn't working too well. The title and navbar text is hard to read. Also the links at the bottom aren't the same size on hover. That makes them a little hard to click.
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post #14 of 14
3/9/06 at 12:26am
Yell I know, those are the images they give you, thats why I am going to build my own.
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