Website

[JohnD]

Hi all

Since retiring I was looking for a project to keep my mind active. I have been considering creating a website to collate all my aviation memorabilia that I have collected over the past 55 years or so, which includes photos, videos, magazines etc..

I was wondering if anyone can give me a pointer where to start, what hosting service I need and what web design software should be used. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

It will be a steep learning curve for me but I now have time and am quite looking forward to the challenge.

Regards

John

[speedbird591]

I've created a few amateur websites over the last couple of years, so this may be a starting point for you John.

Firstly, the best value web design program is Serif WebPlus. It's wysiwyg and drag and drop - so no need to learn anything complicated. it's basically a desktop publishing program that converts to HTML. Serif have just brought out WebPlus X6 which means X5 is going for a song. £31 at Amazon. The main advantage of X6 is that it will help you design mobile sites but I wouldn't worry about that at the moment. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Serif-WPX5USDPR ... B004XO6U5S

I use 3 hosting companies at the moment. the only one of them that is reliable and user-friendly is Hosting24 but there are hundreds out there and you will get as many recommendations as you want. I would recommend one that uses CPanel as the user interface. I have an account with 1&1 who have their own control panel and it's very limited.

It's easier to take out a hosting service at the same time as choosing a domain name and doing it in one package.

If you want to see what you can do with WebPlus X5 have a look at my main portal site, Speedbird747, the link is in my signature. On the home page you will see links to other sites I have done. The only one that isn't mine is 'Blue Champagne' which is my brother's. If you want any more info, let me know. It's a lot of fun and a gentle learning curve

Ian

[ianhind]

The alternative to a carefully crafted HTML site using Webplus or similar is to try one of the free content management systems (CMS) available. These include Wordpress, Joomla (an example is http://www.britsim.com/) and Drupal.

Although Wordpress is known more as a blogging tool, it can also be used for websites. We changed my wife's HTML site to a Wordpress site after a fair amount of effort to customise it but now updating is easy. I'm currently working on a Drupal site for myself.

If you are going to pay for web hosting space for an HTML site, most hosting companies also include the facility for using Wordpress, etc

The learning curve for Wordpress is probably much steeper than using a program like Webplus. As (other) Ian says, Webplus is essentially a DTP layout program so you set up your web pages on screen and the convert them to HTML files which you then upload to the hosting system. Just didn't want you to not consider alternatives

Edit: re hosting companies, it might be worth going for a cheap option while you get the feel for things. Trouble is they can tend to be slow. Once you know what you want, you can choose more carefully.

Actually scrap that advice! The company I am with (Vidahost) was much faster than my initial choice (iPage) and yet having just checked the costs are similar. Most people would suggest you avoid any hosting companies associated with GoDaddy even though they come up high in (biased?) reviews.

Ian

[speedbird591]

Ian makes some good points about choosing a hosting company. If you don't know where to start you'll find loads of comparison charts but I suspect most of them are unreliable. It's better to go on personal recommendation. It's a very competitive industry so they all offer much the same deal. The main thing to watch out for is the headline cost, e.g. $5 a month. That price will be if you commit yourself for 24 or 36 months. When you start you'll want to be able to cancel whenever you want so you'll be looking at around the $10 mark for hosting. A domain name would then cost around $10 a year to renew.

My first choice was 3iX at the heady price of $1 a month! However, the server went down every two or three days for an hour or so at a time and when it was up it was slow. It's a shame because I like dealing with the Company. I still have a couple of domain names registered with them - you can just point them to another hosting company, you don't have to keep names and hosting together. I took out a contract with 1&1, very heavily advertised, because they were giving away a copy of Dreamweaver and it was the cheapest way of trying out the software. But I haven't used the web space because I don't like the user interface. Finally, Hosting 24 costs me about £9 a month (gold account) for all the bells and whistles and a good control panel. It is totally reliable and fast and they cause me no hassle. But there are hundreds as good but unless you have personal experience or recommendation you won't know what to avoid.

Ian

[JohnD]

Thanks Ian and Ian very informative and comprehensive information. I will now digest and come up with a solution for my needs.

I did look at your site Ian. (speedbird747) and thought it was very easy to navigate. It has a simple and good feel to it, similar to what I was considering for myself.

Once again thank you both very much. Looking forward to planning the layouts and getting to grips with the whole process. Will keep you informed and hopefully you won't mind if I ask for help and advice when I get going.

Best wishes
John

[WhisperJet]

A little late but anyway -
you can also have a look here, they have great tools to work with...

http://www.wix.com/

Cheers,

Nick

[TSR2]

the only advise I would add to that above is to avoid using Flash. Websites that use Adobe's Flash product are often unusable by anyone using a mobile web browser or tablet. If you are starting from scratch, look for tools and hosting providers that support the HTML5 langauge. This is the way things are moving so it would be of little point starting to learn earlier versions, but this is only if you fancy getting down into the programing of websites.

[WhisperJet]

Wix offer HTML5 as well. Not for very long - but now they do...

Cheers,

Nick

[DogTailRed2]

As a very low tech and slightly geeky approach you can design a simple website with a good book on HTML and (or) CSS and just good old notepad.
http://www.amazon.com/HTML-CSS-Design-B ... +a+website
This is only if you want to code it yourself (html and css are not rearly programming languages and relatively easy to learn).

Alternatively you could download Joomla as previously mentioned.

[JohnD]

Thanks for all you recommendations and interesting thoughts.

I have purchased WebPlus x5 as recommended by Ian and have been playing with it to get used to the software.
It seems to be OK at the moment and I have a few ideas that I'm playing with. When I'm happy that it is what I want to do I will look at the web hosting and domain name.

I'll keep you updated as I progress.

Thanks again

John