Website Building - The Making of this Site
Creating and Editing Site Pages
Before anything can be uploaded,
the webpages need to be created. Some web servers have
site-building
tools built in, but I won't delve into that here.
There are two main ways of creating
or editing a webpage before it's online: editing the code directly, or
editing the page in a "WYSIWYG" program ("what you see is what you get").
Direct Code Editing
I regularly edit pages using HTML and CSS code directly, and it's a good way to learn the basics behind a webpage. HTML (for Hyper-Text Markup Language) is the most basic code for webpages, and it is sufficient on its own to create a simple page. CSS (for Cascading Style Sheets) allows for the styles of a page (fonts, layout, navigation etc.) to be programmed into a single separate file, called the stylesheet, so that the pages themselves contain little more than simple text and a reference to the stylesheet. These are the two types of code used for this website, and there are many sites online that describe them in detail.
This method requires knowledge of the underlying code. The chief
advantage of using this method over a WYSIWYG editor is that the
resulting code is simpler and more elegant, allowing for easier editing
and faster load times. However, creating the code for even basic
operations such as text formatting or inserting an image can be
time-consuming, and errors in the code can produce odd results.
A simple text editor, such as Notepad, is sufficient to edit the page code, but there are other programs (such as Notepad++) that offer syntax highlighting, which is helpful for locating errors. Only the code is visible, without images or fonts, and a browser is necessary to view the page as it would appear online.
WYSIWYG Document Editing
There are several programs available
for WYSIWYG website creating. Until 2009 I used Netscape Composer,
which came bundled with Netscape 4.7 and is now extremely dated. Other
newer programs are available, and some word processing programs will
work as well. The main advantage of this method is that the pages can
be edited
in a similar fashion to creating a word-processed document, so
no knowledge of HTML code is necessary. The disadvantage,
however,
is that unnecessary "junk" HTML code will often make its way into the
page, increasing load times and making it a hassle to edit the code
later. Older programs may also insert HTML tags that are now deprecated.
Combination Editing
My preferred method of editing the pages is a combination of the two
methods. Many newer WYSIWYG editors allow instant switching between
editing the page visually and editing the code. I currently use
KompoZer 0.8 (in passing: Version 0.7 is crash-prone). I edit the html
and CSS code directly for tables and page layout, but type paragraphs
and edit headings using the WYSIWYG view. I check over the code to make
sure that it remains uncluttered.
Pitfall Prevention
Here are a few things I've come across over the years of editing the site.Links
The full address of the link is necessary (complete with the "http://") unless the linked file is in the same directory as the page. Some servers are case-senstitive and won't recognize links if only one letter is incorrect. It's a good idea to develop a pattern for filenames, including consistency in the filename extensions.
Images
Bitmap images are not suited to being displayed on a
website, as I learned in the very early days of website building. All
the images on this site are either GIF (for drawings) or JPG (for
photos). PNG is another common format, although I don't use it.
Load times
can be excessive when many large images are displayed on a single
page, regardless of how the image is scaled on the page. Therefore, for
displaying thumbnails, separate scaled image files should always be
used. The full-size photos on this site are 1,000 to 3,000 KB, compared
to 3 to 5 KB for the thumbnail versions.
Servers
There are many servers available to host web sites. I chose Bravenet http://bravenet.com because it's generally well-recommended and suits my needs well. Servers can either be free or require payment (usually $4 to $10 a month). While there are many good free web hosts out there, there are often serious restrictions, such as banner ads or limitations on file size and bandwidth.
Most hosts with free packages offer the option of upgrading to a paid package. This generally means more file space, removal of ads and a general increase in options and site possibilities. Special deals are sometimes offered, and I managed to catch one in signing up with Bravenet.