Build your own website with dreamweaver

So I've previously written about this before, the old one is worth reading first, it contains instructions on photoshop and dreamweaver that this doesn't, however it misses a lot of points out compared to this one. 

These days there are tonnes of services for building websites with and there are also a lot of sites and communities well suited to those not wanting to go through the effort of building an entire site from scratch. 

If you just need a site to showcase your stuff then chances are you could put one together over an afternoon, for a more complex site it'll take more time.  

My actual site is here - killerjackalope.co.nr
Which is a redirect of - killerjackalope.zxq.net

gh

Step 1 Tools, materials, skills

Tools
 - A computer running
      - Photoshop or your image editor of choice (you may need to download plugins to output                   HTML)
      - Dreamweaver or your editor and FTP client of choice
      - A decent internet connection
 - An email address, if you don't have one I doubt you'll make it through this
 - You'll likely need a camera
 - Pens and paper

Materials
- Content - I'll talk on this more later but you'll certainly need to fill your site with something
- Spare space on your HDD
- Time and patience.

Basic skills
- A basic knowledge of how to use your computer, the internet
- The majority of this requires very little coding knowledge, so don't be intimidated
- A sense of design
- Knowing how to use photoshop would be nice, paint.NET or GIMP

Comments

[catash]

Dreamweaver is the best, that's how I got started myself.

[killerjackalope]

Ahh, lucky you - I started with some text editing of pages just arsing about. Then horror of horrors.

Frontpage...

Dreamweaver was a godsend...

[ukwebdesigner]

This covers some of the design skills and process required to set up a website, but from experience having a site designed professionally is the way forward.

(If you need any help or a quote for a website, please get in touch, I'm a uk website designer and have been for over ten years.)

[killerjackalope]

I'd certainly say that trying to make a website from scratch for commercial purposes shouldn't be taken lightly, with no experience it's very likely best to leave it to the pros.

I'd love any comments on the design itself, still a work in progress to date, there are always little things that need touched up.

I clicked on your link and was thoroughly impressed, I've seen a lot of companies producing sub-par websites or very dated looking ones but that portfolio is great.

[AngryRedhead]

I think a more accurate title would be "Build your own website using Dreamweaver and Photoshop"...

Extra columns and rows can be extraordinarily helpful for visual blank space so that, for example, words in one column aren't butted up against the words in another column.

More and more often, background images are being incorporated as part of the header (example) and shouldn't necessarily be avoided even on a minimalist site.

[Computothought]

I am wondering if I could not do this with the gimp, bluefish, or a host of open source alternatives. Actually most of my website front page was done with a text editor and gimp. You can also add other software to make the site more powerful.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Uses-for-your-own-private-cloud/

[jj.inc]

Duh, I just realized you where listing photo editing software.

[jj.inc]

You can use Microsoft word to make a website, I haven't read this yet so I'm not sure how it explains it, but in word you can build a page any way you wan't and it just shows up that way, although you don't get to do all of the deep coding changes.

[Computothought]

Since I access my server (out of the way in a closet without a monitor) remotely via ssh, i just use vim from the command line to edit files. I keep a browser open and refresh it when I have made updates. Use sfp to transfer files (i.e. pics) over to the server. Once you have a bit if code as a base, it is not really that hard to do it this way.

w3schools.com and http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/ were a big help to add to the base of code to work with.

[AngryRedhead]

There are many ways to skin a cat which is why titles are so important.

[Computothought]

Exactamundo! But I do like to look at other ways people do it, then apply those ideas with the tools I have. Photoshop has really helped me to learn the Gimp. So far I have not found anything the Gimp could not do. Need to learn bluefish, but using vim and or gedit (or notepad for mswindows users) to cut and paste code is so easy to do,

[killerjackalope]

Gimps got a lot going for it, I use it a lot less than photoshop but only because I prefer the interface and working with large numbers of files is easier...

[killerjackalope]

Good points, I think the header image bit needs reworded - I was trying to get across that lots of images or a cluttered image could be bad, maybe I'll grab some sample links and knock together some visual cues too.

Maybe another section on layouts and how to make use of them effectively should be added, it's pretty late now but I'll likely make a start anyway because I don't leave things alone...

More accurate but also unwieldy, it's also making me think I should add documentation for different program options.

[AngryRedhead]

How about "Build a website with Dreamweaver"? That's what most of it boils down to.  Photoshop isn't really necessary - a reader would just need some sort of program for working with images to use on the site.  You are using Photoshop in particular, but it could be GIMP, Picasa, Inkscape, etc.  Expanding beyond Dreamweaver might as well be a separate Instructable.

[killerjackalope]

Aye, that certainly sounds better, I'm going to look at Gimp and check for that bit.

Dear god I just checked out publisher, it's been years since I opened it up, new '07 edition and it's still every little bit as awful. Along with my foray in to the world of netobjects fusion I'm starting to believe that DW is the only way to make a site other than coding...

In the morning I'll make all the changes, wrote up the bit on columns and the wording is a total wreck.

By the way, what's that project? On 365 I saw what looks like plastering but something said fireproof about the material...

[AngryRedhead]

There are plenty of options for making a website such as blogging "software", Joomla!, Drupal, etc., and then there are the open source alternatives to DreamWeaver.  And of course, there's Flash and all that business.  I wouldn't recommend trying to take all of that on.  There are whole books dedicated to using DreamWeaver alone.

[killerjackalope]

I know of these books, had to read them for class, between them and generally cirruculum approved photoshop books I've never come across such bad instruction in most cases.

Hmm, a spammer said something about a Drupal extension for dreamweaver on my old 'ible. Added some notes about the columns and images.

I've been meaning to look in to wordpress, I've not been updating my blog because I'm doing it on the site but I'd rather incorporate my wordpress blog in to the site...

[AngryRedhead]

I'm a bit surprised that you didn't use WordPress as your site since there's so much you can do with it.

[killerjackalope]

I guess I like making my own site better, though I know I could have added a lot of functionality for a lot less effort...

[tinkerman92]

on websites all the time i always see them overlaying images over flash documents and such how do i do that?

[CrLz]

Awesome instruction. Thanks!

[killerjackalope]

Thanks, let me know if you run in to anything that looks like trouble...

[Ninzerbean]

Thank you ever so much for this and the other one, I can actually understand this, I am going to try doing it.

[killerjackalope]

Brilliant - If you get stuck at any point let me know, can improve it and generally help. I'd love to be able to get together an 'ible that can definitively describe building a website because there's such a mess of incomplete or conflicted advice on it, my old 'ible included...