How NOT to Build a Website (cont)

In November of 2006 my wife, Shirley, and I took a Mexican Riviera cruise. In anticipation of some much-needed downtime I ordered a book called Head Rush Ajax. Not sure why I bought that book except that I had heard of Ajax, and the book looked interesting in its format.

Well, I read that entire 400 page book during the 8 day cruise. And yes, there was plenty of time left over to make sure that my Sweetie was fully engaged and entertained during the cruise! I felt as though I really understood Ajax after reading that, but more importantly it made me start thinking more about both javascript and html.

When I got home I ordered Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. If you’ve never read this series of books, you just have to do it. I have never learned as quickly as I did reading those books.

So anyhow, the Head First book on html made me realize how easy html and css is to use. I immediately restructured all of my websites using css. Now I can change the look and feel of an entire site by changing a few lines in the css document.

I do continue to use DW8 for updating and creating my sites, but it’s funny – now I use only the “code” window and never look at the “display” window! And I feel as though I have absolute and complete control of every aspect of my sites and pages. I can move anything anywhere on any page with a quick css update.

So the moral of the story is that if you have, or want to have, a website, learn html and css and do it the right way. You may wonder why I continue to use DW8 if I can write html in Notepad. DW8 still provides good value to me because it helps me see code errors as I make them, and makes it easy to ftp the updates to my live sites. I can make a change, click two buttons to review it, click two more buttons to upload it to the web servers.

That is how to build a website the RIGHT way.

How NOT to Build a Website

At the time that I felt I needed my first website I knew basically nothing about html or css. And I was deep in the throes of learning VB6 so I wasn’t about to try to tackle html too.

But I needed a site, so I knew that I needed a tool that would give me WYSIWYG capability – and at low cost. I wasn’t (and still am not) much into spending loads of money on my “hobbies”. I found a little shareware tool for about $29 that did a few pretty cool things – and allowed me to throw a site up in a couple of weeks. It was very basic but at least I had a web presence!

So that sufficed for the next year or two. Then I needed more sophistication and decided to pop for Dreamweaver 8. DW brought a lot more functionality, but at a price – significantly more complexity. Not knowing html, I never even looked at the “code” window. I always worked in the “display” window. Still WYSIWYG dependent, you see.

After I got through the fairly steep learning curve, helped tremendously by a book called Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual I was pretty comfortable knocking out an update to my sites over the weekend.

But then a funny thing happened. Well, let’s save that one for the next post.


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Your Very Own Web Domain

I've had a website for about 5 years now. I started out the old-fashioned (and really easy) way of putting up a generic page at Adelphia.net - my internet provider at the time.

And that was OK for awhile. But then I needed a place to sell my software. Plus I was tired of having email addresses like "stevekri271@adelphia.net". Oh, and I was also tired of having my internet provider change names or close shop, leaving me to create a new email address with the new provider and communicate my new address to all of my contacts.

Now my email address is simple, and it will never change.

So I saw an ad by "1 and 1.com".

In the interest of full disclosure I should say that I will make money (not much) if you go to 1and1.com and end up buying a package. I must also say that for 3 years now their service has been excellent - except for one 3 day stretch in October when the sites were down entirely. They discovered a major issue, fixed it so it won't happen again, and no problems since. They also provided financial compensation for my trouble.

Why own your own domain? It's easy, you get to pick your own domain name, have email addresses like "steve@novasine.com", and see all kinds of stats about how many people come to your site and what they look at there. Lot's of other great reasons, but it's early and I haven't had coffee yet...

I don't mean this to sound like a 1and1.com ad - there are many great hosting companies out there that provide similar services. I just want you to understand what you can get and do for next to nothing in monthly fees.

For as little as $4.99/mo you get:

2 free domain names of your choice
1,000 email accounts
100 GB of storage space
1,000 GB of monthly file transfers
Much, much more

To sign up for this package just go to 1and1.com.

By the way, I have the Developer's Package at 1and1.com. It's $19.95/mo but I get 5 free domains, database support and other developer tools, and tons of filespace and transfer volume.

The first thing you'll want to do is find a great domain name. They are harder and harder to come by. You can pretty much forget finding a common word or phrase available as a .com.
You may get it as a .net or one of the other "top level domains". Those include .org, .us, .info, .name and others.

A recent phenomenon is to use a .us and make a word that ends in .us - such as del.icio.us. I imagine these are getting hard to come by now as well.

So anyhoo, find a good domain name. It should be easy to spell, as short as possible, no hyphens - and you really want a .com if you can get it. They are where everyone starts their search on the web - they're the best.

I currently own 24 domains. Most are .com, some are .net, and I just bought 2 .mobi's that focus on mobile devices, like cellphones and PDA's. I expect to be doing a lot of mobile device programming in the future and want to be ready to market to those users.

The way to determine if a domain name is available is to go to Whois.com and enter your proposed domain name and domain (.com, .net, etc) in the box where it says "Easy domain search".

Also, have you ever wondered who owned a certain domain? Search for the domain as described above. At the bottom of the response page you'll see a link to "Whois Lookup". Click on that to get name, address and other information about the domain owner. This is sometimes helpful if you are concerned about a website being fraudulent.

And if you want to hide your personal information for your own domain you can have your hosting company (at least you can at 1and1) act as your agent, as I do for most of my domains. It shows their name and contact information in the lookup, not mine. The only charge for this, as I recall, is that I have to pay a small fee for any mail that they receive for me and forward to me. Which has never happened.

So once you own your very own domain you need a website to put up on it.

Stay tuned for my struggles over the years as I tried to use website-building software, like Dreamweaver, rather than just learning how to write html and use CSS style sheets.

Man, what a difference!