How difficult would it be to create a website like this...?

[Feathers McGraw]

I was wondering how difficult it would be to create a website like this from scratch, starting with only a basic understanding of HTML and no prior PHP knowledge.

Things I like about it:

• Simple and to the point
• Scales really well - displays well on phones, tablets, laptops
• Looks clean

A steep learning curve is fine. One of the reasons I'd like to do it is that I'm currently using Wordpress, but I don't understand how it works. I think rolling my own will help me understand, and I can study/copy parts of Wordpress to see how it has been done before.

The only interactive part of the site would be the comment form (I guess this is the only part that really requires PHP?)

I don't mind making changes via SSH, so I don't need the wp-admin section of Wordpress.

Eventually, I'd like to crate a script to give me Google Analytics style info on visits, and ditch Analytics - it's really useful but I'm trying to disentangle myself from Google where I can.

Thanks in advance,

Feathers

P.S. I'd like to avoid databases if possible... one thing at a time!

[woodsmoke]

That is a very simple website.

"most" small websites are just copies of other websites that are then modified.

right click the page, copy the total stuff there

put it into your HTML editor of choice.

Voila! you will see the site, however the links will not work you have to manually build them for yourself and you may not want all of the "inside" pages.

The colours and text are easiest to find and work with when you are doing it for the first time.

start playing around with stuff like the html colours and then preview to see how it looks when you get colours you like stop with that.

This site offers a new person a very easy way to get an almost infinite colour pallate, just click a spot in the image below and the html is returned, copy it, manually delete the html colour # that you want to change and past, or type in the new code and preview.

http://html-color-codes.info/

Fiddling around in the code will allow you to become familiar with the text. again, just change the text to what you want.

The lines around blocks is a little bit trickier but you can lastly fiddle with that.

You can also replace the buttons, the are many sites that provide buttons.

Here is where I got my first buttons, making buttons is really hard, it requires real artwork, so it is easiest to just get free ones:

http://cooltext.com/

Then the FUN begins, you will have to do a little reading around about the pages that link from the front.

The easiest way to think of it is to think of a geneaology tree the front page is the top of the tree and links typed created between the original parent, the front page, and the children, the inside pages.

I started doing webpages using MS Frontpage and it gave a dead simple method.

However, it does not "manually" produce kewl things like counters etc some of them do work but the coding does not admit of the newer HTML.

What I...........would do if I was you would be to go to a FREE webhosting service that does indeed allow you to produce a simple website and then will publish it. for a very nominal fee, like ten bucks a month, they will provide you with options about domain names, etc. and if you are SERIOUS about the website you NEED to actually buy the domain name(s) you want so that an "URL sitter" won't buy it and then charge you a thousand bucks.

Any website generator business will provide Google Analytics links for a VERY nominal fee.

If you have a reasonably good cable company, that company will provide a website, analytics, multiple e-mail hostings, etc.

After I made my first site using MSFrontPage I then used my cable company has a host and published it to them. But they now will provide a website as I said above.

They could care less about your site as long as you make it within their paramaters, and they will walk you through hooking things up.

After you have experience doing that, then use the Linux HTML editor to make your really own very own website.

MOST PEOPLE I talked to said that I could not EVER make a website.

I made the first site for myself and it was REALLY GARISH...... I did a LOT of politically incorrect things with backgrounds etc. However, it got hundreds of thousands of hits and several thousand downloads of the item I was putting into public domain.

What was pitiful was that "the powers that be" in Linux went to the website to look at my item and did not even go TO the item itself because they did not like the APPEARANCE of the website.

There is a BIG difference between what "the sneerers" like and what YOUR target market may like.

I then built a website for my, former, church, which they put up but then did not allow me to teach the many educated retirees about how to maintain it, they went to a local college and paid for it. One reason why it is my former church, because the powers that be did not want the "common folk" to be involved in ....the "inner workings" of things.

You will find that there are a LOT of people that may want to get themselves between you and what you want to do.

I then built a website for............ A LIBERAL........... political candidate in my local Elks.

See, I am not conservative!

Again, the politically correct political bosses said that they wanted control of his website, and that is how Democratic stuff is done, and....they made him a very pretty, and unworkable, site and he lost his bid, because .......for some reason......they could not get the site to take donations to his campaign.

I then did websites for two private schools where I taught for a few years.

Be prepared............a great new adventure awaits you!!!

It is a LOT of fun!

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

I was wondering how difficult it would be to create a website like this from scratch, starting with only a basic understanding of HTML and no prior PHP knowledge... A steep learning curve is fine. One of the reasons I'd like to do it is that I'm currently using Wordpress, but I don't understand how it works. I think rolling my own will help me understand, and I can study/copy parts of Wordpress to see how it has been done before... P.S. I'd like to avoid databases if possible... one thing at a time!

The days of hand-crafting HTML are long gone. Even writing your own PHP is unnecessary unless your intent is to create a web application like TT-RSS, DAViCal, OwnCloud, etc.

These days, learning one of the major open-source content-management systems (CMS) is a good foundation for managing a web site. Joomla and Drupal are the most important ones; Joomla is easier to learn (but still has a curve). Try exploring their online demo to get a feel for it.

Originally developed as a blogging platform, WordPress has morphed into a kind of mini-CMS. Personally, I wouldn't use it for either purpose -- it has pretty bad default security settings, requiring you to install a variety of third-party plugins to overcome its weaknesses. And if you want to use it for anything other than blogging, it isn't all that great of a CMS.

Basing your work around a CMS allows you to start small, with one of their prebuilt themes. And the more you learn, the more sophisticated you can get. The CMS engine takes care of the PHP and HTML for you, allowing you to concentrate on design, workflow, and organization. This is far superior to using an HTML/XML editor, manually keeping track of links, and tinkering with Apache's settings.

[Feathers McGraw]

Thanks both of you, you've given me some good things to think about and research.

[SteveRiley]

I think you're an ideal candidate for learning about Bitnami Stacks.

What are Bitnami Stacks?

A Bitnami Stack is an integrated software bundle that includes a web application and all of its required components (web server, database, language runtime), so it is ready to run out of the box. The Stacks can be deployed as traditional Native Installers, Virtual Machine Images or Cloud Images. Native installers are single file executables that you download to your machine. When double-clicked, they walk you through each step of the automated installation process. They are available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Bitnami Virtual Machine Images are pre-configured and include a minimal installation of Linux and a Bitnami Stack. They are available for VMware and the latest version of VirtualBox. Bitnami Cloud Images allow you to run a Bitnami Stack in a cloud computing environment on a pay-as-you-go basis, and programmatically start and stop them. Bitnami Cloud Images are currently available for Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure, with planned support for additional cloud environments.

Regardless of whether you choose a Native Installer, Virtual Machine Image or Cloud Image, you will be able to have your Bitnami-packaged application of choice up and running in just minutes, with no manual configuration required.

A fun and easy way of getting started with many popular open source software packages.

[woodsmoke]

COOL BEANS SR!

wodsmoke

[Roguehorse]

All good answers but we shouldn't overlook simply using a template then cutting it up to your liking. This is a good easy way to have a base to start from and then move on from there.

http://www.templatemo.com/

http://www.freecsstemplates.org/

Another good way of getting going is to use a a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editor which turned out to be a very popular item with students in my classses who had never done web work before.

http://net2.com/nvu/

Lastly, a person can always try using a web builder like Google Sites which works, and is pretty good for really simple stuff but I wouldn't get overly excited about it.

http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html

As Steve Riley mentioned, a CMS (Content Management System) is a very handy route to go as well. There is an entirely different learning curve associated with a CMS then learning how to do things from scratch like myself and others have done. It's good to get the experience though.

If what you're interested in is getting up and going and less on learning the code behind what's making it all happen, Jupiter Broadcasting has been promoting the web builder services from GoDaddy. Many of the larger web hosting companies offer these tools and while I have never used them myself, I can't say that I have ever heard very many bad things about them aside from younger audiences who feel they are "webmaster ninjas".

[SteveRiley]

As Steve Riley mentioned, a CMS (Content Management System) is a very handy route to go as well. There is an entirely different learning curve associated with a CMS then learning how to do things from scratch like myself and others have done. It's good to get the experience though.

Once upon a time, I might have recommended a WYSIWYG editor for HTML pages, but not anymore. Handcrafting HTML provides no added benefit over modern development environments like a CMS. With a CMS you have flexible choices for document organization and can focus on the path and workflow that you'd like your site to follow. The CMS generates PHP, which in turn generates the HTML sent to the browser. Often, this HTML can dynamically adjust itself for various kinds of desktop and mobile browsers, and even incorporate a number of automated performance enhancement techniques.

Nvu, the product you mentioned, is pretty much dead (in spite of their claim otherwise). They gave up on Linux in 2005. Kompozer, the replacement, hasn't seen development since 2007. BlueGriffon's last release was nearly a year ago. It's based on Gecko, which feels like not a strategic choice -- the world is moving away from that engine and toward Blink and Webkit. Why would anyone intentionally optimize for only one browser engine?

I think the days of using standalone HTML/XML editors and futzing around in the file system to keep Apache happy are coming to an end. If I were looking to hire a web developer, I'd be looking for demonstrated success with Joomla or Drupal. This tells me the candidate has a grasp of business processes and can translate those into technical requirements that result in a well-organized and high-performing site.

[Goeroeboeroe]

I didn't react till now, because I simply don't have the time to help with building a site. But a few remarks.
I had a quick look at that site. If you want, you can build it completely with html/css (except for the serverside of the form). Since the menu comes back on every page, that's a good candidate for php of ssi (another way to include repeating code).
You can use a cms, but there still are differences with handcrafted code. With a cms you never get the amount of control you get with handcrafted code. But if that's not important, you can use a cms. Besides, before you'll better code by hand than with a cms takes (a long) time to learn.
Another benefit handmade code can have is accessibility. There is no cms, and certainly no wysiwyg-editor, that handles wai-aria, tabindex, etc. like it should. But again: it takes a pretty long time to learn how to use wai-aria etc. (wai-aria is special code for screenreaders etc.)
cms and wysiwyg-editor have a very bad habit to put much, much, much more code in it as is necessary. But that's not a big problem anymore, since one image is most of the time much more code than the html/css etc.
If you want to change something in the code to do something special, that's hardly possible with a cms. You're mostly dependent on the cms itself and plug-ins. With a wysiwyg-editor it's much easier to change the code by hand, if you want somewhere an exception or whatever.
With a cms it's really very important to imply updates. Every cms has weaknesses and a hacked site is really no fun at all.

So it's your choice. If you really want pixel perfect control, the better way is to learn css/html/... If that's not that important, you could use a cms or wysisyg-editor.

I agree with what SteveRiley said about nvu and kompozer. But not completely about BlueGriffon. The last update was 19 june 2013, so it's still being updated regularly. It's not optimized for Gecko (Firefox, SeaMonkey, etc.), but it's based on the Gecko machine. Standardized html/css/JavaScript/... is the same for every browser. More experimental code has prefixes for each browser. BlueGriffon uses that prefixes.
The only really important thing with a wysiwyg-editor is that it should obey standards.

List of wysisyg-editors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTML_editors
If you decide to learn html/css etc. yourself, here are some good tutorials. There must be millions of tutorials, but almost all use very bad methods from years ago or are filled with the most stupid errors. Some of this tutorials are also pretty old, but because the base of standards doesn't change, a good tutorial is usable for years.
http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/web (interactive)
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1...standards-cur/ (article says it's obsoleted, but it's really still very good tot learn the basics)
http://freecourses.tutsplus.com/30-d...-html-and-css/ (videos)
http://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/

Oh, and there's one more reason for hand coding: because it's fun!

[GreyGeek]

If all you want is a Q&D web page that is plain and simple, but has graphics and text interspersed and/or blocked out, then create it as a text document using LibreOffice. Then, save it as an html page and upload it to your server.

[Roguehorse]

As you can see from all the different responses, everyone is going to have their opinion on what is the best way to go about completing your project.

I also agree that hand coding is fun and that's why I usually suggest learning it but go about it with templates instead of trying to do the whole thing from scratch. Learning hand coding will help you learn how to tweak fine points in the resulting code produced from a CMS as well, even though it's really a lot of work. It doesn't hurt to know how as much as it can frustrate not knowing how.

Learning a CMS is really the "production" way of doing things and for someone who would be doing this for a paycheck you would most definitely want to know your way around one. I think of it like solving long division; it's good to learn how to do it by hand but, a calculator is much more efficient. I have fun playing with CMS's too but (for me anyway) they just aren't as much fun as hand doing it. This is all on my time though and not on someone elses.