Personal Website Advice...

ghost_user_nameghost_user_name
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hello everyone!!! [*groan*... Hello \\/\\/ickes]



Well I have taken the leap and desided to make my own website and I am about half-way done.

I have made a few sites before but they were school projects and I did not put too much effort into them...



Anyhow, I had a few questions...



Is there a standard directory layout you should follow when building a website? Right now I have all the pages in the sites root directory and images in a folder called [*drumb-roll*] images. so things kinda look messy...



Should I just have the index.htm page in the root directory? I am shure this is just out of prefrence but I would like to hear from any pros in our comunity.



Next, I am looking for a good host for the site... I have never gone through the process of putting a site on the web, how much should it cost me for decent service? The site will act as my personal website and my business site so I would need some good service with ok a average amount of bandwith.



I am learning HTML and doing it all by hand... well by text editor. I hate the crap HTML that Front Page spits out so I have refrained from using any such program... this way I will have a better understanding of HTML anyway.



So, any thoughts?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 16
    johnqjohnq Posts: 2,763member
    If I'm doing a site that is comprised of static HTML documents (Not php, perl, coldfusion, asp, etc) I typically name folders for the section and leave the main page for each section just be index.htm so that you needen't name it to see it.



    I'd rather have this:

    index.html

    /contact_us/index.html

    /portfolio/index.html

    /history/index.html

    /careers/index.html





    rather than:

    index.html

    contact_us.html

    portfolio.html

    history.html

    careers.html

    all in the same folder.



    This way, related subpages can all be in the subdirectory.



    I have sometimes used image and flash folders in each subdirectory. This lets be have identical generic image names:



    I'd rather this:



    /contact_us/images/header.gif

    /portfolio/images/header.gif

    /history/images/header.gif

    /careers/images/header.gif

    (keeping the uniqueness at the folder level, not the filename level.



    So any section might have an image called header.gif rather than needing to make the image names be specific like:



    /images/contact_us_header.gif

    /images/portfolio_header.gif

    /images/history_header.gif

    /images/careers_header.gif



    Although there is the drawback of having things be in "too many" folders and not be unique filenames (which can promote overwriting by accident) I far prefer the benefit of this:



    By keeping filenames generic, they become intelligent in that they will grab the image for the section you are in merely by being relative names. No need to make your code be specific to filename.



    I can call "images/header.gif" generically (for whatever section I'm in) rather than needing to specifically name "(root)images/contact_us_header.gif".
  • Reply 2 of 16
    johnqjohnq Posts: 2,763member
    Of course, there are a lot of ways to do it. Few are "wrong", just depends on the situation.



    I just prefer to take advantage of "relativeness" since it reduces typing and needing to come up with unique names everywhere.



    Better still will be when you get into scripting languages and templates etc. But for now I think the approach I outlined might be easiest.
  • Reply 3 of 16
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Thanks for the input johnq.



    Ok I might go that route...



    Now on to the hosting thing...
  • Reply 4 of 16
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by \\/\\/ickes

    I am learning HTML and doing it all by hand... well by text editor. I hate the crap HTML that Front Page spits out so I have refrained from using any such program... this way I will have a better understanding of HTML anyway.



    So, any thoughts?



    FWIW, I would suggest learning XHTML (and CSS) and try to write to the strict doctype. While you're at it, validate your code every step of the way! You'll thank yourself later.



    Some place to get started learning the right way:



    W3C's HTML Home Page

    XHTML 1.0 Specifications

    CSS Validator

    HTML/XHTML Validator



    And some design tips/tutorials:



    W3Schools Online Tutorials

    Web Development Realm (tutorials are incomplete, still being written)

    A List Apart

    CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit

    Index D O T Html, Index D O T Css
  • Reply 5 of 16
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    I'm going to second Brad's recommendation that you validate your code. I had some display strangeness with a couple pages on my site and I could NOT figure out what the problem was. I could have combed over my code to find the issue, but I let the validator do the work. It solved the problem and saved me a lot of frustration pouring over the code. It's well worth it.
  • Reply 6 of 16
    escherescher Posts: 1,811member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by \\/\\/ickes

    Next, I am looking for a good host for the site...



    \\/\\/ickes: I've used pair Networks since 1997 and highly recommend them. They offer a basic $6 per month virtual hosting package, which fits the bill for a personal site. They also have an affiliated domain registrar, PairNIC, which integrates very well with their hosting management system. As my various domains have expired with Network Solutions, I've moved all of them over to PairNIC for easy management.



    As for HTML, I'm still coding like I did in 1995. So I don't have any cutting edge advice, except for one piece: Don't use frames! Use server side includes or other dynamic content generation instead.



    Escher
  • Reply 7 of 16
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Brad: Words can not explain how useful your post was to me... thanks! I like reading stuff like this. It helps so much.



    Escher: Thanks for the link... I will consider it. Also I don't use frames... *shutters* some of my school project sites used frames and they looked like crap. I am useing good old tables and the site looks clean and great.





    I gotta get back to working on the site... sooo much to do now.



    Thanks again.
  • Reply 8 of 16
    ynhockeyynhockey Posts: 1member
    Heh, I was just browsing my HTTP logs and noticed that this page linked to mine (ynhockey.net), so i might as well answer



    The best hosting I've come across so far had been UniqueSpace, I'm not sure if they have a site but I know one of the people who runs it, contact him at [email protected] on MSN messenger if you will... to give you an idea of the plans, you can get 1 gigabyte of space (and enough bandwidth, PHP/MySQL support, FTP, e-mail, etc.) for $5. Very good deal.



    As for HTML, my HTML guide has been complete for some time, so you're welcome to use it anytime you want the other guides however (as Brad noted) are still being written and could take a while because school is killing me... but they'll be there eventually :P if you have any specific questions, ask me over IM (AIM or MSN).



    Good luck
  • Reply 9 of 16
    giantgiant Posts: 6,041member
    For hosting, do a search @ http://www.webhostingratings.com/



    I think I'm about to switch to http://www.lunarpages.com/



    You can see they have a bunch of good reviews and one of the best deals I have seen.
  • Reply 10 of 16
    whisperwhisper Posts: 735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Brad

    FWIW, I would suggest learning XHTML (and CSS) and try to write to the strict doctype. While you're at it, validate your code every step of the way! You'll thank yourself later.



    Hehe, www.apple.com isn't valid.
  • Reply 11 of 16
    cowerdcowerd Posts: 579member
    Quote:

    Hehe, www.apple.com isn't valid



    Very few commercial sites are. YAWN.
  • Reply 12 of 16
    stupider...likeafoxstupider...likeafox Posts: 1,618member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Whisper

    Hehe, www.apple.com isn't valid.



    Though it has been getting more and more valid over time. Remember that until recently the default web browser on the Mac was a dilapidated banger, hobbled by complacent management (though once world leading in standards compliance).



    I check apple.com out every-so often and the last time I checked it was only the row of tabs at the top that refllected old-school table-based HTML design principles.



    I'd be very surprised if they replaced that look and the new design didn't come near to 100% compliance.
  • Reply 13 of 16
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    So if we're talking about eschewing table based designs, how can we be sure our layouts won't be fuked in some browsers. CSS adherence is middling at best in many of the current browsers. How well would a non-table based layout like the ones on glish.com do with a shitty browser? I'm thinking of making the change just because it so easy to tweak things in CSS but I'm worried I'll make my site unusable for many. :/
  • Reply 14 of 16
    escherescher Posts: 1,811member
    And how many of us still include ALT tags for those who browse the web with image-less clients like Lynx?



    All my websites are table based because (1) I don't have the time to re-learn and (2) I hate to abandon people who haven't upgraded their systems and browsers in many years.



    Escher
  • Reply 15 of 16
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Escher

    And how many of us still include ALT tags for those who browse the web with image-less clients like Lynx?



    All my websites are table based because (1) I don't have the time to re-learn and (2) I hate to abandon people who haven't upgraded their systems and browsers in many years.



    Escher





    Looks like you are not my target audience



    I always love to push the "Look is everything" kind of thoughts.



    All my latest site designs requires at least Netscape 6 and IE 5 and running at 1024x768 screen res.



    Anything lower than these are so 90-ish
  • Reply 16 of 16
    cowerdcowerd Posts: 579member
    Quote:

    So if we're talking about eschewing table based designs, how can we be sure our layouts won't be fuked in some browsers. CSS adherence is middling at best in many of the current browsers. How well would a non-table based layout like the ones on glish.com do with a shitty browser?



    http://www.quirksmode.org/

    http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CssHack

    http://www.wannabegirl.org/firdamatic/

    http://www.inknoise.com/experimental/layoutomatic.php



    for starters
Sign In or Register to comment.