Website Help

[Trey Touchstone]

I've seen some website posts here in the past so I guess it works in this forum. I'm hoping to affiliate in a few months and would like to start working on a website. I have no website building experience but would really like to learn to do it myself rather than pay (and more importantly rely on) somebody else. Can anyone give me a good place to start the learning process. Books, websites, etc.
Thanks.

[Kristin Hoppe]

A simple walkthrough (sfw) of registering a domain name.

Wordpress (sfw).

Learn html (sfw).

Learn CSS (sfw).

Good website design practices (sfw).

Learning at least a little about graphic design would probably also be a good idea. Google is your friend.

Learn HTML and CSS, find website you like the look of, and study their page sources.

[Leonid Soubbotine]

What Kristin said!

That's a really great post Kristin!

[Kristin Hoppe]

A decade of dabbling with websites finally came in handy

Another quick piece of advice, You can use the cheap places for hosting, but imho it's better to pay a little more per month for a nicer service. I use Hosting Matters (sfw) and their control panel and help desk is light years ahead of places like GoDaddy and Register. But that's just my personal preference.

[Grace Patenaude]

This is a great thread!

[Rolando Ezequiel Martinez]

The last link to Adobe is a great one.

[Steve Reggio]

If you have a Mac, iWeb is awesome. You just cut and paste and write and it translates it all into code for you. The templates are very basic but you can do some pretty cool things and I have only scratched the surface of what it can do.

Example:
www.crossfitlorton.com w/f/s

[Lisbeth Darsh]

I'm liking the links! Thanks!

And, while I'm still a novice on site design, here's one tip I learned on TypePad: pay attention to keeping your site loading quickly. Since your site will load from left to right, put any photos or outside links in the right sidebar so they don't slow down your loading time. Put the stuff that you really want people to read on the upper left. (Putting photos in the center is fine for speed too, as long as you keep them to manageable sizes and don't put too many in one blog posting.)

If it takes too long, people simply will not wait for it, no matter how great your content is.

And no "dead" buttons -- make sure everything works. Check it frequently yourself.

(I'm sure somebody out there has a better explanation and/or tip on this process, but that's what I got right now!)

Good luck!

[Rolando Ezequiel Martinez]

I keep mine to show only last 5 blog posts. Also I use thumbnails to keep loading time very low. You click on the thumbnail and a hoverbox pops up to show the full photo- which should be resized to around 800x600 - roughly 100-150 kb.

[Lisbeth Darsh]

Originally Posted by Rolando Ezequiel Martinez

I keep mine to show only last 5 blog posts. Also I use thumbnails to keep loading time very low. You click on the thumbnail and a hoverbox pops up to show the full photo- which should be resized to around 800x600 - roughly 100-150 kb.

Rolando, what is your website? If you attach it to the bottom of your post (like I've done) then people can click on it to see the example of which you speak.

Just an idea.