Making a Site, How?

Okay... Laugh at me if you will but...

Summery: I don't know how to even begin the process so I need some advice.
Any tips on starting the process are good. Like tools, server, etc. for a professional site... not one of those 'We make it for you and host it for a small fee' or geocities kind of thing...

Is geocities still running? bleh whatever...

So yeah...

Full story: I was supposed to have a site made by a company for an upcoming publications project and unfortunately I lost their phone number and... yeah... forgot their name... I'm an idiot I know...

So now that leaves me with the job of making it, 'Oh Joy!', yeah...

So... yeah...

I use and recommend BlueHost for a server. They have tools to host, build and arrange your file structures that beat everyone else I've tried.

As far as actual website building, I've only ever used Notepad and DreamWeaver. To be honest, I prefer Notepad. That's easily just a personal preference, but they both have pros and cons. DreamWeaver is easy, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and can do the file transfer for you (which BlueHost and some other servers can do, but it's easiest if you only use one tool for everything). Notepad doesn't catch errors, but neither does it constantly make faulty assumptions like DW does all the time (at least for me, but that may just be my coding style). In Notepad, you can do a few HTML tricks that you can't in DreamWeaver, mainly because it has been hardwired to disallow them. DreamWeaver isn't very good at making the file size as small as possible, so that's another pain. But, it Notepad you HAVE to know how to code, as that is the only option, and it isn't assisted in the least.

As far as learning HTML, which I highly recommend, there are several good online 'schools' that are free, helpful, and a good reference. They are up to date with the latest standards, and typically explain everything well enough. My favorite is www.w3schools.com, as it seems the most comprehensive to me. Take a look and let me know what you think.

I tried to click it and got an error... I'll google it right quick

Basics:

WEbsites are programmed in HTML (hyper text markup language).

Everything you see in front of you now,is a result of HTML (and PHP)

Look up a good HTML tutorial (I like the one by w3school)... Your site won't be public to the Internet unless it's uploaded (with index.html as your main page) to a web server.

Yeah I'm looking at the site now... looks like I've got a long couple of nights coming up...

Edit: forgot to say thanks. Thanks.

Hahaha sure thing. You're amoung several website developers, including John and me, so we'll be open to helping you.

Well yes, what you see right now is all in HTML. However, there are other languages working here, you just see the HTML output of those other languages calculations...

(Did this post come out retarded? I'm on the phone and can't think straight.)

Kinda but I speak fluent tardish so it's okay.

Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. I didn't realize it would hotlink it, so I wasn't paying much attention to its implementation. You'll notice it includes a comma at the end of the link, coming from what I deemed a grammatically correct insertion, but the BBCode parser decided it was part of the website url.

Well. I've been learning up on HTML, PHP and some Java (<--OMG, ITS HAARD >.>) So I'll be a small help.

Java is not hard XD

It's the easier web/platform language out there :-D

luke wrote:Basics:

WEbsites are programmed in HTML (hyper text markup language).

Everything you see in front of you now,is a result of HTML (and PHP)

Look up a good HTML tutorial (I like the one by w3school)... Your site won't be public to the Internet unless it's uploaded (with index.html as your main page) to a web server.

correction: websites are not "programmed" because HTML is NOT a programming language. Also "everything you see in front of you now, is a result of html and PHP" , not true. You are totally missing the big stuff here

it's all of this HTML XHTML CSS JavaScript XML XSL ASP SQL ADO VBScript

I liked the w3school tutorials too

oh and freewebs is a great place to start for web hosting. Very friendly plus lots of widgets if you're just going to not learn and use the site builder, which is still fun.

it's all of this HTML XHTML CSS JavaScript XML XSL ASP SQL ADO VBScript

Correction: Both of you are wrong. There is HTML/XHTML/Javascript/CSS. That's it. The rest of the languages you mentioned are server-side. Therefore, you will see none of it in the source code.

how often do you see a website that doesn't need server side coding?

No... >.>
Most websites need server-side coding.
What Luke meant is that what you SEE is mostly the result of HTML and CSS coding and positioning.