# Need advice on creating a website



## Moocher

I have almost no experience with coding. I wanted to create a website, like a blog type thing...where I could post and write about my different computer builds, inventor images etc (Something similar to Squibler.com). I want to be able to host this website from my computer at home (so basically the site is only up when my computer is on)

*What will be the best/easiest language for me to learn so I can accomplish that goal? And can you recommend books, online tutorials etc that i can use to learn it?*

*Is it even feasible to host my website from my home pc (the website is not for business, just leisure for now)*


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## Moocher

Bump


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## Matthew1990

As far as I know you need to pay to host a website. You can create a forum for free or a blog. Webistes are very complex, you need to know HTML which is confusing for begginers. There are websites creators but they are not as good as HTML.


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## Moocher

Oh that's unfortunate, I didn't want to use a website that creates the code for you (Like geocities or something like that). And I thought you could host your own website for free? off your computer?


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## Euklid

You can host a blog for free right at wordpress.com, or you can download the
software at wordpress.org and upload it to your own host. 

-Cost-
Domain: $9.50US/year
Hosting: $2.50-$40.00/mon

You can use your own computer, but then you have to turn your computer into a
website server. It means you have to download Apache2Triad, and then you have 
to run your computer 24/7 so anyone can connect to your website. Basically, there
is no way running it from your home will be as stable as hosting it on dedicated 
servers. You will have lots of downtime -- for example, thunderstorm takes out 
your power. Reliability is a key issue for having a friendly website for your visitors.


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## seecor

of course u can host it off your own computer.. 
and if u go to DynamicDNS they give u a free DNS name 
hook that up to ur ip .. map the ports and your halfway there.. 
download PHP & MYSQL to your comp set that up.. 
download wordpress and your away..


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## 9Ker

One word: Wordpress!

I run a couple blogs using Wordpress and I swear by it. There's absolutely no need to be able to do any kind of coding; honestly, unless you really need to create a website from scratch for business/personal reasons, I'd just make it easy and stick to WP if you're just looking to put up a blog...

As far as hosting goes, you can get a monthly hosting subscription through hostgator for less than $10/month for a single site. I mean, we're all on budgets, but if you can't afford an extra $6-$7/month then you might want to consider a better job.


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## webmaster1105

*No need to do all these things...*

If you are storming your brain so much for the sake of just a blog, i would say its totally waist. Creating a blog now a days is as easy as creating an email id.

As suggested by someone you can make it on wordpress or if you want more easier way, go to blogger. If you want no one to guess its made on blogger, do following changes:

- remove header or upload a free template without header
- Map it with your own domain, you can get one free from www.co.cc
- change favicon

You dont need to buy any hosting account to make a site on blogger

Do let me know if you stuck somewhere:good:


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## Moocher

The whole point of this is that i want to _learn_ how to create a website...it's the experience more than anything that I wanted to gain. So you guys would recommend me creating something else apart from a blog to start with?


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## 9Ker

Moocher said:


> The whole point of this is that i want to _learn_ how to create a website...it's the experience more than anything that I wanted to gain. So you guys would recommend me creating something else apart from a blog to start with?



Well, it sounds to me from your original post that you do want to just create a blog...are you planning on using this site you're going to build for anything else? Selling, for instance?


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## Moocher

No. I just wanted to find out and a good programming language to learn for web building, and create a website for leisure.


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## Moocher

bump


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## Moocher

bump


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## techdude

Like I told another user, I work for a tech firm that has a web hosting arm and could give you a deal on hosting. I'll even help you out with learning website building/development if you like.  Let me know.  The site is www.zorveo.net


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## Jonyboy

Not sure if I entirely understand what you intend to do, but if you're looking to merely learn html and css, then I would suggest http://www.w3schools.com/ Then I would suggest creating a folder on your own computer, and start creating pages and linking them together. Other people won't be able to access your site, but you can learn the language.

If you're interested in doing that, then I or another member of this forum could explain more.


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## Moocher

Yes I would be interested in doing that!


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## Jonyboy

Well, my best advice would be to head over to that website I suggested.

My 2 second tutorial would be:

create a folder called "my site", open up notepad and create a textfile called index.html

In their, write the code:



		Code:
	

<html>
<head>
<title>Hello World!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a header</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>


Save the file, and open it in your web browser. Your on the first steps to creating a full site. I'm sure the other members can give you better help though, and I would be interested in any resources they provide.


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## Moocher

that sounds good to me


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## zblowfish

Euklid said:


> You can host a blog for free right at wordpress.com, or you can download the
> software at wordpress.org and upload it to your own host.
> 
> -Cost-
> Domain: $9.50US/year
> Hosting: $2.50-$40.00/mon
> 
> You can use your own computer, but then you have to turn your computer into a
> website server. It means you have to download Apache2Triad, and then you have
> to run your computer 24/7 so anyone can connect to your website. Basically, there
> is no way running it from your home will be as stable as hosting it on dedicated
> servers. You will have lots of downtime -- for example, thunderstorm takes out
> your power. Reliability is a key issue for having a friendly website for your visitors.



Wordpress themes are great for beginners.


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## xuniter

you can host your website on your pc you must have static ip address or if you dont have then go to no-ip.com and register and make a port 80 redirection you'll see it.
The best language for begginers is php i believe, i started with that.
No-ip also provides you a DNS name instead of ip address...check it out


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## tlarkin

So, since you are a beginner I think people aren't understanding exactly what you want, and perhaps you aren't wording the questions just right either.  Which is common when you are first starting out, so let me maybe just point out a few things and let you decide where to go.

What exactly makes a great website?

1)  Back end technology, like databases, web servers, php command line, cron jobs, scripts, and so forth.  These things the end user never sees and they are things that put your whole site together.

2)  Simple and efficient design.  You don't want your users being confused when they come visit your site.  You also want it to look nice but simple at the same time.

3)  Content - you need content on your site for whatever the site is about.  Content is what keeps people coming back.


So, then you might want to ask yourself, how do I accomplish all of this?  How do I create and maintain MySQL, or SQL databases for my content, forums and users to make it searchable and what not?  How do I ensure my web server is always up to date, and always has the latest security modules installed?  How do I easily create, maintain and update content on my site to keep my users coming back for more?

Really, in my opinion, the answer to all of these questions is to use or build a CMS (content management system).  Wordpress has been mentioned before but I recommend Drupal over it.  For many reasons, but I won't go into all of those right now.

Drupal, is a free open source CMS, that also has a large community behind it.  It is basically a very powerful frame work you can install on your web server and it allows you to maintain, design, and upload content in an efficient manner.  It also runs crons jobs against itself to check for security updates and what not and it will notify you when those updates are available.

In fact, in a giant win for open source, www.whitehouse.gov just switched over all their content to a Drupal based site.  Now, when I say it is a framework, it really is just that.  You download it, install it, and can use built in themes or you can completely redesign the whole layout and create your own theme.  All the while all the back end stuff is there for you.  

www.drupal.org

This is something you will not learn over night either.  You will need to take the time to learn basics, and then learn how to transcend the basics into advanced coding and development.  So there will be times where you become frustrated and want to quit, and if you stick with it though, you will be able to build just about anything you want with it.  Since that is the very nature of what a framework really is.


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## Moocher

Thanks for the reply tlarkin


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## Moocher

OK so I downloaded Drupal... what next? How do I go about hosting the site on my own... right now all I have is a folder with a bunch of stuff in it. I'll Google it, but I would like some help from the patrons of this site as well


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## tlarkin

You need to install it on a web server that meets the minimum requirements.  what web server are you running and on what platform?


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## Moocher

Well I want to set up a Web server on my home computer for now. I don't mind the downtime of the website when I turn off my computer at night.


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## tlarkin

OK, but I don't know what you are running as far as your home computer?  To be honest, if you are serious about this you may want to learn a bit of Linux as you go.  I don't really know of any company that hosts web sites on a Windows box, almost 99% of the Web is either Unix or Linux when it comes to hosting.

You need to the following

MySQL

PHP 5

PHP command line

Apache (or equivalent web server)

and maybe a thing or two I am forgetting....

If you insist on running windows you can look at AMPP or whatever it is as an all in one install of Apache.


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## Moocher

I'm running Windows 7, 2 gigs of RAM, and 159/300g HD. So you think Linux would be better to run this web server on? Would I need to get another pc to do it that way? Bc Windows is my main OS, I do have install for Ubuntu however, and I think the web server would go offline when I log into Windows.


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## tlarkin

Moocher said:


> I'm running Windows 7, 2 gigs of RAM, and 159/300g HD. So you think Linux would be better to run this web server on? Would I need to get another pc to do it that way? Bc Windows is my main OS, I do have install for Ubuntu however, and I think the web server would go offline when I log into Windows.




I run a virtual machine of Ubuntu on my PC at home and on my Mac.  I run my test (dev) server off the virtual machine.  You can download and install all the software needed to do this for free.  However, VMs do take up a bit of RAM, or they can, but to be honest for testing a simple web site I think you can probably run a VM with 512mb of RAM, and be OK with it.  I only give my Linux VMs 1gig of RAM.


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## Moocher

So run a linux VM on my pc, and in that run a web server, in which I can then run a website, which I will use Drupal to build. I better get cracking lol


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## Moocher

I have 4 gigs of RAM, but my motherboard refuses to stay stable when I place both 2gig sticks in. It crashes my pc, and corrupts my Graphics driver. Frustrating... b/c i'm not liking the idea of running 7 on 1 gig of RAM.


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## tlarkin

Well to be bluntly honest if you want your website to be live just pay for hosting, it can be as cheap as $4 per a month, and up to $10 per a month for decent hosting of a single low traffic page.  

Linux is the way to go if you are serious about learning how to be a web developer.  It will be so much in your benefit to learn how to administer a server so you will never need to pay anyone else to do it for you, and if you decide to go into web development as a career it makes you look better on paper and probably can justify higher pay at a firm.  Everyone likes to make more money right?

I would get your system to use all 4gigs of RAM then you could dedicate a whole gig to your VM.  Develop on your VM and once you get the hang of it transfer it to your live site.

Plus ISPs block so much stuff and with your extremely limited upload trying to host it yourself will suck.


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## Moocher

Ok, I'll got hat route then.


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## Moocher

Tlarkin I have bought webhosting with IX web hosting now. How do I go about installing and using Drupal.


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## tlarkin

you will need to make sure first your webhost has the minimum requirements to run drupal, which are here:

http://drupal.org/requirements

Then you need to download the latest build and upload it with an FTP program.  If you have ssh access to your home/webroot folder it makes it easier.

Then just follow the instructions and upload it, once that is done you install drupal over the web by visiting your fully qualified domain name over the web.


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## Moocher

They say they support Drupal. How do the FTP thing and " If you have ssh access to your home/webroot folder it makes it easier" ?


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## tlarkin

google filezilla, download it and use it to FTP and transfer files to your webhost.


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## Moocher

ok


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## Moocher

So I finally got Drupal installed on my webserver (hosting with IX) and it's great  I have hit a wall however with an issue. I want to post a monthly newsletter (pdf) to the site, so that people can click on a link or something and open a pdf of my file... the site is http://www.niwa.babayemi.com , let me know what you think.


It's working now.


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