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Context: Ok so I am building a website for a friend. Hes a designer with a high need to daily include his projects (images and text).
Problem:
Ok so I know pretty much how to code in html/css/javascript a front end responsive website, that is the easy part for me, the hard one is the content page. I've never done it so I don't know the best way.
A page that he goes daily put a new project, new images, formatted text (A like a blog). But since he doesn't know anything about coding and front end, it has to be simple enough for him to understand.
Resources: I made several searches and found some websites that allow custom templates with content, one of them standing is wordPress (haven't used it for years). I am currently abusing tumblr for that matter, but their support is quite bad. Should I use one, should I buy a host like bluehost and create my self one, what you guys recommend? I tried google it but perhaps I am not doing it the right way since I am not finding any answer to my problem.
Look, you've come to a programming website, so the most common suggestion you'll get here, and the option I myself recommend is:
MAKE IT YOURSELF!
It really is a fun and very educational experience.
There are many, many ways to do this. In general you'll want to have a front end that communicates with a back end API.
For the front end, there are a lot of options. From templating engines like Jekyll, to MVC frameworks like Laravel, to full fledged high level abstractions like Angular and React, which are admitedly harder to learn but so, so robust, and useful once you've figured them out.
The selection of tools you can use to make the API that supports the website is just as rich. There is ASP.NET for C# (which some people use for the front end as well but I wouldn't), there is Node.JS for JavaScript, with a myriad of libraries and packages to get you started. Flask is a popular option for Python. The list goes on and on.
Oh and dont forget about Ruby on Rails.
As for the interface which your friend will use to add their work, turning all that complicated back end into a simple, easy to use interface is a fundamental part of UX design and, IMHO, quite satisfying once you get it right. Make it sleek and, most of all, intuitive. One shouldn't have to be taught how to use it. It should be apparent from the first time they open the page. You should always ask for their feedback as you are developing it. Some even opt to create mock ups of the interface, in order to get feedback on both its aesthetics and its intuitiveness before a single line of code has been written.
Now, regarding how you'll actually do it, the answer really depends on the tools you opt to use. In general, you'll want to read up on things like the MVC pattern, or React's component architecture. The former is something you'll come across on a wide variety of platforms. The latter is mostly React specific, but in my opinion, understanding how to properly build a website using component architecture means you're in the right mindset, something that will help you no matter how you choose to build it.
All that being said...
Web development is complicated. Creating dynamic websites is a much larger undertaking that designing a static page, or even making an SPA. Though I do wholeheartedly recommend you do it at some point, starting with your friend's website might not be the best idea. Or, you may simply not have the time to sift through all your options, figure out which is best for you, begin the learning process etc.
In that case, there are plenty of publishing frameworks and tool sets to choose from. Wordpress has become very popular in the recent years, and templates and plugins for it are abundant. Alternatives like Medium and Ghost have also gained some traction.
There are plenty of commercial CMS type frameworks. One I have heard good things about is ExpressionEngine. However, I cannot speak for it with certainty.
If you are looking for a website builder, there are also plenty of options out there such as Weebly, Wix, as well as Squarespace. Google sites is a relative newcomer in that department, but seems promising.
So, in summary,
I wholeheartedly recommend building it from scratch. There are many, many languages, frameworks, and tools out there you can choose from, each with its own patterns, best practices and idiosyncrasies. If you lack the time, or simply don't feel like going through that process of building a dynamic website from scratch, you can use one of many tools available. However, that wouldn't be nearly as much fun, and would likely produce an inferior result.
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It's well-known among teachers that some people can program and some can't. They just don't have mindset for that. In a nut-shell, I want to ask if the same is true about web-design.
I have a friend who is a good designer in general and can produce reasonably good-looking sites with WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver. But, since we're starting a common project, I'd like someone who can 'get hands dirty': work with html and css code directly. For many reasons, I'm sure you understand.
Now I'm thinking to incite him to learn, but not sure what're the chances of success.
So, do you also need some 'programming abilities' to profess css and html, or it's just a matter of training for regular designer?
I would especially like to hear particular experience from web designers.
PS I intentionally leave out JavaScript, let's keep it simple
The best web designers I have worked with know a small amount of html but don't use it when they are designing the sites. They do their work in PhotoShop (a minority will use GIMP). The reality is that I would rather they concentrate on laying out eye catching websites instead of trying to code it and lay the site out on the fly.
A web designer is absolutely not the same person as a front end web developer. That person has a skillset aimed towards converting the designers work into a set of working html/css templates.
Let me be clear that I am not saying that there is no cross-over between the two skillsets, but rather that very few people will be excellent at both design and development. If you are willing to settle for less than stellar results, at least be sure you go into the project with your eyes open.
Not at all. HTML is not a programming language, it's a markup language.
It shouldn't take you long to figure it out; I did it when I was 12. I personally think you need to be a better, how do I put it... artist to design websites than a programmer.
Of course websites nowadays are a lot more interactive, and for that you'll need some sort of server scripting (PHP, ASP, etc) and Javascript - and these are real programming languages.
A web designer who can't hand code HTML/CSS is not a web designer. The lack of such skills shows more of an aptitude problem(wanting to improve one's self). the graphic designer + front end developer combo doesn't always work well, because chances are the developer doesn't have the eye for the details in the design, such as margin, line-height, text kerning etc etc. Also it's hard to convert the interactive elements as well.
edit: this topic has been debated within the web design community on and off for a while now. You may find some interesting links in the blog post I wrote regarding this issue.
you are much better to know how to code a website HTML / CSS / Javascript before you go saying your amazing with a WYSIWYG editor. Sure you can use software to create a nice looking site but when it comes down to it how do you solve cross browser issues? How do you add dynamic content (even without server side) a WYSIWYG editor is just like designing a website in powerpoint or word but a lot more smarts. Though without the backing knowledge you are not going to go far.
As for learning plain HTML / CSS is fairly simple its an easy markup to get the understanding of. But then with that comes more, learning how to SEO plain HTML for example. There is always more to a site than HTML / CSS for it to be successfull.
This seems like a life question; I suspect it is true about almost anything. I think it can be hard to guage someone's aptitude for programming without seeing them actually try to program for awhile, however. Many people need to struggle with it for awhile before an "AHA!" moment is reached.
Nevertheless, I don't think design skills and abaility to work with CSS and HTML necessarily correlate to an aptitude for programming, per se. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive,
It is not important for the designer to be able to program/markup/code in HTML or CSS. However, it is important for the designer to be aware of the current constraints imposed by HTML/CSS. With things becoming more dynamic, it is also important for the designer to understand how things are going to interact with each other. For example, you cannot become a real architect, without being aware of the constraints imposed by civil engineering.
But that's it. It is not important for a good designer to even know Dreamweaver or Photoshop or some other software :)
I am a university teacher, and I have also written both computer programs and HTML. Although I teach math, I understand the point about teaching computer programming. Although it might seem like there is no gray area between being able to program and not, I would say that writing in a markup language is one. You shouldn't divide the world into "cans" and "can'ts" with a question like this.
If he's a generally bright guy, yes you should encourage him to learn HTML and CSS. I wouldn't propagandize it as the thing that real men do or the greatest thing since sliced bread. Rather my argument would be to have a more complete perspective of what, after all, he's already been doing. Just as a racecar driver shouldn't necessarily need to pick up a wrench, but knowing what to do with one is useful for a deeper understanding. If you offer your friend a positive sell, the worst that can happen is that he'll say no and not take your advice. And who knows, he might even like it.
A lot of people either can't program or just wouldn't enjoy it, but don't mind writing in markup all that much. Most research mathematicians these days write their papers directly in a markup language, TeX/LaTeX, that in some ways looks a lot like HTML. Some mathematicians also like to write computer programs, but most of them don't. If they did like it, there is a good chance that they would have ended up in Silicon Valley. In fact in my profession, the whole question of can or can't write markup, or can or can't write programs, is stale. We're long used to a continuous range of abilities.
In my opinion, you can't have enough knowledge about this sort of stuff when doing any type of computer design or software implementation.
The more you know about the underlying technology, the better you will be at working with the high-level frameworks and constraints you live in.
Even if you work only in Photoshop in order to design a website, having the knowledge about what works and what will be more difficult in HTML/CSS/Whatever will give you an edge when designing that website over someone who doesn't know those details.
Of course, with knowledge comes constraints, which might be bad in and of themselves. Some of the best new technologies out there was built by people who didn't know that almost everyone else thought that what they tried to do was impossible.
But I still hold that more knowledge = Good Thing™
Web site creation especially a commercial website involves a LOT of different skill sets.
Back-end requires:
System Administration, Database Administration,
Web Applications development (anytime a website becomes interactive) requires server side programming skills and knowing various tools like (PHP, Java, ASP, Perl, C, C#, pick-flavour-of-the-month-server-side-language) and client side programming requires knowledge of browser behaviours mark-up languages and browser-side layout systems (HTML, javascript, CSS...)
Web Design requires artistic visual skills and related tools (Graphics programs)
Web Content requires language skills (Knowing how to proof read, translate, etc.).
Site Optimization requires knowledge of how to make sites appeal to various readers and audiences (both human and robotic)
A professional website involves several folks working in-tandem to bring all of the above together in various quantities.
If you are going to pursue something as a career, you need to know a bit about all aspects of that space and then follow in on what really excites you. So if someone is good at creating visually appealing content they should simply plan the content, and collaborate with someone to "program" their vision into the site.
Learning tools, and knowing about various components, is good as it tells you the boundaries and the playing field scope, but you don't need to know all of it to achieve professional competence in one specialization.
Well, I know a little HTML, and I'm just interested in playing around with it. I was wondering, though, do people usually write websites from scratch, or do they use templates, or do they use WYSIWYG editors?
To me, it seems like writing from scratch is unnecessary, nowadays, with the editors and templates we have, but maybe I'd be better off to try write something from scratch from learning purposes?
So, if I want to learn HTML better than I do, what is the best way to go about it (I have access to a free server) and how do professional website creators do it? Maybe this is an obvious answer but I'm quite new to it. Thanks!
If from scratch means hand-writing the markup, yes, that's the correct way to do it.
WYSIWYG, fully-bloated editors, are not good alternatives if you are serious about writing a web-site -- as most drag-and-drop-and-run systems out there. They might serve their purposes, but they are not general professional solution.
Hand-written markup (HTML, XHTML) and CSS will always provide better cross-browser compatibility, will be much more optimized and easier to maintain.
I really like Aptana Studio. It is an IDE that enables you to easily write the markup (HTML, XHTML), the formatting (CSS), the client-side code (ie, animations, etc, through JavaScript, and it is really well integrated with common JavaScript frameworks) as well as server-side code in a very professional way (PHP, Ruby, and many others). Oh, and it's free.
Aptana is better than, say, Notepad clones, because it is adapted to Web Development: all the time you have context menus popping up containing hints about compatibility, it displays errors on the markup, etc. It understands your code better than most notepad clones do.
I definitely recommend writing from scratch when you are learning. Using a wysiwyg editor can create a lot of extra code that you have no idea how to deal with when something strange happens and you have to edit the HTML itself. Using something like Notepad++ that supports code highlighting can help a lot.
the secret of html is: not writing it. means: keep it as tiny and semantically as possible and thats where all WYSIWYG editors fail. they let you create 403 nested dom elements whit 2 mouseclicks and if you are a beginner you don't even realize how wrong that is.
I agree with others that learning HTML makes sense. But at the same time, you can use WYSIWYG as a learning tool if necessary. I know that when I first started creating websites, margins and padding always seemed hard to properly format (due in part to inconsistencies across various browsers), and using a visual editor did help me figure out how changing certain values affected the view.
My favorite WYSIWYG editor is probably Nvu just because it is free and less bloated than software like Frontpage. But as others have noted, just practice with HTML. Check out w3schools for a nice intro and reference pieces.
Depends on the budget and software adquisition posibilities (yes, the budget).
Assuming you are talking about research, design, development, scripts, flash and everything you need the best option is Adobe Creative Suite for Web Designers.
There´s no powerfull editor in the world than Dreamweaver and that´s a fact.
You should use Notepad, Notepad++, jEdit and whatever you want but if you want to be productive a serious IDE is the best choice and Adobe win by far.
My opinion!
What are the pros and cons of using a WYSIWYG editor for web page development vs hand coding?
With the exception of just not knowing how to create something by hand coding is there any reasons to use WYSIWYG?
I handcode, but I prefer to work with a wysiwyg editor in tow, and for that reason I'm still using Dreamweaver as an editor. What I'm doing 95% of the time is handcoding inside the Source editor and viewing the results in the preview. Occasionally I'll drop into the wysiwyg editor to move blocks around directly though and when I do I find it invaluable. I never use any of Dreamweavers wizards or generated code and I clean up the html manually too.
I see nothing wrong with this approach, it strikes me as the HTML design equivalent of an IDE prompting to complete functions etc. (intellisense or whatever your IDE may call it)
I also always use a templating system of one form or another so my scripting code is totally separate from html.
The combination with Dreamweaver of the occasional wysiwyg edit (invaluable I find when laying things out or making 'macro' layout changes) and the one click preview has kept me with it despite looking at better tools - Aptana, NetBeans etc. Indeed I would dearly like to move to another system - see this question - preferably something that runs on Ubuntu and strips out the crud in Dreamweaver leaving just the wysiwyg features and possibly an intelligent Javascript editor, but I'm yet to find anything. KompoZer is starting to look promising though.
There are a variety of reasons to use a WYSIWYG editor when creating HTML.
Allows for quick prototyping
Allows designer-y people to be actively involved in front end development
Some WYSIWYG tools will set you up with a clean base to be modified (Dreamweaver's CSS layouts are actually pretty good)
I think the important thing to remember is that after you get it into approximate shape, you should dig into the code and make sure there's nothing weird going on. Nested spans, odd absolute positioning, and (lord almighty) table based layouts count as weird things. Even if you use a WYSIWYG to start with, you should always check that the code is valid and looks the way you would expect it to.
WYSIWYG can be handy if you don't know HTML or just want to whip something together extremely fast. You're not going to get clean code, though. Most WSYIWIG editors still throw out a bunch of unneeded dirty HTML instead of clean solid markup.
Anyone familiar with HTML can usually whip up something just as fast by hand in an HTML editor. And it will be clean, xhtml compliant semantic markup instead of thrown together templates with extraneous crud.
If you set up the template and css properly, you can probably be faster with hand coding than a WSYIWYG editor, as those work against you when you're trying to create properly abstracted css with degradable semantic markup.
If the design isn't terribly important and you're just throwing a website together there's nothing wrong with using a WYSIWYG. Or if you're trying to create a marginally functional mock up for a client it's a good way to get something built quickly.
I develop in ASP.net most of the time, so I'm in VS2008 most of the time; however whenever possible (which is most of the time) I still-hand code....but I do it in VS2008's source mode. When working with ASP.net, theres always somewhat bloated code which you just sort of have to accept (to a point).
However, in my free time, I also do php development, and like hell will I ever not hand-code with php. Plus, its not like VS with the drag and drop stuff.
If you want to be really good at what you do, as in Guru like good, drop the WYSIWYG stuff and start hand coding. The learning curve is steeper, but it makes you better at what you do in a meaningful way.
It comes down to maintainability and changeability. It is usually much easier to change a GUI layout in a GUI editor than by hand.
"Oh you want to move that JTable from this position to this other completely unrelated position". If you have handcoded it, it basically turns out to be a programming job (which for non-trivial layouts might actually be HARD), but if it is in a good GUI editor, it is probably just a matter of point-click-move-release.
People who handcode probably never have had to do that kind of changes :)
The advantages of using a WYSIWYG editor for web development are pretty obvious. Development is much simpler and faster even if you know how to code web since web development requires to know many different languages and can get messy when trying to get them to work together as planned. Real WYSIWYG designers should be able to solve those complexities by allowing you to visually develop on one form in one layer.
The disadvantages of this kind of development paradigms can be that it sometimes limits you, meaning that you are usually constrained within a predefined framework.
Therefore it is important to find a framework that on top of its WYSIWYG development experience is open to extension and customization. Take a look at http://www.visualwebgui.com/.
This is the same type of thing as Glade versus hand coding your Gtk code. I think that you add a level of obfuscation and things that might break when you hand edit your code. However, as Spencer said, if you need to do it and it needs to work; usualy WYSI wil work pretty well and reliably. If you're doing something that you're going to be keeping up to date and be managing for years to come; you should know every piece of code that is in that application/web page.
Really it comes down to your job function. If you're primarily a designer, WYSIWYG editors can be very handy for creating mock-ups for clients, or prototypes that can be handed to developers to code against.
If you're a developer, you'll probably prefer to hand-code.
Most WYSIWYG editors offer a code view and design view which enables you to switch back and forth pretty easily.
My suggestion is to try and learn how to hand-code your site. After years of web development, I find that hand-coding is faster for me than attempting to use a designer. Moreover, as you gain a better understanding of how HTML and CSS work together you'll find that there's very little that can't be done gracefully.
It can be frustrating to learn, but you'll find that you're better for it in the long run.
Although I've done programming, I'm not a programmer. I've recently agreed to coordinate getting a Website up for a club. The resources are--me, who has done Web content maintenance (putting content into HTML and ColdFusion templates via a gatekeeper to the site itself; doing simple HTML and XML coding); a serious Web developer who does database programming, ColdFusion, etc., and talks way over the heads of the rest of us; two designers who use Dreamweaver; the guy who created the original (and now badly broken) site in Front Page and wants to use Expression Web; and assorted other club members who are even less technically inclined.
What we need up first is some text and graphics (a gorgeous design has been created in Dreamweaver), some links (including to existing PDF newsletters for download), and maybe hooking up an existing Blogspot blog. Later (or earlier if it's not hard), we may add mouseover menus to the links, a gallery, a calendar, a few Mapquest hotlinks, and so on.
My question--First, is there any real problem with sticking with HTML and jpegs for the initial site? Second, for the "later" part of the site development, what's the simplest we can go with? Third, are there costs in doing this the simple way that will make us regret it down the road? Also, is there a good site/resource where I can learn more about this from a newbie perspective?
If you don't require any dynamic content, heck, if you don't plan on editing the content more than once a week, I'd say stick to basic HTML.
Later, you'd probably want a basic, no-fuss and easily installable CMS. The brand really depends on the platform (most likely PHP/Rails/ASP), but most of them can be found by typing " CMS" into Google. Try prefixing it with "free" or "open source" if you want.
I'm pretty sure you can do all this for absolutely free. Most PHP and Ruby CMS's are free and web hosting is free/extremely cheap if you're not demanding.
And last/best tip: Find someone who has done this before, preferably more than once. He'll probably set you up so you never have to look at anything more complicated than a WYSIWYG editor.
Plain old HTML is fine, just as long as you don't use tags like blink and marquee.
I personally love tools like CityDesk.
And I'm not just plugging Joel. (There are others out there in this class I'm sure.) The point is they make making a static website very easy:
The structure is just a filesystem structure
pages have templates to consolidate formatting
all resources are contained in one file
easy and fast Preview and Publish functions
For a dynamic collaborative site, I would just install one of many open source CMSs available on shared hosting sites.
If you're familiar with html/javascript basics I'd look into a CMS - wordpress, drupal, joomla, nuke, etc. All of these are free. Very often your web hosting company will install one of these by default which takes all of the hard part out of your hands. Next is just learning to customize the system and there's tons of docs out there for any of those systems.
All that being said there is noting wrong with good old fashioned html.
In addition to some of the great content management systems already mentioned, consider cms made simple.
It makes it very easy to turn a static site into a content managed site (which sounds like exactly what you might need to do in the future), and the admin area is very easy to use. Our clients have found it much simpler to use than the likes of Joomla.
It's also free and open source.
Good luck!
There's no reason to not go with plain old HTML and JPGs if you don't know any server side scripting languages. Also, once you want to get more advanced, most cheap hosting services have tools that can be installed with one click, and provide things like blogs, photo galleries, bulletin boards (PHPBB), and even content management tools like Joomla.
I had the same problem myself, I was just looking for something really easy to smash together a website quickly. First I went with just plain old HTML, but then I realised a simple CMS would be better.
I went for Wordpress. Wordpress is mostly known as a blogging platform, but in my opinion it is really great as a deadly simple CMS as well.
why not simply use Google pages?
Here is an example of a website I did, takes about 2 hours, easy to maintain (not that I do (-: ) and FREE.
I think that suggesting you mess with HTML for what you need is crazy!
Plain HTML is great, gives you the most control. If you want to make updating a bit easier though, you could use SSI. Most servers have this enabled. It basically let's you attach one file to many pages.
For example, you could have your menu in navigation.html and every page would include this file. That way you wouldn't have to update this one file on every page each time you need to update.
<!--#include virtual="navigation.html" -->
I agree with the other commenters that a CMS might be useful to you, however as I see it, probably a solution like Webby might do it for you. It generates plain HTML pages based on Templates. Think about it as a "webpage preprocessor" which outputs plain HTML files. It has most of the advantages of using a server-based CMS, but without a lot of load on the server, and making it easy for you to change stuff on any of the templates you might use.
It's fine
Rails (or purchase / use a CMS)
Not unless you start becoming crazy-popular
It really depends on what you go with for 2. Rails has a plethora of tutorials on the net and any product you go with will have its own community etc.
To be perfectly honest though, if the dynamic part is someone elses blog and you move the gallery out into flikr you may find that you can actually live with large parts of it being static HTML for a very long time.
If a to Implement a website With User Profiles/Logins, Extensions, Gallery's etc s a Newbi then a CMS like Joomla, Etc are good , but Else if you presently have only Static Content then Its good to go with Good Old HTML, About JPEG , I though Presently Its better to use PNG or GIF as its Less Bulky.
Also About you Query About Shifting to Server Scripts , When you have Database Driven Material or When you have Other Things that Require Advanced Prog Languages , Just use PHP Scripts inside PHP , and Rename teh File as a PHP, Thats IT, No Loss to you HTML Data.....
Do Go Ahead and Launch you Site ......
Dude, you're talking about HTML, obviously you'll be styling your content with CSS. Wait till you run into IE issues and god forbid your client wants ie6 compatibility.
Go with the HTML for now, I'm sure you guys will hack it through. Our prayers are with you.
Personally, I'd never use JPEG images on a website, mainly because of three reasons:
JPEGs often contains artifacts.
Quality is often proportional
with filesize.
Does not support
alpha transparency.
That said, I'd recommend you to use PNGs for images since it's lossless and a 24-bit palette (meaning full colors + alpha transparency). The only quirk is that IE6 and below does not support native alpha for PNGs, however this could be resolved by running a javascript which would fix this issue.
As for designing a website, there's both pros and cons for this. I suggest you read through:
37 Signal's Why We Skip Photoshop
Jeff Croft's Why We Don't Skip Photoshop
As for newbie resources, I'd recommend you flip through the pages at W3 Schools.