I'm looking for a HTML editor that kinda supports templated editing or live snippets or something like that.
Background: I'm working on a website for a friend. As there are no specifications what the webspace/webserver can or can't do, I decided to make it a pure HTML/CSS page, or rather 10 of them. I wrote a template, copied it 10 times and edited the content. And guess what, the template has to be changed.
Therefore I'm looking for a (HTML-)editor that has some kind of live template system where I can edit the content in as it where plain text and then save the project into the 10 pure HTML/CSS files.
I thought about using PHP (the only script language I've some knowledge in), but writing the underlying template script would cost me enough time that I could change all files by hand. I'm not that familiar with AJAX to know if there's a way to load content from another file. If so, this would be an option if there already is a script. With Webdeveloper (firefox extension) I could save the generated source code as HTML/CSS.
Thanks in advance
Edit: any hints how to do this without an editor are welcome
Edit2: In my mind the tool looks like a plain old text editor like SciTe, but capable of editing multiple files simultaneously in the same text area, so it looks like editing one ordinary file, but actually it's a whole bunch of files.
Dreamweaver will do this for you, it's had HTML templating of the type your describe built in from very early versions (because from how you phrase the question I do not think you're thinking along the lines of a PHP templating engine such as Smarty, but some sort of HTML layout formating)
Although I regularly look around for Dreamweaver replacements, and I've certainly been impressed by Aptana, I still tend to use Dreamweaver in my development stack simply because whereas I can compensate for some of the more coding-orientated features it misses, I find the WYSIWYG nature of the editor invaluable.
I would have used a template engine.
I wrote a post about a dead simple script using the Dwoo template engine and mod_rewrite, where I am taking the uri and loading the forrect data and template based on that. You should be able to get it running in a few minutes.
Maybe I am way off on this, but why don't you look into an Open Source Content Management System (PHP/MYSQL)? There are MANY light systems that are not like Drupal, Joomla (if you do not want the big bulk of those CMS's).
There are even a few good ones for light web design that are flat file driven.
That would be my suggestion, at least if not for this project, look into it for future projects.
Here is an example of a great micro CMS that would seem to fit the bill for what you are doing:
http://www.mini-print.com/
Related
I'm writing blogs on Tumblr using HTML (I use HTML in order to control the content of my blogs flexibly and precisely) and I'm coding with Tumblr's own HTML editor, which is not so bad and I can continue writing in this way. However, there're some points I don't like, e.g.:
I can't adjust the width of the editor window and so the view looks a little compact.
After posting (or saving as draft), the source code will be automatically rearranged, pretty differently from my original version. That includes the line breaks, automatic adding of HTML tags (like </p>), and converting of special characters, like > to > and to (displayed as a dot).
My ideal wish is that I can use my own editor (namely Visual Studio Code) to manage my blogs. I could get a more familiar and comfortable working environment, together with useful functions like auto-complete. But there's still a conflict here - Very often I need to use the "Preview on Blog" feature (so that I can check the actual result).
To explain the situation, I describe an odd plan as example here. I could edit the source code using VS Code, during this I copy everything to Tumblr's editor when I need to "Preview on Blog", until posting. And whenever I need to update blogs I do the same work. That is, to keep a synchronous update of my blogs as local HTML files and online on Tumblr. But this way is not pretty convenient.
Is there a magical way to achieve a connection between the local editor and the website? Or, in general, how can I get a more comfortable workspace to write blogs on Tumblr using HTML?
Thanks a lot!
EDIT:
I'm not blogging on Tumblr anymore, I started to set up my own blogging platform using GitHub Pages and Jekyll.
(BTW, the code editor I use has changed from Visual Studio Code to NeoVim.)
We have a asp.net mvc website which is using umbraco CMS system. Now,we want to convert the CMS system to plain HTML pages. We do not have the complete code of the website.
How can we remove CMS system and convert it into flat HTML files easily without writing the code from the scratch for this website.
Why would you want to move away from a CMS? A CMS is build to make things easier and you are moving going back to the dark ages of the internets where we build websites with notepad by typing HTML by hand.
Discaimer: I am an umbraco dev, and I love the product. So I might be biased
To answer your question, I use http://www.httrack.com/ to backup existing (old) websites before moving to a new platform & hosting.
To answer your question:
For every page, view source and copy the shown Html to a new Html file. Make sure you honour the folder structure too.
You could also use https://www.httrack.com/ that might give you what you need.
To try to persuade you not to:
However I would strongly recommend against doing this. Umbraco has great mechanisms in place that give almost comparable speed to a flat file website. It uses an Xml file that gets updated when database values are changed, and builds pages and content from this.
If you flatten your website to plain Html files all your Urls will invariably change and this is super bad for SEO. You will also have a 'mare of a time trying to update the site with new content or editing the same content found across all pages e.g. the main navigation and footer.
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So I recently finished the HTML and CSS course at Codecademy, and I want to practice coding with html and css. My problem though, is that I don't know where to start. I've been searching around to try and find the information I need, but I can't find anything. I kind of feel like it's so obvious noone's ever needed to ask, but I don't know, so here I am, asking.
While searching for the answer to this question, I could only find sites that teach how to use html and css, like Codecademy, and sites that let you test html code like w3schools.com, but no sites that let you practice html and CSS.
Here's my question:
Are HTML and CSS created as .html and .css files on my computer?
You should ask new question for each of the questions you posted.
Where do I code html?
You can use any text editor. Try Sublime Text - download the app for your operating system and install.
Create a new file, saving it with the file exetension .html. Be sure you saved the file in an easy to find location - like you would with any word processing document or spreadsheet.
Open a browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox).
Click and drag your new HTML file into the tab window.
Make some changes in your HTML file.
Refresh your browser tab.
You're now on your way to learning more about coding HTML in your local environment.
You can create HTML, CSS and JS files on your hard drive and simply open up the HTML file by double-clicking it (or opening it directly through the browser's file menu).
Typically these files are stored on an HTTP server that provides content when asked... but for your purposes to practice HTML and CSS, you can simply save the files on your hard-drive and open them from there.
Yes, they are (but CSS can be stored on a server as well, see 2.). You can then open the HTML file you're editing in any browser and see the output.
You can include CSS in your HTML file by using:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="path-to-your.css">
The path to CSS file can also lead to an online server, if the CSS file is stored there:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap.min.css">
The simplest way I can think to answer is:
Are CSS and HTML coded in a file on one's computer?
Yes
If so, how is the CSS connected to the HTML, and how are these connected to a website?
In the HTML file you specify which CSS files will be used in your page (I'm assuming you know what CSS files are for). The web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome, read the HTML code and produce the sites you see anywhere.
If you are only practicing basic HTML:
Open notepad (Windows+R, type "notepad", enter)
Write some code like the found here: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_basic.asp
Save your file with .html extension
Open it in your web browser by just double clicking the file
EDIT. Check this other example to see how to reference the CSS files http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_css.asp.
You only need to put your HTML file and CSS file in a folder in your computer, you don't need go to any site to practice this because HTML and CSS code is interpreted directly by your web browser.
Are CSS and HTML coded in a file on one's computer?
yes and no.
Basically CSS can be anywhere; your computer, your server, someone else's server, etc.
Your Chrome blocks some local sources for security reasons, but Firefox handles them pretty well. If you have a static website (that does not involve with any database), you can just create a directory and make html, css, and javascript files and open with Firefox to test.
Otherwise, get hosting services like godaddy, or get a server like Amazon Web Services and put them in there.
If so, how is the CSS connected to the HTML, and how are these connected to a website?
Typically, this is how people do.
<html>
<head>
<link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
<!-- your body... -->
</body>
</html>
If not, where are HTML and CSS coded for use on the web?
This was answered above.
CSS and HTML are not things that need to be installed on your computer, you just need to create a file with the .html extension, put some code in it and open it with a browser. The browser interprets it automatically, the same goes for CSS. To create HTML pages for practice, all you need to install is an IDE to edit your code.
Ok - everyone has to start somewhere and I'm going to assume you are a novice so if any of this information is too basic, please excuse it.
There are tiers to consider here....First let's break down what the languages do - I'm going to talk about additional languages because I see people already talking about servers and scripting to so I'm going to try and tie this all together for you. I started self taught and learned a lot of hard lessons so hopefully this add's a little bit of an advantage to the learning curve.
SERVER Think of a server as a computer. It run's slightly different software but the principles are the same. It's only job is to store code, interpret it and present it when called. A very popular server software that you'll find is apache so let's focus on this for now. Windows is not a server and can't be used as a server. However, it's possible to edit a server with windows and it's possible to run server software on top of windows just like any other application. You'll hear references to WAMP, LAMP, XAMPP and a bunch of other acronyms but for now you just need to know why they exist and what they do. A server is not required to write and produce html and css documents
HTML The primary purpose of HTML is to tell a web browser what it's looking at. You'll see a lot of HTML4 vs HTML5 and a ton of other arguments that won't make a lot of sense up front. The important thing to remember about HTML is that it is the framework for everything website related. A lot of people will argue that other languages are more important for one reason or another but without html, none of the other languages matter at all. Whatever you know about this is fine for now. Start small and work your way up.
CSS Is amazing. CSS3 is the current standard but there are still some things that are not cross browser compatible. That's a story for another day but the basics are the same everywhere. You define your classes, id's and elements then tell them how they're going to look. The more you get in to CSS the more you'll realize how amazing it really is. It's useful on a lot of levels and plays a big part in some scripting languages. The biggest thing to remember about CSS is that you should write as little as possible. The more rules you write, the more chance there is for overlapping and something you wrote 3 files ago on line 463 is going to dominate a new rule you just wrote. Try and write as much as possible in classes too so you can really make your code globally usable.
PHP/ASP These are just two of the more popular languages that are considered back end languages. When you're thinking of a website, break it down like this. Front end = Browser, Back end = server. Anything that PHP does is on the browser side. As an end user of a website, you'll rarely see it but it's a major component. This is relevant because as you grow, you'll wonder about trying your hand at a back end scripting language. That's great but that's when you're going to start getting in to servers and such so I'm sure you'll hear a lot about the benefits of it but for now, just stay focused on the basics until you're comfortable.
Javascript/jQuery Again, this is just two popular examples of the many scripting languages that are available on the client side(the browser). These languages can generally be viewed(and edited) by the end user. They are extremely useful for changing pages content without reloading the page and they can talk to the server languages as well. Again, get more comfortable first with your basics before branching out here but with the references you're bound to receive to these languages as you learn, it's helpful to know what they do and why.
Editor To edit html you can absolutely use any text editor. Word, notepad, notepad++, sublime-text, wordpad...literally anything that saves in a standard text format. As long as the extension is html, css, etc. The editors geared towards programming offer a lot of features and benefits as compared to the basic editors available in your windows/mac setup. Try your hand at a few different ones and see what suits your taste. You can write one file of html, download the programs and right click to open with each program to see the differences. Personally I recommend Notepad++ but to each his own.
Why is my answer so long? I know this is a majorly overkill answer to your question however I also know how hard it was for me to get started in this field without some very basic knowledge. This should be enough to get you off and running and hopefully help out when you encounter some unfamiliar territory. In the future, if you find yourself looking to get in to the server/scripting world, let me know and I'll pass along a write up I did on setting up xampp for windows.
Good luck!!
You need a text editor to practice your code I recommend downloading Sublime
Its free, in sublime under view you can change syntax which is the language you are programming in you can set it to html or css or any other language you desire.
The structure for "connecting" html and css is usually a simple folder like structure.
Create a folder called Website
In that folder you would have your html file(s) you can call it index.html
Also in that folder you would have sub folder(s) for your CSS and JS but since you are just working with CSS now create a folder named css. This is where you will save your css file that could be called something like style.css
Here is a more through guide on folder and directory structure.
Keep going with Codecademy and build your own projects in the browser.
I'd recommend taking a look at a good example. HTML5 Boilerplate is a good starting point and has some good practices for a project (in my opinoin). This may be a good reference for you to get a feeling of how the javascript and css files can be arranged and linked to. The website is static so you can open the index.html file with a browser to preview it. You can also make changes to the css and javascript files to see how this changes the index.html page.
https://html5boilerplate.com/
You're asking a very broad set of questions but hopefully there's quite a few good answers in here to point you in the right direction. Good luck!
It is technically possible to have both HTML and CSS in one file using the style tags:
<html>
<head>
<title>Title</title>
<style>
h1 {
color: blue;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Test Text</h1>
</body>
</html>
However it is considered proper practice to use Cascading Style Sheets, which is probably what Code Academy used.
Checkout setting up a WAMP, LAMP, MAMP server depending on your platform (W) Windows, (M) Mac, (L) Linux.
http://www.wampserver.com/en/
https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/288158-easy-lamp-server-installation
https://www.mamp.info/en/
Then in your respective directory (html_public, Sites, wherever) you will have a local server environment where you can develop locally.
I use the Sites/ setup on a mac
css and javascript are usually linked in the head section of an html document.
You will need a editor - I recommend looking at Sublime Text or Atom.io
If you just want to play around for a while before attempting your own projects, you can build on sandboxes like http://codepen.io
Are CSS and HTML coded in a file on one's computer?
A: depends either you can create both css and html in one file or in different files. If you using lots of css code then everyone will suggest you to write them in different files and you can code them in someone's computer or on server.
If so, how is the CSS connected to the HTML, and how are these connected to a website?
A: you said that you have done html and course and you don't know who to add a css file to a html file. (Use Google sometimes) use this link you Wil get you answer. After coding you can test them using your web development tool if you are developing in a tool. Else use your web browser to test.
I suggest you to visit websites as much as you can an use chrome tool to see how that website is done (you can only find front end parts.)
A local nonprofit needs a new website. It's a very basic website that simply presents information, nothing past basic HTML/CSS is needed to make the actual site.
The marketing manager would like to be able to edit text sections (upcoming events, jobs) regularly. How would I go about creating the site in HTML/CSS and then allowing them to edit just the text in those sections in an easy way? is that even possible, or would this require more advanced knowledge of actual programming/database languages?
Thanks
No, you can't edit the site with just HTML and CSS. Even if you have JavaScript, you'll need server side code (ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Node.js etc) to store the changed text, since HTML, CSS, and JS run on the client (excluding server side JavaScript based frameworks).
The easy solution is to just use simple HTML and tell him to directly edit the HTML. If he's just a little bit technical, an hour or two of explanation of how HTML works might be enough to get you going.
A CMS solution that is prebuilt and has simple menus for editing things might work nicely. There's plenty of various options to suit your needs.
Otherwise, you can either build a custom site. A custom site that reads text from simple text files might be all it takes (Markdown might be preferable to plain text.) Of course, you can scale it up if you want until you've basically built your own CMS.
You can't do that.
HTML pages are stored on a server (which is just a computer accessible by other computers via an internet connection), when you type in an address in your browser's address bar it sends a request to a server to fetch the corresponding HTML page. Then this page is displayed in your browser.
Now, say you managed to change a text in your browser somehow using HTML/CSS, but you still need to find a way to send these changes back to the server so that these updated pages are accessible by other remote browsers, and the only way of doing this is to use server side languages. They are not really that difficult, you can quickly learn that.
You might like to take a look at this sourceforge project.
This is a file-based system that uses conventional HTML for the webpages, but allows online editing with CKEditor. Requirements are Apache 2 and php 5.3 or later.
There is a testdrive available.
Login with guest.
I'm trying to create a theme for a CMS, but it's proving nearly impossible, as I have no understanding of PHP or ASP.NET. I can put a site together via CSS and HTML, but I want clients to be able to add and edit content themselves. I'm about ready to give up on designing one altogether and just use an existing theme.
I've had a go at trying to understand the inner workings of Wordpress, SilverStripe, Umbraco and Pixie, but the tutorials have left me confounded. Are there other CMSes I should be looking into for a more simplified theming process?
I'd really love to be able to just drop a chunk of code into the content area of a given HTML page, and make that region editable from a WYSIWYG front end that the client can log into. Is there such a thing?
Anything but DotNetNuke.
I'd recommend giving Wordpress another try.
I'm no web developer, just a an average Java/C# programmer who needed a web site and has some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. What I did was find a theme that was similar to what I wanted, then started tweaking it incrementally. My theme is pretty basic, but before long I got a pretty good grasp of "The Loop" and printing out category and page links and such.
How about Movable Type?
You can (and should) edit the templates via the web interface, they are divided into separate modules, so you can concentrate on one area of the site, styling is of course handled via CSS.
It took me a few hours without any prior experience with this CMS to completely port a Wordpress theme to MT - I found the documentation very helpful and didn't even have to look elsewhere.
An awesome thing about MT - it generates static pages based on the templates you defined. Meaning, very low load on the server, you don't need to query the database on every request, etc. You could probably do the same/similar by activating the cache plugin (or is it built in now?) in Wordpress, but here it's the default modus operandi so it's more stable and integrated with the CMS.
Drupal with the zen theme (or a "lighter" version of it: Starkish theme) seems like a popular choice (and well deserved, too). It gives you a good starting point, it has great documentation and many modules available.
PS: I've added this as an additional answer so that it can be voted upon separately from my other suggestion - I just could not stop myself from bringing up the Drupal + zen combo :)
I worked with Joomla, it is really easy to have a theme for it without knowing any programming language. When you install it using a simple installer, there will be a folder named templates. There are three simple themes each in its own folder. Just copy one of them,change XML data for that theme ( just to name it and have some details, no programming ) and change the contents of CSS and HTMLs. every where you see something unrelated to HTML like , copy them!! Names are descriptive. so you can guess what do they do. give it a try!
I'd really love to be able to just drop a chunk of code into the content area of a given HTML page, and make that region editable from a WYSIWYG front end that the client can log into. Is there such a thing?
The only system I've come across with this kind of functionality is Perch.
Just create your website using HTML/CSS as usual and chuck in a few small php tags where you want editable content. These areas are then added to an admin area for your clients to edit.
The only drawback is it costs £35 per site - I don't know if there's a free/open-source CMS with this functionality...
It's difficult to say which CMS will be the best one for you (maybe your question should be made into a community wiki question).
I have a little experience with mojoPortal, and found it to be easily customizable. There's a lot of documentation about how to skin your CMS and there a lots of complete skins that you can use as a starting point.
There is also a demo site, where you can see how the CMS works for an end-user.
Take a look at Joomla. That was the first CMS that I really used, and I still think its templating engine is better than most of the others out there.
Its template system essentially lets you build a standard web page, and then use some simple tags to define where the content and modules would go. You can override the output of most external components and modules without too much trouble, and the vast library of third-party extensions should help you add a ton of functionality to your site without much coding on your part. Joomla also has a fairly easy-to-use administrative backend, so your clients should like it too.
This page for themeing Wordpress helped me a lot:
Theme Development
UPDATE
Xichael,
If you know HTML and CSS pretty well, but you just don't want to spend time learning the Wordpress framework, then I think this is a good option for you (again, I can relate to your situation). Use Wordpress with the new Toolbox starter theme. It's super minimal.
Toolbox: An HTML5 WordPress Starter Theme
Here's an example of what it looks like. Just "View page source" and go to town on the CSS!
I've thought about writing my own very simple CMS just for handling pages, i.e. you have some sort of template, and then a <div> in the middle to drop in text from a WYSIWYG editor. You could even use XML as the data store to eliminate having to set up a database to store the page content.
It would sort of be re-inventing the wheel though, because there is so much polished CMS software out there already, but it wouldn't be that hard because it wouldn't have 99% of the features most systems have. However, what happens when your client wants to add something in the future that's already standard in an existing CMS or plugin?
If you are looking for a simple CMS tool, CMSimple is as basic as it gets. A small PHP based CMS system that does not even require a database or XML.
"CMSimple is the ideal tool for a single user to maintain a website."
Original version here: CMSimple.ORG
Original plus 2 enhanced versions here: Download CMSimple
117KB content manangement system
no database required; the entire site is stored in a single HTML file
built in WYSIWYG
no modules or widgets, no blog, no comments, etc., just basic pages
uses PHP (but no database)
Get themes here: dotcomwebdesign.com