The Right Direction

[Mad Max]

I have worked on a website using a free website builder, and I am wondering if it is going in the right direction. I either want to know if it's worth continuing posting new articles, or to quit and not waste my time and just do something else.


http://www.angelfire.com/ak5/mmax_airsoft_vgs
or the news site
http://www.angelfire.com/ak5/mmax_airsoft_vgs/homepage


Feel Free to post comments on the website or to send me Pvt messages too.

P.S. I have had only one High School class that touched a little on Website design so be a little considerate

[Smiley]

If it's your first, then not bad.

But I doubt your site will have many visitors, I think you're wasting your time.

But hey, don't let your enthusiasm die out, unless you planned on ripping news from sites like DAC.
You might be able to write for someone else.

[ApTyp]

The best place for Fallout is Nukeboy's Fallout Hub, you goddamn jew!

Also, DAC isn't bad either...

[Mad Max]

Good job! You took that out of context you Nazi, and for your website shove it up you shvinkter. Your website isn't deciated to Mad Max, Airsoft, Video Games, and Fallout all at once. Please would a intellegent person reply, and not be a kiss ass to there own website.


This is what I imagine you as ApTyp:

[DJ Slamák]

I have worked on a website using a free website buil--

Stop right there. Smiley is right in that it's not bad for a first try (you should see the abomination I gave birth to when I first got intimate with Miss HTML; hell, even VOTF was bad enough), but if you're trying to take this somewhere (i.e. not just a handful of pages to deposit stuff you make every once in a while), I believe you should really try to learn this for yourself. The basics are fairly simple, and there's a lot of educational websites on the web. Just remember: Automated code generators are the jizz of Satan's retarded cousin. And that includes most WYSIWYG editors (especially M*******t Frontpage, avoid that like the plague).

[Smiley]

WYSIWYG

Warhammer player?

[Nicolai]

What You See Is What You Get.

[Megatron]

qwhat about dreamweaver?!

i think your site needs to dedicate itself to something i dont like seeing sites where its like THESE ARE MY HOBBIES unless his hobbies include keeping out-of-date patches for old games with no-cd crack and stuff ^-^

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Dont waste your time on being a news site because that is a competitive business. Just make something unique that people will want to see.

[DJ Slamák]

Warhammer player?

As Nicolai noted. It's a common description for editors where you edit the page like a Word document, instead of editing the actual HTML code.

Noob.

[Smiley]

Warhammer player?

As Nicolai noted. It's a common description for editors where you edit the page like a Word document, instead of editing the actual HTML code.

Noob.

I know what it stands for, what made me wonder was that I've only heard that one other place, and that was when a guy tried to teach me to play Warhammer. Something to do with the miniatures having the specific weapon, aka, WYSIWYG..

[ApTyp]

That's it, I'm banning Mad Max...

[Kashluk]

The site itself looks a whole tad bit (?) ugly. The design could use a touch of some hands-on coding + getting rid of those banners. Angelfire = teh sux0r anyways. And who cares about blogs? There's like 10 000 kazillion blogs all over the net, but I don't read a single one regularly, because they all suck. TONITE I ATE A HAM SAM WITCH AND PLAID SOM AIR SOFT GTA:5 ROXORZ!!1

[Ashmo]

This website looks pretty GeoCities to me. It's definately got that flair (heh).

qwhat about dreamweaver?!

No. WYSIWYG = Crappy results. Nuff said.

If you want to make websites learn HTML (that means HTML 4.01 Strict, and you better follow the standards or I shall hunt you down and smite you), CSS (that means CSS 2, not Microsoft's interpretation of what might look like CSS) and then maybe some server-side scripting technology (PHP, Python, or maybe Perl if you like teh cawk).
If you have mastered all that, you can THINK about touching JavaScript (ECMAScript with the W3C DOM, that is), but better don't screw up or I'll hunt you down and smite you.

Don't even THINK about going anywhere near Flash or I shall hunt you down and smite you.

Any questions?

[DarkUnderlord]

what about dreamweaver?!

As a user of Dreamweaver, I can comfortably say that it's an over-priced text editor. Sure, it's got a lot of nifty other features that emulate a live dynamic web-site and all but you're better off just setting up your own localhost and doing such an advanced action as "refreshing the page" every time you want to test your code changes. Dreamweaver also takes another 5 minutes to load when you set one of those dynamic site things up too.

If you want to make websites learn HTML (that means HTML 4.01 Strict, and you better follow the standards or I shall hunt you down and smite you)

He will you know (smite you that is).

I have worked on a website using a free website builder, and I am wondering if it is going in the right direction. I either want to know if it's worth continuing posting new articles, or to quit and not waste my time and just do something else.

As a self-taught HTML / PHP code-monkey and given I've just written all of DAC, you'll need solid HTML skills if you really want to do this yourself. There are always going to be "systems" out there like PHP-Nuke and so on that you can use but you'll always find they either do too much or don't do enough. Truth be told, your web-site does not exist in a box that can be bought off the shelf. If it did, a whole lot of people would be out of business.

You have to keep in mind what your purpose is though. Is your aim to post news or to learn HTML? With DAC, it simply started out as a desire by me to learn PHP (and as a result the back-end of the code that runs this place is quite messy and could be seriously tightened up). You'll always need basic HTML skills though as knowing the basic structure and "logic" behind a design goes a long ways to helping you "think" better about web-design.

If you're posting news, you'll definately want something dynamic and database driven. Hand-editing HTML files isn't fun. With what I've done with DAC, the fun part is we only need to edit those HTML files once. A lot of similar code systems (phpBB / PHP-Nuke / Mambo / Your Blog etc..) are the same. Someone like Ashmo can go through and clean it all up if they want and everything is easily changed because it's generated on the fly (Note to Self: Should build some kind of cache instead which is rebuilt when a news post is updated). For your blog, learn the HTML so you can make a nice template but other than that, you should be fine.

Unless you really want to descend into the deep murky depths of web development that is (and read all those fun debates about tables vs CSS table-less design which only works in 0.7% of all browsers).

If your question is more about "is my web-site worth it" then fuck knows. The oddest of web-sites can become popular and generate a substantial following. If it bothers you, stop that shit and get back to posting news at DAC.

[Ashmo]

As a user of Dreamweaver, I can comfortably say that it's an over-priced text editor. Sure, it's got a lot of nifty other features that emulate a live dynamic web-site and all but you're better off just setting up your own localhost and doing such an advanced action as "refreshing the page" every time you want to test your code changes. Dreamweaver also takes another 5 minutes to load when you set one of those dynamic site things up too.

Indeed, and that's the reason I'm using a source editor like jEdit instead. Syntax highlighting and auto indenting is all I want, when I'm coding, the tag closing (there's a nice mod that automatically writes the closing tag to the last _open_ tag if you enter "</" and automatically adds the closing tag if you enter an _opening_ tag -- it's fully aware of HTML 4's empty non-closed tags too) is a nice addition, too. If it wasn't for the need of a Windows based C++ compiler I would even ditch Borland as an IDE (what is an IDE good for apart from syntax validation and compiling anyway? it only takes hours to load) in favour of jEdit.

I'm usually testing changes online (I usually announce that beforehand, tho, so the amount of scared-as-hell people contacting me on Trillian is reduced slightly) because I tend to write stuff that works -- and if it doesn't, that's usually a matter of a missing closing bracket or semicolon.
As XML forced me to write perfectly valid HTML on the fly, I'm one of the people that can sometimes even enjoy marking up a couple of pages of text. In fact, the markup is only a minor point once the basic layout is done (and that tends to involve a lot of tinkering around with CSS).

If you want to make websites learn HTML (that means HTML 4.01 Strict, and you better follow the standards or I shall hunt you down and smite you)

He will you know (smite you that is).

Yes. Guess where I got that title at NMA from.

I have worked on a website using a free website builder, and I am wondering if it is going in the right direction. I either want to know if it's worth continuing posting new articles, or to quit and not waste my time and just do something else.

As a self-taught HTML / PHP code-monkey and given I've just written all of DAC, you'll need solid HTML skills if you really want to do this yourself. There are always going to be "systems" out there like PHP-Nuke and so on that you can use but you'll always find they either do too much or don't do enough. Truth be told, your web-site does not exist in a box that can be bought off the shelf. If it did, a whole lot of people would be out of business.

Third party code can be good, especially if it's a larger open source project (or even Open Source, in some rarer cases), but oftenly it's full of bugs, security holes or messy/invalid code. Sloppy coding is okay if you're the only one with access to it, but if the code is open source, any cracker and scriptkiddie will know about it (or be able to find out about it) and exploit it.
When I rely on voodoo coding at least I make sure I'm the only one who will ever know about it (unless the client switches to a different programmer, in which case I couldn't care less because that programmer is usually both cheaper and less experienced).

You have to keep in mind what your purpose is though. Is your aim to post news or to learn HTML? With DAC, it simply started out as a desire by me to learn PHP (and as a result the back-end of the code that runs this place is quite messy and could be seriously tightened up).

Heheheh. Yeah, on average I rewrote the code of my website four times a year. Luckily I used to get bored with that every now and then, tho.
Which reminds me I really need to write a decent forum software some time.

You'll always need basic HTML skills though as knowing the basic structure and "logic" behind a design goes a long ways to helping you "think" better about web-design.

Knowing the underlying language is definitely a plus when modifying or modding (or even just installing mods on) an existing software.
I taught myself PHP initially by modifying WoltLab's Burning Board (beta 0.45 back then -- now they're at 2.0, but still suck) and that definitely tought me some bad practices.

It wasn't until I learned PHP by the book (or rather by the documentation, some tutorials and a lot of trial-and-error) that I learned some good practices and understood OOP (which helped a lot when picking up C++).

I also didn't understand the whole fuzz about web standards until I learned XML and how DTDs work.

If you're posting news, you'll definately want something dynamic and database driven. Hand-editing HTML files isn't fun.

Well, yes, replicating an HTML file everytime you want to add content and then having to edit all of them if you want to change the layout or somesuch isn't fun at all, but editing a single HTML file every now and then can be.
Although of course a BBCode like system with a database is a whole lot faster.

With what I've done with DAC, the fun part is we only need to edit those HTML files once. A lot of similar code systems (phpBB / PHP-Nuke / Mambo / Your Blog etc..) are the same.

Someone like Ashmo can go through and clean it all up if they want and everything is easily changed because it's generated on the fly

You just need to ask, y'know?

(Note to Self: Should build some kind of cache instead which is rebuilt when a news post is updated).

Good idea, actually. Dynamically generated websites are fun, but if you can cache the included content rather than generating it when it's actually unneccessary, that's a big plus.
Also better don't have any HTML in the PHP code or an update to a newer HTML standard can be painful -- although I tend to hardcode the HTML that is responsible for the layout into the PHP files.

For your blog, learn the HTML so you can make a nice template but other than that, you should be fine.

My gripe with templates is that the seperation of style and content makes them pretty much obsolete for what they were traditionally used for: styling content.

If your templates are well-written (i.e. your HTML is) you should be able to modify the CSS a lot without having to rewrite the entire HTML each time.
Just look at the CSS Zen Garden.

Unless you really want to descend into the deep murky depths of web development that is (and read all those fun debates about tables vs CSS table-less design which only works in 0.7% of all browsers).

Tableless design is possible and can look pretty spiffy. You just need to stop trying to make everything look like a table.
Of course it's currently nigh impossible to create a tableless tabular design, but that's really trying to do the wrong things.

I guess the years of exposure to table-based designs has hampered our creativity somewhat because I can rarely think of a good design that doesn't boil down to abuse of tables, tho.

If your question is more about "is my web-site worth it" then fuck knows. The oddest of web-sites can become popular and generate a substantial following. If it bothers you, stop that shit and get back to posting news at DAC.

Seconded.

[Smiley]

jesus fucking christ!

What's with the kilometer-long replies... ffs

[Gimp Mask]

yaeh folks keep it in one sentence ffs!!

[Megatron]

y

[Nicolai]

Tapan kaikki.