Web-Mastring of a total Newbie

Hi Everybody;

About my Own Web-site, well it is basically just a shell. I can't use much HTML code to make it do the things I would like to try, and I don't think I actually have web space for a site, from my Internet Provider, just the semi-site. I was thinking I could learn about web sites, and how to build one, using this little option that comes with my service, but it is not really what I wanted. I could buy Web Hosting service, and a Domain Name, but I just wanted to learn more, and maybe post my blog thing there. I could blog with the free site I made, but I need some people to actually read it, and make comments. I don't think people would read it that just come to my site to just read my ramblings, I would think that if it is part of a larger site of nice people, that are from lots of places, I would do better. I got NoteTab Light, and it looks like it would work fine, to build a site with, and I am working my way through a free Tutorial at < http://www.pagetutor.com/html_tutor/index.html >, and it is easy enough, but HTML code is tedious to write. So to make a long story short, I may mess around with my site, or some other free way to build my own site, but it will be a wile before anything is worth looking at, if ever.

If anybody here has Comcast/Xfinity, and know about their Web-Hosting service, please let me know what you think.

Link to my Site as it is, and it may be different soon.
Link: http://home.comcast.net/~rogerk281/site/?/home/

Less than a Web Builder Newbie, Mr. K

HI Everybody;

I just tried something with my site, I added a Weather Sticker to my site, at least that worked. Here is the HTML Code from < http://www.wunderground.com/stickers/ >:

<span style="display: block !important; width: 180px; text-align: center; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=zmw:77058.1.99999&bannertypeclick=wu_bluestripes" title="Houston, Texas Weather Forecast" target="_blank"><img src="http://weathersticker.wunderground.com/weathersticker/cgi-bin/banner/ban/wxBanner?bannertype=wu_bluestripes&airportcode=KEFD&ForcedCity=Houston&ForcedState=TX&zip=77058&language=EN" alt="Find more about Weather in Houston, TX" width="160" /></a><br><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=zmw:77058.1.99999&bannertypeclick=wu_bluestripes" title="Get latest Weather Forecast updates" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px" target="_blank">Click for weather forecast</a></span>

Fun stuff.

Mr. K

That's a cool little addition.

Hi Carabas;

It looks like I can do things on the pages, but I don't have any control over how the rest of it works. And I don't think that other people can post anything except in the little "What visitors had to say" side box. Well you get what you pay for.

Mr. K

OK;

I figured out that to read, or make comments on my Blog on my web-site, you have to click on the Title of the Blog post.

Try it.

That's a good thing.

Mr. K

Have you considered an option of using an independent open source CMS like, Joomla! or Wordpress. They have a lot of plugins to adjust the functionality of your site and easily customizable.

On the other hand maybe your host has limited functionality.

Hi RYUchan;

I got Note Tab Light to try and work with my Website, but I think the main problem is that my Host has Limited Functionality.

I can add some HTML code to a box for HTML, when I write something in the editor, but some of it doesn't work, like the Code for something posted as code in a website I wanted to try. Maybe I just need to look at that code and change some bracket to make it a functional block of code. It works in the editor, but when I post it, it disappears.

I am learning some HTML code, but I don't have a place to add it for anything other than the post editor window, no place to change the site itself.

To get a website of my own that I can actually build, I will ether have to pay for it, or use one of the free host things, but I am not sure about that kind of thing.

I use Firefox as my Browser, and it has some web-builder functions, but it doesn't tell me how to add it to my site.

Mr. K

If you need a discount on a regular host, I could probably get you $97-ish off of hosting from DreamHost for the first year.

Hi Ygfbv;

Thanks, but I would not want to pay for site Hosting, that I may not want to keep going. It is something I am interested in, but not enough to start another drain on my budget.

Maybe someday, but for now, I am a member of 3 different sites that I can post in, and the people are all very nice; BSS, Wormhole, and DC.

At some point I may learn enough to be a member that can help the site work, or look better, but for now, I am no Web-Master.

[move]Mr. K, Your non webbing expert friend.[/move]

PS, I found a bit of HTML code to make something move in a post, but it doesn't work here. [move] say something here[/move]

You need to learn HTML which is easy and CSS which is also easy for the basics of site making.

Can you list your extentions you are using in Mozilla? Maybe I'll found something useful for myself

I think you already have a firebug extention. It's a god send to any web developer.

OK RYUchan;

As I say, I am a Newbie. What is, or how do I look at "extensions", and Mozolla is, I think, part of, or the developer of Firefox. What is "Firebug"? CSS?

See, I am a newbie... Definitely a Newbie.

Mr. K

I guess I got a little carried away, sorry

Addon for Mozilla Firefox browser is third party plugin, with a certain function.

Firebug is a brilliant addon that lets you analyze any part of a webpage and see its HTML/CSS code and its parameters. For instance I wanna know what font, is used on this forum board in user names, I just right click on my name for example, and click analyze with firebug. I see that the font is Arial.
This is a link to firebug addon

As for the CSS it stands for cascading style sheet. It's a language that goes hand in hand with HTML and used for site looks and formatting I think of it as the next step after you learned a bit of HTML. I don't know if this forum is the best place to talk about it, maybe it's better to talk through steam for instance Anyway here is a very good site, I use when I forget about something, or wanna learn about HTML or CSS a bit deeper. http://www.w3schools.com/ what great about it is that you can try any example that is given for yourself in their online editor

RYUchan, you may talk about most anything here. Who knows someone else may find it interesting or of value. The more people talk about things the more I learn.

To get you a quick picture of what CSS is - lets take a pick into bit of a code you posted above

<span style="display: block !important; width: 180px; text-align: center; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=zmw:77058.1.99999&bannertypeclick=wu_bluestripes" title="Houston, Texas Weather Forecast" target="_blank"></span>

Imagine you have 15 HTML pages and you need them to have the same style: text-align in the center, font sans-serif and font size 12px. If you use styling in HTML language ALL of your 15 pages would have to have this chunk of code.

However you can set in your HTML page a connection to CSS file with the same styling.
myhtmlfile.html
<html>

<head>

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mypath/mycssfile.css">

</head>
<body>

<span class="style1""><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=zmw:77058.1.99999&bannertypeclick=wu_bluestripes" title="Houston, Texas Weather Forecast" target="_blank"></span>

</body>
</html>
and CSS file would look like

mycssfile.css


style1
{
font: 12 sans-serif;
width: 180px;
display:block !important;
text-align: center;
}

Now you have all your 15 HTML pages styled in the way you wanted but without lots of code inside every page.


All in all CSS gives you flexibility in formatting and styling multiple pages. CSS helps clearing HTML of redundant code chunks. But before diving into CSS I advise you to learn HTML a bit.

What I understood about HTML - it is a language of tags and that 20% of tags do 80% of the job, other tags are just exotic and rare, so you don't have to learn them all.

Hi RYUchan;

I will check out your links and see what I can learn.

The problem now is that I am on a different computer, and it would be inconvenient to look now. This Lap-Top is an old one that my daughter Kim bought with her own money back in high school. it was old when she got it, and the Win Vista OS is "Not Genuine". I need to reload the original OS, Win XP, if I could find the old disks.

I do have a question; In showing HTML code, do you have to change the brackets to keep the codes visible? [normal bracket], {non-functional Bracket}

Fun stuff computers, and the languages they speak.

Mr. K

@Mr. K

What do you mean by showing HTML code? You mean make it visible on your page, I don't see a reason for that. The only brackets for HTML are <opening> </closing> that's all. As for the {these} I've showed above these are CSS only.

However I think I just don't understand you

And yes simple languages are fun to dive in. The most interesting thing I did was diving into the source code of a program written in C++. I don't know the language and trying for hours to make changes then compiling, disassembling, trying to change again, and so on was quite entertaining. I succeeded in the end but it took way to much time

Thanks RYUchan;

I don't know much HTML, and no CSS or any C++.

The Brackets Are a little confusing, sometimes I see some kind of code, and I am thinking that the brackets, have been changed to deactivate the code so someone can talk about the code, without the code being active. I need to learn more about what brackets are used by what programing language.

Fun stuff, but it will take some time for me to figure it out.

Mr. K

To deactivate the code in a working file is a special symbol and is called comment symbols or comments.
In HTML there is a comment tag:

<!-- this text won't be used by a browser -->

in CSS it looks like this

/*this text won't be used by a program*/

Every PC language has its own comment syntax it helps a lot to put your own marks in a code using comments. To be able to navigate through the whole code easily.

Thanks RYUchan;

[move]code like this move code...[/move]
It is non-functional on this site, but for something that did work, I would need to show it as:
<move>code like this move code...</move>
/ for CSS/
OK, I will remember that. I may see some code like that, and try changing the brackets, to see what happens.

Mr. K

Hi Y'all;

OK, I have been looking at some Similes, and I am going to try and post a few here.

An Oblivion Gate!

Getting sucked into a Wormhole!

It WORKS!!!

OK, now to Test; I am now going to close the Wormhole Site, that I grabbed the Similes from and see if they still work...

Stand by....

HOT DOG!!! I made it work in a Post here.

If anybody knows how to copy the Simileys and add them to this site's Simileys, please do, and tell me how to do it. Looks like fun.

I just right clicked on the image in the selector for the Wormhole site, and copied the image location, and posted them here as images.

Mr. K

PS: I will have to look at this post after closing my Browser to see if it stays.
EDIT: Yep, it works. Now all I got to figure out is how to add them to the BSS Emoticons pull-down.

OK, I found one for a TEXAS Flag, at Smilies World of Smilies.com. I really want one that waves in the wind.

Mr. K,
I think Carabas is the only one who can do smileys. If you can find a Texas flag ask him to put it up.

We would probably need permission from Wormhole to put up any of their smileys. Some are unique I think. At the least it would be a courtesy.

Hi Nakia;

Permission, that would be good. I was thinking it would be OK, to post an example, with out actually adding it to this site.

OK, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

Hi Carabas, would you like to add a few Emoticons? I, or you, could ask over at the Wormhole, for the 2 or 3 that look like something they made there. And if I find one at some random Smiley Site, I could post it and ask you to add it.

OK, This is not a big project I want, but it would be fun...

Mr. K