Website "Development" Question?

Well, I'm sure this is the wrong place for this post (though I know next to nothing about technology [which is why I am here], so I'll just run it up the old flag-pole ...)

I have ("own" ... though lease or rent I think is more accurate) several domain names. Have had them one of them for almost two years, and am getting close (I "think") to attempting to use it for what I got it for.

I am looking to try to develop at least one of these names as an website, but the "Host" (if that is the correct terminology), named "Hostmonster" has proven (for me) impossible to work with (though in fairness, I have only "attempted" SEVERAL times to get ANYTHING to "go onto" my "site" ... "anything"!).

I had read somewhere that Hostmonster was 'ok' as a Host (or server - or whatever?), but that they were hard for NON-Techie people to "work with". That has been my experience. And the one time that I called their tech-support (although that should be MY tech-support now - wouldn't it??). I got a "guy", who, while nice enough, and seemingly patient, was not at all any help in getting me up & running there. The "answers" I got were such as: "I don't know why it does that", and, "I'm not really sure why it does that" ...

So, my question(s) is (are): WHAT IN THE NAME OF JAMES BROWN AM I DOIN' HERE (me trying to "develop" - if that's the correct term - a website)??? Has anyone heard of this Hostmonster? Has anyone dealt with them? I am not a 'techie" (not by any stretch of the imagination) - I would simply like to have a website that works (rather than seeing the same "Under Construction" message that I've seen for two years).

Thanks in advanzzzzzzz
g ...

 

Well, first, lets make sure we know that the actual building/making of the website(which is really a collection of certain files, which I'll explain later) is done independant of the host.

The host owns and maintains a server. When you pay a hosting company to host your website, you are basically renting/leasing space on their servers hard drive, and you are renting/leasing a portion of their internet connection to be used for people to access those files(which make up the website).

Now, I think most hosting companies use CPanel. I am not familiar with Hostmonster, so I don't know if they do or not. If they do, watching some videos on youtube about cpanel would probably help a little just so that it isn't completely foreign. Really though, the only part you absolutely HAVE to know, is how to upload files, which you could actually do from within a program on your own computer, but that's beside the point... Anyway.

Now there are plenty of technologies and languages out there to use to create web pages, but I'll stick with the basics. The actual web page is an html document. That is, it's a file with a .html extension (or .htm). They are basically just plain text documents saved with an html extension. In them, you write the html code. Sounds complicated, but it's not really that bad. HTML is a markup language, so, basically, you just use html tags to tell the browser (whatever program you use to surf the web) how to display stuff.

Anyway, you'll want to know at least the basics of html.

Now, I'm gonna stop there before I spend like 45 minutes writing out a huge long post and I'm gonna ask questions..

First, am I correct in assuming that you are wanting help with the "whole shebang"? Start to finish? Designing the website, developing the website, uploading it, maintaining it, everything?

Second, what do you currently know? Do you know about html? Css? Cpanel? etc.

Based on your post I'd assume not, but I'm not trying to be disrespectful and I hope you don't take it that way if I tell you something you already know.

Hope I helped/can help more.

 

Great! Thanks again (very much), and I look forward to receiving an education here!

 

Ok, cool.

First, try to become familiar with html. Even if you don't "hand code" your website, knowing at least the basics of html will, in my opinion, greatly help you in your understand of the process, and will help you troubleshoot some problems if you need to. Here is the website that I got started with. The link goes to a sort of "starter page"
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/article.php/3478141

Hopefully that article and maybe others on the site will help you get kind of a foundation for html.

Now, at least basically, most websites are just html documents. You have the "home" page, which is named index.html, which loads when someone types in your domain name. In that html document, you will, with html tags and text, create links and such to other pages. You can also create links and relationships with other files, like css files or images. For instance, if you wanted to put a picture on the web page, you would use the appropriate html tags (or in the case of an image, just tag).

If you have a basic understand of a computers file structure, then making links should come fairly easy. Of course, if you only have a few files and pages, then it wouldn't be bad to just have everything in the same folder/directory. In that case, the "href" to an image would simply be the image's filename. All of this will make more sense as you learn the basics of html, though.

Anyway, we can go more in-depth on that later, but lets say you get the website made. So, you now have all of the files you need for your website in some folder on your computer. Say, you have a few html files, and some pictures/images. Now, since you already have your domain name and hosting company, you, for the most part, just need to upload all of the files.

So, you will want to log into cpanel and find file manager. Then you can upload everything into the public_html folder. After that, assuming that you have the domain name is set up with the hosting company right, it should be up!

And that's it in a nutshell. Also, there are a lot of template html documents out there that you can use. You could also use a WYSIWYG editor, but I wouldn't. Especially one like Dreamweaver, it's just so expensive... And after hand coding website... I don't really like Dreamweaver to be honest. But anyway... Point being, once you kind of have a general idea of how it works, you can go to some place like http://www.oswd.org/ and find a free template to use, if you would like to.

 

Great! And thanks again. I have already peeked at both links you sent to me, and will dive into the HTML info in earnest here shortly (today).

I plan to look exclusively at the HTML info today, and do exactly as recommended on the site: "take the Primers one at a time over seven days". Unfortunately it may not be seven "consecutive" days for me though. I have a good bit of traveling to do this week, and I am somewhat limited (by blocks of time) by some health/medical issues. As well, it's just simply a busy time of year to get much much extra-curricular work done ...

Thank you again very much. I will keep you advised as to my progress. Oh, as far as the "Templates" - that might be a great idea to get started, and I might even use one initially on the site(s), but I am really pretty much "set" (?) on having custom (my own) designs, art, graphics, etc. That is, at least I "think" that I am (?!?) - lol ....

Thank again,
Glenn ...