Unit Website

[Chief2009]

I am going to be making a unit website, problem is I have no idea what I need to do so.

Basically I need a crash course in building a website.

Any help would be great.
Thanks,

DN

[Eclipse]

http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/columns/abcs_of_building_web_sites.html

[Pylon]

My recommendation:  Leave as much of the explanation what CAP is and does to National (link to their pages).  They'll always have the most up-to-date and most accurate information.  Saves you some work, too.

Essential unit website components, in my opinion: Upcoming events, News & Photos, Staff Directory/Contact Information, How to Join/Where We Meet. 

A squadron website I just happen to like:  www.syracusecap.org

[notaNCO forever]

I'd recommend seeing if anyone in your unit has experience making websites or have at least taken a class in it. You can also have a brainstorming session with other people from your unit to get ideas.

[isuhawkeye]

many clubs are going to blog style web sites.  for minimal cost Blogger, or Type pad web sites can be build and customized.

[PhoenixRisen]

many clubs are going to blog style web sites.  for minimal cost Blogger, or Type pad web sites can be build and customized.

For squadron websites, I personally don't care for the blog style.  That's what my former squadron did.  (On the flip-side, though - while I still don't care for blog style squadron sites - their previous one was heavily, heavily in need of upgrading.)

Here's the site, if you care to take a look:  http://sq144.cawg.cap.gov

[bobthebuilder]

WordPress is a decent alternative. You can either use it on your own webserver or set one up at wordpress.com.

[A.Member]

I just redesigned our squadron website:  www.mncap.org/viking

It went live at 0300 this morning. 

By all accounts, I'm a web development novice.  The site was created using FrontPage 2003 (I have a free copy and free will always trump $200+ for you Dreamweaver snobs  ).  There is still some code cleanup to do, I need to add content to the News and Gallery pages, and one of my pet peeves is that I'd like to figure out how to center the pages within a browser.  Being newly deployed, there is still more testing to do, which is part of the reason I posted it here.  I'd rather have CAP members critique early on before it has a ton of exposure.  You all have a much broader set of browser configurations and such - so consider yourselves testers.   As such, I'm open to any constructive criticism, as well as any development tips from those with more experience.

As to the OP, if you're using FrontPage 2003 to create your site, I recommend stopping at your local library and picking up "FrontPage 2003 The Missing Manual".  I relied on it almost exclusively...and it clued me in on things to look for that weren't covered in the book.  You can also find this on-line in electronic format as well:  The Missing Manual - electronic version

For comparison sake, here is a screen shot of our old Home page (you'd have to scroll down to get to links but you get the idea):

[Nathan]

The site was created using FrontPage 2003 (I have a free copy and free will always trump $200+ for you Dreamweaver snobs  )

Dreamweaver? Ha! I use Textpad!

[A.Member]

The site was created using FrontPage 2003 (I have a free copy and free will always trump $200+ for you Dreamweaver snobs  )

Dreamweaver? Ha! I use Textpad!

WYSIWYG is the current extent of my "skills"! 

[dwb]

I also use TextPad (and Paint.NET for graphics): http://cny.nywg.cap.gov

Allow me to make a recommendation to Chief2009: Make a non-CAP web site first.  The first web site anyone makes is always heinous.

I made my first web site on GeoCities in 1996, back when there was a thing called GeoCities.  It looked terrible, but at the time, I thought I was the coolest cat in the alley.  I wrote a web page.  Using HTML.  With my awesome AOL 2.0 for Mac dialup connection.

Learn how to make web sites first, then, when you don't suck quite so bad at it, offer to do one for CAP.

[Pumbaa]

Dan is right on.... Don't make CAP your first website...

I use CMS to handle my unit and group websites.  My news can be scheduled to go on and off when I want thus never having old outdated news other than the list in the archive.

I love working with MySQL and Linux.

South Central NY Group

[pixelwonk]

I made my first web site on GeoCities in 1996, back when there was a thing called GeoCities.  It looked terrible, but at the time, I thought I was the coolest cat in the alley.  I wrote a web page.  Using HTML.  With my awesome AOL 2.0 for Mac dialup connection.

Geocities FTW! 
"Hey, I made a website!  It's at http:// www.geocities.com /Area51/Hangar/lair/dusty_corner/nook/cranny/1831!"
Seriously, the geocities sites I've made opened the sluices open up at both ends.
Never did red on black /black on red look so cool!  Woo!


edited fake url

[N Harmon]

The site was created using FrontPage 2003 (I have a free copy and free will always trump $200+ for you Dreamweaver snobs  )

Dreamweaver? Ha! I use Textpad!

Textpad? Ha! I use butterflies.... ( http://xkcd.com/378/ )



New web designers would do very good to spend some time checking out Web Pages that Suck .com. There you will find examples of web sites that are REALLY bad, as well as some pointers for evaluating your own projects.

[A.Member]

New web designers would do very good to spend some time checking out Web Pages that Suck .com. There you will find examples of web sites that are REALLY bad, as well as some pointers for evaluating your own projects.

And with that, the "Welcome to..." has been removed! 

[Rotorhead]

Front Page is not your best option to build websites; Microsoft adds lots of "garbage code" to the HTML.

There are several other options for free or cheap web creation software on the internet.

[Eeyore]

I don't know of any WYSIWYG editor that doesn't add extra garbage code, but usually looks pretty if you aren't one of those coding types.

[SarDragon]

With Frontpage, you have NO control over the extra code. With something like Dreamweaver, you can adjust the settings to provide just basic HTML, all the way up to CSS, PHP, ASP, etc. Files converted from M$ Word to HTML are even worse for excess code. Be afwaid, vewy, vewy afwaid.

[JAFO78]

Anyone know anything about homestead.com? A gentleman I know of uses them for his catering business. I don't have contact with him any more so I can't ask him.

They are associated with Intuit companies.

[A.Member]

With Frontpage, you have NO control over the extra code. With something like Dreamweaver, you can adjust the settings to provide just basic HTML, all the way up to CSS, PHP, ASP, etc. Files converted from M$ Word to HTML are even worse for excess code. Be afwaid, vewy, vewy afwaid.

That's not exactly true.  I'd argue that the code produced from FrontPage is as good as the developer!  In my case, not particularly clean code but effective enough (and getting better as I learn).  In my case, you get what you pay for . 

If someone takes the time to actually learn the tool, it can be pretty good.   Problem is that many don't.  After all, the whole point of WYSIWYG is to just get something out there.  As compared to Dreamweaver, I found the FrontPage interface to be much more flexible and accommodating to new users.  As admo1 pointed out, a person can create crappy code using any of these tools as well.  It's only been a week and a half since I jumped in but I continue to learn from the various mistakes I made.  As I become more proficient and leverage CSS, the code will improve.  I'd be curious to see how Expressions works...but not curious enough to pay for it .

[dwb]

The only thing about apps like FrontPage is that the typical FrontPage user doesn't really understand what's going on underneath the interface.

FrontPage provides what we programmer weenies call an abstraction.  FrontPage allows you to pretend that making a web page is just like making a Word document, and it does all sorts of clever things to maintain that illusion.  Like, if you drag-and-drop an image onto the page designer, it makes a copy of that image within the web site's directory structure.

The problem here is that abstractions leak.  The underlying HTML code may not render correctly in a lot of web browsers, or you may do something that messes up the layout in FrontPage, and have no idea how to fix it, because the abstraction is imperfect.

That's why I always advocate making at least your first couple of web sites by learning the HTML markup syntax and writing the web pages yourself in a plain text editor.  At the very least, you'll understand what's going on under the covers, so if you use FrontPage and it springs a leak, you'll know how to plug it.

Anyone know anything about homestead.com?

They're another free web hosting site.  The biggest drawback to those types of sites is that they'll insert advertisements in your web pages.

[A.Member]

The only thing about apps like FrontPage is that the typical FrontPage user doesn't really understand what's going on underneath the interface.

I think an issue that's just as problematic is not understanding the differences in how browsers render pages.   While cleaning up code certainly minimizes such issues, it doesn't necessarily eliminate them.  For example, as I've learned, you can create perfect code but if you use .png files for images, you'll still have issues with how they display on IE versions 6.0 and prior.  Other considerations include your audience's screen resolution (800x600, 1080x800, etc.), ADA compliance (did you use tables?  are they readable?), etc.

So, a "developer" (and I use that term loosely in my case) at some point will want/need to understand these things (and I don't claim to know them well), regardless of their tool.   They also need to realize that standards are constantly changing.  The point is, that while coding is important, understanding the audience and their tools is equally important. 

[CAPPAO]

The Southeast Region Web site is one of the best I've seen:

http://www.sercap.us/

In fact, 3 of the 6 Wings in SER have now adopted the same format:

http://new.flwg.gov

http://mswg.us/

http://www.prwg.us/

But for a real treat, check out the SER Twitter page and sign up!

http://twitter.com/SERCAP

[Hoorah]

Well mys suggestion is that there are free websites out there you have to look for them. On GLR's website at the bottom gives a way to ,make a website.

[Chief2009]

Thanks everybody! Eclipse, that run through is a great help.

DN