I am not up to snuff with the latest in web page design and programming. I know how to create a simple web page and have always been using and still use Dreamweaver.

AFAIK, HTML is alive and well. They have left me behind when I was still programming with frames.
You will have to brush up on W3 containers, classes, CSS, PHP and SQL.

My advice would be to learn from the experts. Go to many web design sites and see what they say, for example,

https://websitesetup.org/

Hi,

Do you have to pay for that or does it come free too?

 

Hi,

Do you have to pay for that or does it come free too?

Pay for what?

 

Websites are fairly cheap. You buy a domain and renew it every few years. I think it ends up being $10/yr or so. Just a rough estimate. Then you pay a host such as Godaddy to serve up your site. That costs a similar amount. An SSL certificate is an expensive add-on at Godaddy, maybe $60. I got mine from a third party for maybe $20. (I can verify these numbers if you care.)

And then you’re right back to feeding the beast - trying to deliver content in an attractive way.

 

The problem is that the modern web is a fast-moving target. It used to be that most people accessed the web through one of two standard browsers running on desktop computers with a small range of screen sizes. We expected web pages to be largely static, with simple hyperlink navigation. A modest investment in learning the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) was all you needed to make your guests happy.

Today, people expect web applications that look good on any device they might have, from 4" smartphones to 120" TVs. To this end, the stack has grown to include various presentation, client-side scripting, and framework middleware layers, all in the name of abstracting away the many ugly details of making a modern website. If you want something slick, you're going to have to either learn it all yourself or pay for someone who has. The real problem, however, is that the technologies in each of these layers is constantly changing. That means maintenance must be regularly performed.

For example, suppose you're paying for managed hosting. As part of their security policies, they update the server's OS, which introduces a new version of PHP that has deprecated several functions that are littered throughout your code base. Your website stops working unexpectedly, and now you have to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it (or pay someone to do it). You might be surprised how often this kind of thing happens. Or, imagine you wake up to an email from your provider stating that your website has been detected as being hacked and is shutdown until the situation is resolved. Turns out the kid you paid to do your website inadvertently introduced several SQL-injection holes.

Unless you're willing to dedicate a significant amount of time and resources to this project, I'd avoid trying to develop your own modern site. Alternatively, you could use one of the template "instant website" services and let them worry about the management. This greatly reduces your commitment, at the expense of being reliant on the company (who may or may not be in the website hosting business in 5 years).

If you want more control, but not a giant maintenance commitment, you could use a managed hosting service and do a simple, old school LAMP-type website. Just HTML and content. It won't look slick, but it will work on every device for a long time to come. Take regular backups, and if your hosting service ever goes tango-uniform, you can easily upload the site to a new service.

 

+1

A lot has to do with the functionality of the website and how slick you want it to be.

My #1 rule - Keep it simple. Make your opening page as simple as possible but still functional and attractive. Make sure the opening page loads FAST. Stay away from fancy gimmicks, animated gifs, videos, and most of all, a black background.

 

Pay for what?

Hi,

Dreamweaver.

Also while on this, is there better software like that where you do have to pay for it but offers a ton of benefits?

 

Websites are fairly cheap. You buy a domain and renew it every few years. I think it ends up being $10/yr or so. Just a rough estimate. Then you pay a host such as Godaddy to serve up your site. That costs a similar amount. An SSL certificate is an expensive add-on at Godaddy, maybe $60. I got mine from a third party for maybe $20. (I can verify these numbers if you care.)

And then you’re right back to feeding the beast - trying to deliver content in an attractive way.

Hi and thanks,

I am not sure yet if there will be anything to 'pay' for on the site.
Is that 20 or 60 dollars a one time only fee or monthly or yearly?

 

The problem is that the modern web is a fast-moving target. It used to be that most people accessed the web through one of two standard browsers running on desktop computers with a small range of screen sizes. We expected web pages to be largely static, with simple hyperlink navigation. A modest investment in learning the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) was all you needed to make your guests happy.

Today, people expect web applications that look good on any device they might have, from 4" smartphones to 120" TVs. To this end, the stack has grown to include various presentation, client-side scripting, and framework middleware layers, all in the name of abstracting away the many ugly details of making a modern website. If you want something slick, you're going to have to either learn it all yourself or pay for someone who has. The real problem, however, is that the technologies in each of these layers is constantly changing. That means maintenance must be regularly performed.

For example, suppose you're paying for managed hosting. As part of their security policies, they update the server's OS, which introduces a new version of PHP that has deprecated several functions that are littered throughout your code base. Your website stops working unexpectedly, and now you have to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it (or pay someone to do it). You might be surprised how often this kind of thing happens. Or, imagine you wake up to an email from your provider stating that your website has been detected as being hacked and is shutdown until the situation is resolved. Turns out the kid you paid to do your website inadvertently introduced several SQL-injection holes.

Unless you're willing to dedicate a significant amount of time and resources to this project, I'd avoid trying to develop your own modern site. Alternatively, you could use one of the template "instant website" services and let them worry about the management. This greatly reduces your commitment, at the expense of being reliant on the company (who may or may not be in the website hosting business in 5 years).

If you want more control, but not a giant maintenance commitment, you could use a managed hosting service and do a simple, old school LAMP-type website. Just HTML and content. It won't look slick, but it will work on every device for a long time to come. Take regular backups, and if your hosting service ever goes tango-uniform, you can easily upload the site to a new service.

Hi,

That sounds like really good advice, thanks a lot.

Yeah it is funny that i never got into this and i've been on the web since maybe 1998 or something like that.
Well, i had that AOL website but the jerks discontinued AOL 'homepage' or whatever they called it. Lucky i kept all the content on the local computer HD or i would have lost it all.

 

+1

A lot has to do with the functionality of the website and how slick you want it to be.

My #1 rule - Keep it simple. Make your opening page as simple as possible but still functional and attractive. Make sure the opening page loads FAST. Stay away from fancy gimmicks, animated gifs, videos, and most of all, a black background.

Hi,

Thanks. Why no black background?

 

Hi,

Dreamweaver.

Also while on this, is there better software like that where you do have to pay for it but offers a ton of benefits?

Dreamweaver is the Cadillac and is expensive in my view. It's for professionals and is likely overly featured and complex for a casual user. Think Photoshop versus the many photo editing apps. If money is no object, it's fine. You could buy it and be sure it's fully featured and will put you in good company.

If you search around you'll find there are free apps, expensive apps like Dreamweaver, and a range in between that includes the one I use (RapidWeaver). Read the reviews and look for comments about what any particular program DOESN'T do. That's what can cause frustration if you're chugging along and discover some missing functionality that holds you up. You definitely want one that automates the linking between pages at your site. I never edit links anymore but I remember in the old days having to manually verify all the links on every page. Don't go there! You also want an app that makes it easy to preview your work. You don't want to have to upload to your site and then load the page in your browser, all just to take a look at the page you're working on. You'll have to do some of that anyway, but your website creation software should do a decent job of it while you're working. Oh, and as was mentioned, you want modern templates that will format your site for desktop and mobile platforms automatically for you. Most web access is mobile these days and you can't just develop for your desktop and call it a day.

I said it before but I'll say it again. You could avoid the traditional website altogether. Imagine serving up your content in a forum environment like this one. (A web host such as Godaddy offers these sorts of tools ready to go, no programming needed.) You could classify the content into various topic headings and have a forum for each heading just as we see here. You could load in the content into different posts, or several per post, or whatever. Future changes to the forum software shouldn't mess up the content, which would be available for years with almost no maintenance on your part.

 

Hi and thanks,

I am not sure yet if there will be anything to 'pay' for on the site.
Is that 20 or 60 dollars a one time only fee or monthly or yearly?

Every value I noted was annual.

And I see my memory is crap. I think I've heard that before? Not sure.

The last time I paid a Godaddy bill, domain registration renewal was $21 for two years and hosting was $137 for two years. Both are discounted for payment in advance for the 2-yr period. My SSL certificate was $14 for two years.

 

Could the songs be uploaded to Youtube? Not sure how to tag them (if at all) to get a greater exposition but maybe worth exploring. Eventually I would search also what is the best to protect their copy rights prior uploading them.

 

Every value I noted was annual.

And I see my memory is crap. I think I've heard that before? Not sure.

The last time I paid a Godaddy bill, domain registration renewal was $21 for two years and hosting was $137 for two years. Both are discounted for payment in advance for the 2-yr period. My SSL certificate was $14 for two years.

Hi,

That doesnt sound too bad really.

 

Could the songs be uploaded to Youtube? Not sure how to tag them (if at all) to get a greater exposition but maybe worth exploring. Eventually I would search also what is the best to protect their copy rights prior uploading them.

Hi,

Well some of them actually are already, but i think this is supposed to be a dedicated web site just to them alone.
But maybe that's the only way. I wonder how long Youtube will be in existence now too.

 

You can be guaranteed that none of the current web services will be the same or even in existence 100 years from now.

For example, what was the lifespan of MS DOS, or WIN XP?

 

You can be guaranteed that none of the current web services will be the same or even in existence 100 years from now.

For example, what was the lifespan of MS DOS, or WIN XP?

Hi,
Yeah it's amazing to think back on that stuff and what changed. Where did it all go.
I had a great time with MS DOS 5.0, and i had the Spanish version because i got it at a huge discount back then
It was fun though.