Trap17 Website Building Tips For Beginners For a non-technical beginners first site

[Earths Daughter 0]

Now you've got your Xisto free hosting account, what do you do with it?


This is not a tutorial on how to use everything available on Xisto free hosting accounts. This is just a brief overview to give you an idea on where to start. I am not an extremely technical person myself, I know a little bit of HTML and CSS, and that's about it. So this is written for a non-technical beginner who knows little or nothing about building websites.


****************************************************************************************

I have not used any of the features I mention below, except Drupal, one of the CMS's from #9 below. This is just from studying on these things online. Hopefully, some of the people that have used specific features will add their experiences with them.

****************************************************************************************


1) If you want a chat site, there are a couple of pre-installed chat scripts you can use: PhpMyChat Room and Java/CGI Chat Room. Of course, finding enough people to come and use your chat room is not going to be easy.


For most other sites you can check out the options available in Fantastico.

2) It has a couple of forums available if you want a forum: phpBB2 and SMF. You can find them listed under "Discussion Boards".


3) If you want to do a photo or image gallery, it has a few of those: 4Images Gallery, Coppermine Photo Gallery and Gallery.


4) If you want to do a wiki, it has a couple of those: TikiWiki and PhpWiki. A wiki is a site where somebody makes a post on a topic and visitors can change it. Or a visitor can make up a new topic. The site is built by whoever happens to drop by and feels like adding something. You can require visitors to register to post on the wiki first. It's basically a way of building a knowledge base on one or more topics. The biggest wiki is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.


5) Under "Other" scripts, there are scripts for a Classified Ads site, a Realty site, and an auction site, if you want to one of those.


6) If you want to do a blog, there are several of those: b2evolution, Nucleus, pMachine Free, WordPress. A blog is an online journal. You post whatever you want to say, and other people can comment on it. You can store your older posts in an archive area, and also post links to interesting or useful sites on a side menu. Some people post their own poetry or life experiences, some use it as a diary viewable by the public. A lot of blogs choose one or more topics to write about, such as news, sports, a fan site, computer programming or web design. Making a blog is a way to have a simple website where you chat at anyone that reads it, and share your favorite website links, poetry, discussions on your favorite band, or whatever.


7) There are a couple of site builder programs you can use with Fantastico, too: Soholaunch Pro Edition and Templates Express. With Templates express, you choose a template, modify it if desired with CSS (not too technical for a reasonably smart person to learn), and build a website with it. With Soholaunch Pro, you can build a website by just dragging and dropping things around until you like the result. Soholaunch Pro sounds like the easiest and fastest way for a non-technical beginner to get a website up and running.


8) You can also use Frontpage to build a website if you have it. It's a program to make websites that you will have to pay for. Xisto is compatible with Frontpage extensions.


9) Then there are the Content Management Systems (CMS's). Fantastico has a lot of those. Basically, a CMS is a script that runs a website, keeping content organized, and making it easy for authorized users to add new content to the website. The CMS takes care of the more technical stuff in the background, leaving users free to just add content. CMS's were invented by technical people for non-technical people to be able to add things easily to their websites. Fantastico will install a CMS for you, so you don't have to be a techie to do the install.

However, once the CMS is installed, it has to be configured and a website set up with it. So you have to be willing to learn how to use the CMS itself. That is normally done by technical people for you if you pay for a custom website to be made and maintained for you. How much technical skill is required for the CMS depends on which script you use. It looks like Joomla is probably the easiest to use, and Drupal is probably the hardest to use of the ones I have researched. It's best if you know some HTML, CSS and maybe some PHP programming, or are willing to learn it.

I have done a post on choosing a CMS elsewhere on the forum, you may find it useful: http://forums.xisto.com/index.php?sho33573&hl=drupal

If you are willing to use one of the default themes provided by the CMS, or can find a nice one that's compatible for that CMS, it will be a lot easier to do a website with it. Your website will look like everyone else's that is using that CMS and theme, however.

I would advise that you should only choose a CMS as a non-technical beginner if you plan on having a site with a large amount of content on it that will be hard to keep track of without a program to do it. Like a big professional website has. They use CMS's. You must also be willing to learn to be more technical, and spend some time studying and experimenting with the CMS before you can build a site with it. It's not a fast and easy way to get a website built. It is a great way to build a website that you expect to expand into a very large professional looking one that you will learn to maintain by yourself, however.

*****************************************************************************************

So the easiest and fastest way to build a basic website with the tools provided by Xisto seems to be Soholaunch Pro Edition (in #7 above), since you can just drag and drop things on the page.


If you want an easier way to do it yourself, you might try downloading a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor program for websites online. You might be able to find one easier to use than Soholaunch Pro. You can just drag and drop things around in the program until you like the result. It turns everything into HTML for you. Then save the page and upload it to your hosting account with FTP. You might be able to find one that will let you be more creative than Soholaunch Pro, but it is a retail program, so probably has more features in it than a free one. Also, some WYSIWYG editors don't write very good HTML code, so your site may not work properly in some browsers. Soholaunch Pro claims that it makes proper HTML.


Another way to get a website done easily would be to go sign up for a free hosting account with another free web host that has a very simple website builder and use it to do your site. Then just copy your webpages made with that and upload them into your Xisto account. There may be some code inserted by the host to display a banner or ad on the page, so you will have to remove that, although it's not hard to do. I'm sure there are a lot of people on the forum that could help you remove an ad if you need help, including myself. You don't have to understand very much HTML to do that. One drawback to this method is the HTML that's automatically generated by a website builder may not be proper HTML, and have trouble displaying in some browsers. Just experiment with it and see how it turns out. The drawback to using quick and easy sitebuilders on most free hosts is that they don't offer you a lot of options to make your website exactly the way you want it. If you just want to build a very simple site quickly, they are the fastest easiest way.

*****************************************************************************************

The obvious question would be, why not just use a free host that has one of these fast and easy sitebuilders for your website instead of Xisto? The problem with actually having your site on one of the big, well-known free hosts like Angelfire or Geocities is they put ads on your website. Very annoying ads that drive off visitors.

Their FTP is often extremely slow or unavailable unless you use it at 2-4 Am. The sitebuilder may be slow because of all the traffic they have to their servers. Your site will load slowly because of all that traffic, too.

They usually don't give you as much storage space or bandwidth as Xisto either. People may try to see your site if it's very popular, and get a message saying you've used up your bandwidth for now, try back later, maybe next week or next month.

Their servers tend to have quite a bit of downtime. Meaning they're not working part of the time, and nobody can get to your site.

And whole websites have been known to just disappear off their servers, so you have to upload a backup copy or start all over.

One of the biggest reasons not to use them:Support sucks.

Remember, you usually get what you pay for. And at Xisto, you do have to pay for your hosting with your time on the forums, so you get more quality hosting for it. They are interested in building a good community and keeping a good reputation as a good host, so they will take more trouble for you. Geocities and others are so big and famous, they don't have to worry about it. They have so many people wanting new free accounts every day, they couldn't care less about any single person or website. They don't even need to worry about getting a bad reputation, they still have a huge amount of people that will use them, they're so well-known.

[mama_soap 0]

You know what, why don't you link to this tutorial from your signature? I am sure the other users around here will find it very useful.For someone who's not a computer geek (I'm quoting from the beginning of your post - I understand that you're not a techie specialist, pardon me if I understand wrongly), this is a very well done tutorial. Thanks for taking the time, I'm sure I'll have to refer back to it sometime!

[Earths Daughter 0]

Thank you. I had not thought about linking to it in my sig, but have done so now. Thanks for the idea. I wasn't really thinking of it as a tutorial. I was thinking of it as more of a basic background info sort of thing. A lot of people don't know what a CMS or Blog or whatever is, and probably just see a bunch of scripts they can install with Fantastico and get confused. This is sort of a pre-emptive FAQ on the most basic level. At least this way they can get an idea of what script they might want to install for what they need on their site.