The Internet Sucks!!!!!!

[NYSEGuy]

Ok, I secured a couple of names and got a host, bought dreamweaver, and got a book on building webpages, read and re read the tutorials, and can't get anything going to save my life!!! It seems to me like I'm a step or two behind where the tutorials start out.

Where did you guys go, or what did you guys do to get the basics of building webpages down? After 3 hours of this, I'm about to snap |pcsucks| How much trial and error did you guys go through before you got your first page up, not neccesarily adult page either.

Thanks,

Ed

[HC-Majick]

heres a great resource site:

http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/

i would recommend learning to code a basic website using only notepad or any text editor before jumping into dreamweaver.

[NYSEGuy]

Thanks for the reply. I've gotten a gay "Hi, I'm Ed and from Orlando" type of template down with a picture and some background color going, but that's the extent of it. I guess I just need to be more patient with it :)

[Greenie]

It may sound stupid, but draw the site on paper 1st, then go & build it - I've done that before when I had a mental block & it helped to get away from the computer & just have a few pieces of paper & a pencil :)

[Ramster]

It just takes time to work it out.

I also wanted to say nice avatar. ;)

[T Pat]

Wow I got mesmerized by your Avitar

NYSEGuy I think you need to get at least basic html down first. You will find that many of the old timers use nothing but notepad and code everything by hand

webmonkey is an excellent site for that I go there often for reference.

I would also recomend that you right click and view source on a bunch of free sites and see how they did it|rasta|

[twintone]

It takes time to learn how to build a decent site. This is kind of a stupid cliché, but its kind of like riding a bike. You are going to fall down a few times before you get the hang of it.. it literally took me years to start making decent pages.. its kind of an art in a way.

Keep your pages you make now in a safe place.. then go back and look at them 3 years from now.. you will laugh at how much you have improved..

[T Pat]

Originally posted by twintone t takes time to learn how to build a decent site. This is kind of a stupid cliché, but


Keep your pages you make now in a safe place.. then go back and look at them 3 years from now.. you will laugh at how much you have improved..
|jester| I can look back 3 months and see a big improvement

[NYSEGuy]

Thanks for the encouragement guys! I'll definately bookmark and read that webmonkey site you gave me... I look forward to joining the ranks of you "old timers" |shake|

[amadman]

Originally posted by NYSEGuy
Thanks for the reply. I've gotten a gay "Hi, I'm Ed and from Orlando" type of template down with a picture and some background color going, but that's the extent of it. I guess I just need to be more patient with it :)

It gets easyer but does take some time. Believe it or not you have alot of it already. Just keep playing with it. :)

[Useless Warrior]

HTML is like jerking off. Once you discover how simple it is, you'll wonder why were'nt doing it all along. I learned the basics of HTML using an ebay tutorial on how to spruce up one's auction listings. From then on, whenever I hit a page that had a cool structure or effect, I'd view the source and see how the hell they did that.

[Alphawolf]

I learned a lot on basic design from:

http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/index.asp

Actually, I got her books a couple years ago.

But I found the online movie library very cool to learn things as I needed them.

The movies are easier to absorb than the books.

You are learning quite a bit at once.

The 1st site may seem to take years. The more you do the easier and quicker it gets.

There's no way around the general learning curve. One step at a time and all that....

|thumb

[MadMax]

I started out of the gate with Dreamweaver 2.0, and the most difficult thing about "WYSIWYG" (what you see is what you get) editors like Dreamweaver is that what you see isn't exactly what you get...especially when using things like CSS. You've got to teach your brain to translate what you see on the DW editing page into what the page will actually look like, and preview A LOT. I think you can easily start out with dreamweaver, but it can be frustrating since you need a decent amount of familiarity with the program to use it effectively. I do everything in DW with the "design and code" view so I get instant previews of my code, so I hand code some and use DW for creating tables, inserting images, etc. becasue it saves me time avoiding hand coding image paths, etc.

The biggest thing is not to get frustrated. Your first few pages will look like shit...deal with it. Everyone's first few pages looked like shit. You've just got to jump in and keep trying, and all the advice in this thread has been good advice. I've learned a lot from Webmonkey.

[NYSEGuy]

Thanks guys!