Hello to all, I have finally completed my html and css classes, I am going to go with host gator, do I need to learn any other programs or anything before proceding Thanks to all.....Debbie

It might be useful to know PHP if you're going to mess around with the iside of CMS.

It may also help if you tell us what you are going to do with your site. What kind of site are you going to build?

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Oh Gosh, I don't even know what PHP or CMS is. I am going with the inflammatory breast cancer site.....mostly informational with one page of selling items...I am going with hostgator. I have made my site,pages pic and everything in code,just wondered if I needed anything else before I start with hostgator ? Is there like an under construction something,where I don't have to "get "it going until I'm ready ? Thanks Debbie

Hi Debbie,

If you are just going to have an informational site then an HTML editor is probably all you need. Or you can code from scratch and use Notepad and put those classes to use right?

CMS stands for content management system and it's a program that manages dynamic sites like blogs or sites that have a lot of user interactivity. WordPress would be an example of a CMS. No need to learn that though if you don't want.

As far as an "under construction page", I've never really understood the need for those. If you think about it, unless you advertise your site, people aren't going to know how to find it when it's new. So why not build it up until you have enough to launch with and don't worry about an under construction page.

So I guess your next step is to decide how you are going to build your site. Are you going to use software like Dreamweaver, Nvu, etc. or are you going to code from scratch?

__________________
Don't put the cart before the horse.
Plan your website, then create it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Don't Discount Amazon's Affiliate Program
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PHP includes are useful, you don't even need to know the actual PHP language. If your server doesn't support PHP (but HostGator probably does) then do SSI includes - saves you from editing one aspect of a page over and over again.

Debbie

From what you say, html and css are all you need to start. In fact a lot of quite excellent sites use nothing more.

It is best to just prepare a few basic pages, perhaps three to five, and put them up. You could have an entry page that describes your site and purpose, an about page that tells who you are, and a resource page (just ideas—you need to decide what based on what you want).

Skip the "under construction" signs. That just says "Go away" to most people. If what you have is good, it doesn't hurt to be short. You can suggest what you are working on next, but even then don't ever sound like it is is an apology for what you have.

For your information, php is an open source programming language that enables you to do a lot of things that are nice, things like receive information from contact forms and save it in a data base like MySQL. CMS stands for content management system which people who change a lot of their content regularly like to use, but is unnecessary for what you describe. A simple example is like the blog pages where new blogs are added and information is relocated automatically.

My suggestion would be to get started with a few pages and then start improving them by adding information. The longer you are on line the better for search engines, etc. Anyway, there will always be just one more thing to learn!

Most people seem to recommend javascript as the next thing to study so you can do things like a "go back" button as Lisa recommended recently. A survey of web developers found that successful developers much more often learned php before javascript, however. Even a little understanding of php is useful to do things like making "includes" (inserting files, like putting your navigation in a separate file so you can put it on every page and only have to make one addition when you add a new page instead of doing it on every page.)

[Rats! I see Lisa jumped ahead of me again while I was writing. Luci, too. Well I took time to write so I'm going to post anyway even though much is the same. Guess the repetition won't hurt.]

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Head shaking and banging aganist wall ( lol ) I do have a problem though, I made my "first page" in html code,looks good to me,but when I ran it thru a validator it failed. I did just what my class did ????? Is there a way someone here can look at the html file and see what's going on? I'm now wondering if my teacher is doing this right???? Debbie

Okay I'll take a look, you probably forgot to close something.

How and Where could I post it Thanks Debbie