I am thinking about creating a webpage on InfoTechnology since I read alot about that. Mostly links to reviews, tech updates, upcoming tech, tech rumors, and some of my own writings that summarize or compile what I've read and heard throughout the day. I am a big tech (home theater, computer, gadgets) person, but have little to no info on webpage building. I am planning on using FrontPage to startup my website and most likely iPowerWeb to host. I know little about html, or anything else web-related, but I figure that the only real way to learn is to make a page of my own and start tinkering around.

My main question is, should I go with Frontpage to start off with? I work alot with Word/Powerpoint, Photoshop, Corel, so Frontpage looks quite easy to manuever. Do most webhosts support Frontpage created websites? Should I wait to pay for hosting until my website has created, or just start now? I'm pretty much asking, where do I begin and what should I avoid?

Thanks

There are a couple of approaches you can take. Initially it sounds like a blog would be a perfect place to start if your just writting and posting information. However if your looking for more structure and control a webpage would be needed.

Frontpage is still used and supported by the community. It's rather useful for newbies till they can graduate up to Dreamweaver. There are a few websites to check out which will give you a foot into html programming.

HTMLGoodies.com
W3Schools.com

When you design your site I recommend laying out your content into categories. Develop the structure of the site on paper before even touching code. Having a clearer structure in mind will keep you from wasting to much time and help the flow of design. Since you have worked in photoshop draw up a homepage and position your elements out. Next you can slice it up into a webpage in Imageready which will generate an HTML file. Of course this file has a ton of fat code and will need to be cleaned; or just make a blank html file an use the images from that file.

Good Luck!

Well, it looks like iPowerWeb offers the extensions, which is important for FrontPage publishing.

Generally, you can use FP Publish shortly after you set up your web hosting.

I would first register a domain. GoDaddy is a great place for this.

Second, get started on your site. FrontPage built in help can answer a lot of questions.

You could do a web search for frontpage tutorials. Tina has a great site at http://accessfp.net Although you will see hers separated by version, they pretty much apply across all versions.

If you need help with FrontPage forms stop by my site.

To get started with your web, go to File >> New >> Web and ythen File >> New >> Page to add pages to the web,.
There is plenty of help in the forums to help you along the way.

When you set up your hosting, you will need to then set up the DNS for your domain in the domain registrars control panel. This is the info which allows you to type in your site name and have it appear in the browser.

You can get up and running with just FrontPage, however in the future you will want to get some understanding of HTML itself along with CSS, Includes Pages and ASP, PHP and maybe MySQL.

Would buying Dreamweaver and starting with that be a better approach? I can get it with a student discount. Would this be a better software environment to learn how to create webpages and build my first webpage?

I'm not a great fan of big editor packages like dreamweaver - I prefer hand coding, and you can make a perfectly good website using notepad or some other text editor.

Either way, if you just want to learn then I would try hand coding, and then maybe look at getting dreamweaver or similar if you want to build a bigger site, or hand coding gets too much work.

I'm with Oberon in that hand coding is the best way to go if you really want to get involved with web work. With practice I think it's faster to hand code a site than to use any WYSIWYG editor.

However of all the WYSIWYG editors I think Dreamweaver is by far the best. They all produce bloated code, but Dreamweaver seems to produce the least and I think it has the most features. There will be more of a learning curve with it, but it will take you further than Frontpage will.

I think you can get a 30 day trial before purchasing if you want to look at it before buying. A lot of books on Dreamweaver also come with the 30 day trial software.

Thanks, we'll ive signed up for some lessons on lynda.com on html, dreamweaver and css to get me started and will be starting off with dreamweaver. Hopefully in about a month, I'll know enough to author my first website and have it look quite descent.

Thanks for you help, i'll most likely be back with problems once my building begins.

I remeber Lynda Weinman's books when I first start learning web design. She's more on the graphics side of design or at least was a few years back, but usually had good advice. I'm sure you'll learn a lot from here and we'll all still be here to answer any questions if you have them.