Website Creation
Hey, I'm Jesse and I like building websites the old school way. JREAM is a resource site for you to get tips and learn how to get a website going. I hope to develop some web-based applications in the future.
Beginning
Your website starts with a domain and a host. Your domain name is like a parking space in a car lot, the good spots are often taken but if you go around a few turns you can usually find a spot you like. Your hosting is like your home mailbox that sends and receives mail and packages.
You can have your domain name and hosting from the same company or you can have one company manage your domain(s) and another your hosting, I will explain a it in the sections.
Authoring
Authoring is the content you put on your site and how you write it. You don't need to know much to start a CMS or Blog, besides doing a little customization. Authoring is the most important thing on your website because Content is King, which brings people to your site and back. Your topic and content should be something you know about, later on you apply SEO to your site and get it ranked in the search engines.
- CMS = Content Management System
- Blog = Like an online journal
- SEO = Search Engine Optimization
Most CMS's and Blog's are free and can be installed on your website in under 10 minutes.
Design
Design has to do with the appearance of your site layout; text and graphics. You may go through a few layouts in a year. It's good to practice things that attract the visitor and still looks good to you. A lot of website's lack an easy design or they use too much and make it complicated.
Site Promotion
Once your site is up and running you need to promote it. With all promotion in anything it takes time and patience to build a crowd. Just imagine handing out flyers one person at a time, and wait for those people to start handing out the flyers, it's kind of like that!
Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO, is important if you want to drive a lot of traffic. Instead of paying a lot money for a top listing you can optimize your site and drive traffic based on your content alone without a recurring bill.
Technical
CSS is great for your next learning step if you already know xhtml . CSS is your best friend for site layout and everything with appearance, I would suggest learning CSS in your free time if you already know xhtml.
PHP is a server-side language and is my favorite. PHP is one of the most widely used platforms across the internet now. This is a programming language which looks similar much of the javascript syntax. PHP is used for building automation, contact forms, forums, the list really never ends. PHP is not required to learn but it is fun and if you are a geek go for it!