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I posted my stuff on a geocities page using the generic "page builder" software they provide. Very limiting, as far as I can tell.

The next time I post a game, I'd like to make it look better, even if it's still a freebie site like geocities. Where is the best place to go for advice, guidance, help, etc.? I know nothing about html, but I'd love to learn.

Thanks

James V. West
http://www.geocities.com/randomordercreations/index.html

I just read Clinton's article on cheap web publishing and it helped answer some of my questions. Thanks Clinton!

James V. West
http://www.geocities.com/randomordercreations/index.html

P.S. I'd like to say that so far my experience with using geocities has been positive. Despite the limitations of thier software, I assume if you know html you can have a page that looks any way you choose. No pop-ups, and the banner ad can be closed leaving the page free of clutter. I'm not sure about their size limit. I think its on the order of 25 mb. It was a good place to start for me.

Well a good place to start for learning about HTML is Webmonkey's beginners section http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/frontdoor/beginners.html, or alternatively a search on google for "HTML tutorials" should get you a load of useful sites.

If you'd prefer to learn from a book then Peachpit Press do a good series of books called Visual Quickstart Guides. They're quite cheap (£13, about $18), and have an easy to read style. You should be able to find them on Amazon.

Hope that's of use.

Matt

PS if you want Web Design tips (instead of more technical stuff), try http://www.coolhomepages.com.

Another thing you can do... is view page sources, you'd be surprised what you can learn by doing so.. and it's free.

Well, if you check out

http://www.ravenhold.lpk-computers.co.uk/

Which is my old Orkworld site, it was designed entirely with Microsoft Front Page.  A program not without its own unique set of...quirks...but you can design a fairly sharp site with absolutely zero knowledge of HTML.

I designed the entire site purely with point and click, click and drag, and flow charts and never once inserted a tag of any kind.

Of course, if you do know html, after doing the annoying stuff with point and click you can actually go in and see and manipulate the actual code.

I'd steer clear of their built in themes though (because they have the highest silly quirk ratio of all Front Page functions and they're pretty lame).

How do you view "sources"?

To view source (in Internet Explorer or Netscape) right click in the page you want to view and go to the view source option and left click it. It's give you the raw HTML code that makes up the page.

Viewing the source is great for picking up tips, but you have to have some idea of what you're looking at first.

As to using Frontpage, most pros cringe at its mention. It creates pages with a lot of bespoke microsoft crud in them (so they're often larger than needed and download slower). But it is easy to use. If you're going for a piece of webpage creation software, Dreamweaver is well thought of (but then I use it all the time so I'm biased).

Just my thoughts.


Matt





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[ This Message was edited by: Matt on 2001-09-03 12:07 ]

Well once you start to get the hang of HTML I have found a program that I still use today that helps a lot.

Its called EZPad
http://www.mmedia.is/~hagur/ezpad2/

Allows you to view the page as you modify the HTML in it.  Also it has some basic tools for image maps and such built in.  Its pretty basic and is good to try out something before you upload it.

I give it two thumbs up.

Also to in view of this thread.  I learned most of my HTML from the view source option after I figured out the basics from an old Angelfire quick learn HTML guide they used to have up (sadly a different one is up now with most of the good stuff gone).  With the basics you can look at a view source of a page and start to determine how other stuff works.  But be sure to start of small here, trying to learn something off a high detailed professional page with java, forms, flash and all the other bells and whistles is a chore.

Well just my two cents.

I have also had a hard time learning HTML or even WYSIWYG web page design programs.  My geocities page languishes in a limbo of "I really don't want to spend the time working on it."

This is probably why I signed up with Gaming Outpost's Gaming Library feature.  You don't have to do anything except upload your games or post news.  True, you don't get to make it look all pretty, but who needs that if the games are good?

Oh

yeah

right

darn

Actually, it doesn't really matter what you use. The important thing is that you get it took look how you want. Raw code or editors are only tools to do this.

And hey, content is still king.

I started out by viewing sources, and eventually I read every online tutorial I could get my hand on. A real good idea, if you can't afford Front Page, is to get netscape communicator (free) and use thier page editor. It's not as flashy, but you can manipulate your pages to look the way you want them to with fairly little work. Finally, I do webpage design free of charge. If you still need help, or want a snazzy page.. email me and we'll talk about it.


T.

And if you want the source of you page to be clean, use an advanced HTML editor, such as Arachnophilia (which is free). All WYSIWYG editors tend to create "talkative" HTML code, and making the code yourself is more fun.

And if you really want to optimise the size of you page (i.e. suppress all useless spaces in you HTML code, not on the page you see), there's a useful (and free) tool named HTMLShrinker.

Links to those 2 excellent pieces of software (and others) on my page http://perso.wanadoo.fr/philippe.tromeur/freeware.htm.

As for the aspect of your pages, http://geocities.com/randomordercreations/thepoolrpg.html is very ugly because the ad is hiding the beginning of your text,, be careful.



I suggest you try to find an ad-free web-hosting company. i don't know if this exists in the US. Personnally, I use 3 mirrors, all hoste by French companies : http://philippe.tromeur.free.fr/ which is ad-free ; http://dagon.multimania.com/ with an annoying pop-up, but I keep this address anyway because it's my older address and many people stil use it to make a link to my site ;  http://perso.wanadoo.fr/philippe.tromeur/ is not free : this space is given to me by my ADSL company.

Some tips on learning HTML by the venerable, respected "view the source" method:

1.  Figure out how to do something very basic by some other means, first.  Even if you just get the basic format of

<html>
<head>
<title> This is my title! </title>
</head>

<body
  bgcolor="#000000"
  text="#FFFFFF"
>
<h1>This is my Page!</h1>

<p>
Welcome to my page!
</p>

</body>
</html>

That gives you a framework to understand how to interpret the sources that you view.  Next trick:  Don't get in too far over your head.  If you look at a professionally designed website with a lot of javascript or complex tags of various sorts, you'll be confused.  Try to find a page that has minimally more than what you already know how to do.

Use search commands in the source to find the part that you're interested in.  For example, if you want to find out how some text was placed in a bulleted list, search for the text of the first item in the list.

Learning HTML this way is doable -- I did it.  It's probably best used supplemented by searching for tutorials (I would never have managed CSS without tutorials), and it takes a certain amount of comfort with computers.  Good luck, if you decide to pursue this route.

Hello,

I used the self-trained, source-based approach as well, following much of the guidelines given above.

Here are my only additions, laying it out for everyone.

1) Use Notepad or any other purely text-based application to copy the source to. Do NOT copy it into Microsoft Word, which has its own ideas about formatting and altering text. Save your file as a Notepad file, adding ".htm" or ".html" at the end of the file when you name it.

2) Then, open up your web browser (Navigator, Explorer, whatever) and use File-Open to find that file on your hard drive and open it.

3) With the Notepad program open, and the browser open with the same file up, you can edit on the Notepad and click "Refresh" on the browser to see how it looks.

4) If you get totally stuck, use Netscape Composer or some other compose program (even - blech - Word) to generate what you want, to some extent. Then look at THAT source to see how it did it.

Now, mind you, I never did become an expert, and once Java and databases and all that hoo-ha became the new wave, I was left floundering behind. (That's why Clinton and Mike Holmes are my Sorcerer web-dudes, now.) But the above methods got me much, much farther than any Help file or Net-literacy seminar ever did.

Best,
Ron

If you're looking for a good basic editor for web pages, I highly recommend http://www.jgsoft.com">EditPad Lite from http://www.jgsoft.com">www.jgsoft.com.  I'm teaching Job Corps students to write web pages, and EditPad is much easier for them to use than Notepad.