Starting consulting career: Need to create my own website

I decided I'm starting my own business for the time being.

I need a good book/website that teaches me how to develop professional websites.
I need more then just HTML coding, I want a sophisticated website.

What free tools are available for website construction/design?

I might even host my own website in the beginning, depends on the circumstances. I just need to get a good website up and running within the next month.

Thanks,

-Ciscopimpenator

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Slowhand

I've always loved web design and development, and I've been letting it slip all too much as of late. I follow a basic guideline for people wanting to learn how to create web pages. First, you learn the client-side technologies, then you learn the server-side technologies, and after that, you have options for multimedia or extended functionality. Client-side involves HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and usually JavaScript. Server-side tends to involve databases and back-end functionality, like what you'd see in shopping-carts and forum sites; this usually involves more of the development-end of things with more sophisticated programming required. Beyond that, you're looking at things like Flash, for multimedia-oriented sites, and things like AJAX which works in unison with server-side technologies to make your front-end a bit more efficient and functional. A good example of this is Google Maps, where AJAX is used to bring in data to the maps without having to refresh the page. Microsoft has their own implementation of AJAX, formerly called Atlas.

The books I found the most useful were the ones by WROX, but there are quite a few out there. Accessible XHTML and CSS Web Sites Problem Design Solution is a really good book for once you have a handle on HTML and CSS, but you'll probably want to start with something like Beginning Web Programming with HTML, XHTML, and CSS or HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide. I also found Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition very useful for learning and referencing CSS. For JavaScript, the two books I've got on my desk are JavaScript for the World Wide Web and Beginning JavaScript, 3rd Edition, but I've also heard very good things about Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, but it's pretty advanced. Probably better to pick up an intro to JavaScript book to start with.

Now, for server-side programming, I chose to go with Microsoft technologies. There are lots of other choices out there, like PHP, ColdFusion, JavaServer Pages, and various CGI solutions using something like Perl, Python, or even C++. I, personally, decided on working with ASP 3.0 at first, and then moved on to ASP.NET mainly because I believe that it would be the most versatile way for me to create web applications. I've got quite a few books on .NET programming for the web, starting with Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 with C# to learn the basics. After that, I'd recommend picking up a copy of ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution to get right into creating practical, functional examples of the kinds of applications commonly seen on medium-to-large commercial website. Also, once you have the basics down, getting a copy of Professional ASP.NET 2.0 for reference isn't a bad idea. Of course, to get the most out of ASP.NET 2.0, I chose to get a good foundation in C#, so I've got Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step by Step sitting on my desk. I've heard that Learning C# 2005: Get Started with C# 2.0 and .NET Programming and Beginning Visual C# 2005 are supposed to be pretty good, too. Now, I'm no Flash expert, but I do know that ActionScript shares identical syntax with JavaScript, save for how it applies to the Document Object Model of the Flash environment. There are probably better sources than me to ask, around here, for what Flash books are recommended.

If you're looking at tools to use, start with a basic editor like Notepad. Once you've got HTML and CSS down, at least, you can start looking at things like DreamWeaver, which is a tool a lot of web designers/developers swear by. For ASP.NET development, there's no subsitute for Microsoft's Visual Studio, and more specifically, Visual Web Developer. Beyond that, I'm sure there are lots of open-source and free tools for creating and editing web pages. There are probably lots of other developers on this forum that can help you with books and resources for other languages, for other (free) tools, I'm not really as familiar with things outside of the realm of what I already mentioned. Of course, don't forget to stop by the World Wide Web Consortium's website to check out the origins and standards-recommendations for all things web-related.

Ciscopimpenator

I should have reworded my intro....I need a site like this.

http://www.doyleassociates.net/home.htm

This is the guy who wrote CCIE books for Cisco. He has a basic website that provides information to his clients, this is basically what I need.

I just need a program that will help me develop basic business websites. When I said "sophisticated" I meant I don't want a webpage that looks like this.

www.occisco.com

-Ciscopimpenator

Slowhand

For something like that, you'll need to learn HTML, CSS, probably some JavaScript for some of the menus. It looks like it uses Flash for the movie, but there's probably not much back-end action happening, so you're probably not in need of anything server-side right now. You could probably get away with using a "What You See Is What You Get" editor, like DreamWeaver to make this page, but I'm a big proponent of people learning the underlying technologies before they begin messing with WYSIWYGs to create pages, and you end up with something you can't edit or change beyond what the software lets you do.

BeaverC32

Depending on what your budget looks like, you should at least have a nice web publishing software like DreamWeaver, and an image editing program such as Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks. An excellent book on DreamWeaver is the "Missing Manual" series, which covers just about anything you'd ever want to use (in your scenario, at least). Implementing javascript navigation menus is a breeze, and really requires no coding. There are free alternatives, but I found DreamWeaver to be an excellent way to get into web design/development. It can be as easy or as complicated as you want it to be!

As to web hosting, you'd probably be better off having someone else host it for you. It's cheap enough (especially if you aren't using datasources or technologies like ColdFusion), and will probably be much less of a headache.

Let us know what you decide!

BeaverC32

I also wanted to say -- I think SlowHand's reply is very informative and right on the mark....worthy of a separate post to serve as a wealth of information for any other members interested in web development and design!

Ciscopimpenator

I'm a big proponent of saving time and money!
I could definitely learn all those technologies, but it might take me 1 year I don't have!
By the time I learn all those technologies I might as well be a web developer full-time! hahaha

The website is a means to an end, not the other way around.

-Ciscopimpenator

WanBoy67

You should use Flash templates or Website templates. I gather you would rather get something up and running quick than a crash course on HTML/Javascript/Publishing on something which could end looking like a cat's arse ( Hopefully markzab won't enlighten us with a picture of that

). They're professional, quick to change and best of all cheap.

http://www.flashloaded.com/templates/

http://www.templatemonster.com/category.php?type=9&tid=+-+Any+-&search_words=+-+Any+-&from_=&to=&cat=2&style=0&author=0&x=28&y=10

http://www.flash-template-design.com/category/business/

http://www.flashmint.com/show-category-computing.html

Stating the obvious here but - Google 'Flash Templates' for more until you find one you like

BeaverC32

I asked a friend about free software, and he swears by this:
http://www.trellian.com/webpage/

Also, a very nice link that lists free "stuff" (all legal): http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmleditors.shtml