One of the great regrets I have in terms of education is that I never learned the nuts and bolts side of computing. I can generally make them do what I want, but don’t have a clue when it comes to explaining why it actually happened. To be honest, the in depth details of why it works isn’t as important to me as knowing that it’s going to do what I expect each and every time. That said, I would like to know more about designing and managing my own website. I have photos hosted on one site, a blog hosted on another, email on a third, and a Facebook account that can take on a life of its own when I let it. I’ve integrated with Google for most of those services, but that doesn’t quite make it a seamless experience. In a perfect world I’d like to have all of my “outward facing” web presence integrated into a single space. I’ve been sitting on a handful of domain names for the last few years without really doing anything with them (of course the one I really want is already owned… and has been static since 2006… grrr). In the vast amount of free time that I have, maybe it’s time to teach myself a little about site development.
As always, if anyone has any suggestions as far as reading material for a complete noob, I’m all ears. It’s going to be a good, long while before anyone sees any results, but everything has to start somewhere.
3 comments:
Well, if you want to start with coding, then there's WebMonkey:
http://www.webmonkey.com/
You probably wouldn't want to build the whole site by hand, but knowing some basic HTML can help you tweak templates and such.
You can also look for a WYSIWYG editor... on the expensive side is Adobe Dreamweaver. The open source free option is KompoZer, which is very similar to Dreamweaver. So maybe play around with that first and see if you want to upgrade later.
Another possibility is to use domain mapping, which will let you continue to use Blogger. In the help section, look for "custom domains". Some people prefer to use wordpress.com, though, because it will let you do multiple sections/pages. So you could use one for the blog, one for pics, etc.
Domain mapping is free on Blogger and costs something like $5/year on Wordpress. Setting it up is really easy-- just log in to your domain host and update the CNAME records with some settings that Blogger or Wordpress provides. (I promise this is easy!)
So yeah, if you want to start using your domains with little startup time, I'd go for the domain mapping route. Then you can work on coding/developing and just update your site later.
Also, I totally missed the timer while writing this comment and now a sheet of cookies are burned :-(
I would get a book that covers both CSS and HTML. Most blogging platforms are heavy into CSS these days. O'Rielly makes some great books.
Also, WordPress is a good blogging platform.
Thanks for the great feedback! I'm going to check out WordPress today. I'm definitely looking for something with a few more management options than Blogger seems to offer.
The transition from the old MySpace blog to Blogger and now possibly to a third platform really has gotten me serious about finding a more or less permanent home for this thing, so setting it up on my own domain seems like the way to go.
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