Hi guys,

I'm really really new to designing websites.
I want to make a website for my Counter-Strike Source Clan.
I've already got all the hosting and stuff, threw sponsors, now I don't really want
to go out and pay someone to make us a website, I want to give it a shot first.

Basically what I know of Web Design, is as little as 0... lol

I've played around with Dreamweaver MX, but I can't really get to grips with it.
Another thing I tried, was to design the whole webpage, in Photoshop, then, just
inserting that into Dreamweaver. I know u gotta slice something or such, not to sure.

Is there any really good tutorials, that you guys know off, to help me.
Please don't refer me to go search at google, because, I have, and all the tutorials
I get, is shit.

Please help an old ieXbeta member...

Cheers
PIETER

I usually point people here: W3 Schools HTML Tutorial.

Don't be discouraged if you come across stuff you don't understand; if it's something you think you need, you can google the specific topic for more help and/or ask around. However, I suspect everything you'd need to put together a decent site should be pretty easy to learn from that tutorial.

Good luck!

Hey Pieter

If you're a beginner I would recomend that you use MS's Frontpage. Dreamweaver can be a little complicated for the very new comer to web design.

What kinda things are you wanting to put on your site?

You can also nick the layout/ideas from some other sites that catch your eye

One tip: Always use the HTML doctype, without it you could be left wondering why your HTML and CSS don't behave the way you expect.
E.G. If your making XHTML:

Ta for the tutorial silentShab, gonna check it out now.

Tamski: I'll 'find' Frontpage, and give that a go. Yeah, I basically, don't want a massive site, just a page with 1 or 3 addons.... like a normal clan site.

Dangerousdave: WTF? I don't understand what the hell you were typing there....lol.I do not even know the diffs between, HTML, XHTML, CSS....lol.

Ta all.

Cheers
PIETER

I think FrontPage automatically generates it for you, so I doubt you have to worry.
Anyway long story short.. back in the day, browser makers wanted the best compatibility going, and so made their browsers behave weirdly for certain things that have now been standardised. These are quirks of a time before everyone started going CSS standards compliant.. Now without a line of text like that, a browser will render your pages in 'quirks mode' ... which might not be what you expect to see, based on what tutorials tells you works to do certain things. I know I might not be making loads of sense, but... I only found out about this recently! and it has improved my ability to get CSS stuff to do what I want (as most of todays documentation and tutorials are based on the CSS2 standard) and my pages were being rendered by browsers with quirks mode - making them behave non CSS2.
I'm sure google could shed some more light on this if you were interested. But anyway, as your only learning webdesign for a few pages.. not a career, its not that important. I just think its best to learn the right way to do things from the start, makes things easier.

OK, ta DD. That clears it up a little more.

Omw, but this HTML stuff is not easy, I thought it was gonna be a walk in the park, but it definately aint.... lol

Cheers
PIETER

A few good paper designs and minimising the amount of <table>s and <div>s you use will keep things easier to manage. If you just start writing HTML without a design or goal you usually end up with a lot of unnecessary code.

i'd say just use a CMS, we use webspell its a pre-made php based script for clans.. my clan uses it too...

http://www.omg-gaming.com (multiple templates are available, some free some paid, the one on our site is 100% free )

site url of makers: http://cms.webspell.org/

goodluck!

PHP based means its the .php pages you see, most webservers support it, yet not on default you'll need to install it (see it as a addon), and to store the users and tables and stuff you'll need MYSQL (also needs to be installed extra)