I forgot how hard it was to write the code for a webpage. I haven't messed with in... almost four years and jumping back in isn't as easy as it seems. Though I'm happy about progress.

For those who feel like taking a look, I have attached a picture of the homepage. It took me a little over five hours. That's research, reacquainting myself with the syntax and even a little code spying on a few sites for features that I wanted. The date is dynamic, it will change with the day depending on where you are (when you refresh.)

I think I did an excellent job.

Edit: I would post a picture but it's too large and I can't make it any smaller without losing a whole bunch of details.

*pokes* got a linkie?

It's not actually on the internet yet. I just started it when I got home today, and I might change it because I figured something out that I couldn't before. So I'm going to experiment tomorrow. I tried to add the home page as a file so we'll see what happens.



Edit: you won't see any content because I'm using an iframe and the connected file isn't with it.

Edit 2: It's also missing the style sheet...

Save the homepage, and this one in the same folder then open the homepage.

edit: it won't let me post the CSS file... poo.



save that as a .CSS and it should work.

Maybe Mith can help? if he's not too busy... he's our gooru

Right now it's just down to tweaking what I already have. I took classes on all this in the past but it's going to take a while to get back into the swing of things. Not to mention that I never really did any of the more advanced stuff. Just HTML, CSS, and a touch of JS.

I still have to go through the process of converting all my writing into my templates. Which is going to be easy. Figure sometime next week I'll I should have a good bit done. I still have to put the bottom bar and copyright information on there. Blanket Disclaimers for my fanfictions and such.

When you get it up and running, wanna exchange links? I've got a site, too, though I haven't messed with it in a while.

When I do that would be fine. Still got a lot of work to do because I decided on a different layout code so it'll be a while.

I'm a pretty dab hand at coding if you ever need any help. I'm working on a redesign for my site now, but I can't decide on a layout!

Well, I kinda recreated the Dokuga layout with different colors and lacking anything more then HTML and CSS. I used JS to display the current date. I have no skill with making graphics or anything of the sort so it's going to be pretty basic.

I have no graphic skill, really, either. For mine, I've used a basic frames layout with three different frames - one as a main frame to display my content, one top frame with my links, and one side frame that is used to eat space and display my grahpic (which is a drawing of my avatar on Gaia online since I don't have a Dokugasona).

JS is one thing I have almost no skill in. I can make annoying popups, but the last thing I want to do is bombard users with annoying popus that say things like "hi" XD

Wow, have you ever heard of the website w3schools.com. It can walk you through a lot of it. It's what I've been using for reference.

I used CSS and defined boxes to generate the lay out. A header that spans the center, a links box, and a content box. Nothing special but I like it. If I ever finish currently my only novel and do the self publishing I'd talk to whichever site was hosting about doing a click through ordering and how to set up it.

Other then that... it's just making the several dozen pages by hand that's bugging me. It's not easy to do and takes up so much time.

w3schools is where I learned quite a bit. There was a layout site that I used to frequent that made anime graphics as well as tutorials on whole layouts. It was a really useful thing.

The site you're working on sounds simple and clean.

I know what you mean about doing the individuals. They can be a pain in the tukkus, especially when one little thing doesn't turn out just right.

I know there is a way to do it faster. But because I don't use any of those website maker programs like... dreamweaver I think it's called I have to do it all by hand. At the moment I have a lot of fiction to move over. The original works are going to be the hardest though.

Knight of Disorder wrote:
Other then that... it's just making the several dozen pages by hand that's bugging me. It's not easy to do and takes up so much time.

Well, if you can somewhat control the server/configuration you're going to be having these pages on, you can you SSI's (Server Side Includes) on an Apache Server.

You can then setup some sort of "template" that you use when creating your pages where you can do things like:



Doing it this way, you can break up sections of the HTML layout into separate files, and just include them into the files that you need them in. Depending on the configuration, you could also do something like:



And it'll spit out the current system date on the server. No eeebiiilll JavaScript required. And the time will be the *server* time and not whatever the time is on the machine viewing the page (since JavaScript is client side).

Whee!!! So much fun and entertaining things you can play with.

-J

Hehehe... I have no idea what you just said. I took a few classes in high school on HTML and CSS and just touched on JS. I don't know anything about server coding, for that matter, what I do know of HTML, CSS, and JS is really just the basics and what I pick up from spying.

As for the date, I want it to spit out the date for the user and not the date for the server.

DIV CODING
When I used to roleplay at back when Myspace was the 'thing' I used to make my own layouts~
I straight-up used to make all my BG's in photoshop, upload the NG, and adjust the 'blocks' so that I could type in them (:
I still have my old layouts<3

You are correct Niwa!

I don't really like it though. It still just seems so bulky, even if it's the easiest way to do it. All those nested tags just feel like needless extra... oh well. I'm still struggling to covert all of my stories over into HTML. Since no one knows a problem that doesn't add atrocious and horrible coding of it's own I have to do it all by hand.

I love div, but it's a pain in the tukkus sometimes.

I almost always go the frames or php, that way I don't have to go through each individual page should I make a change to a menu or disclaimer that appears on each one. When you've got a larger site that has thirty plus pages, that can be absolutely painful and tedious.

Right now, I'm using frames. Looking at the pages alone, they are so naked. With my menu frame on top and then image frame on the side, it dresses it up a bit.

Kagome Yuki Niwa - I never RP'd, but I used to love to make forum flobs over on Gaia I almost miss making those things!

MomoDesu wrote:
I love div, but it's a pain in the tukkus sometimes.

I almost always go the frames or php, that way I don't have to go through each individual page should I make a change to a menu or disclaimer that appears on each one. When you've got a larger site that has thirty plus pages, that can be absolutely painful and tedious.

Right now, I'm using frames. Looking at the pages alone, they are so naked. With my menu frame on top and then image frame on the side, it dresses it up a bit.

Kagome Yuki Niwa - I never RP'd, but I used to love to make forum flobs over on Gaia I almost miss making those things!
I wasn't aware people still got on gaia... I log on and just leave the page open in case I for some reason get a random message.

I kinda suck at anything beyond HTML and CSS. PHP is... it's hard to explain, I just never got into server side scripting. I tried working with ASP back in the day but decided not to mess with it to much. I might need to pick up some PHP to make things a little easier... it's still a lot of work though. So far, I've gotten four of fanfictions coverted over.

I learned how to do it from Celestial Star a few years ago when I started piddling with it. They have some amazing tutorials there that are very easy to understand. They also have graphics and other resources for use on sites you build, and premade layouts for those who don't want to spend the time working on their own graphic layout.

I hope that offers some help. It's always a learning process

I've never seen that site before. I use w3schools. I think I said that already though. I might have to mess around with it for a while, see what I can work out. There's no telling how things will turn out though. I've come to the decision that I might have to write my own program for converting my documents into HTML or give up and spend the next three months doing it by hand.

Easy trick for converting your stories to HTML.

Go to any archive where you've already shared them. Go to the story, and then go to View and Page Source. Scroll down through the coding until you find where your story begins and then copy that all the way down until it ends. It will have all of the formatting for that site, including all italics, bold, page breaks, what have you. That way you don't have to do it all by hand.

This is the only site I've posted anything at any real length and while I hate to say it they use special coding....

On mine I need it all sealed up in <p> tags. No inline styles or anything like that. Because my CSS is set to format it specially. I still don't understand why no one has created a simple text converter. Without all the extra crap that is just useless code.

If I used ASP, I wouldn't even have to make a single page for each chapter but the code for saving the variable and setting up the array and such is a bother. In that event I wouldn't even bother with it all. I'd just copy straight into a txt and add the code by hand because I wouldn't have to deal with the rest of a webpage.

This follows on with what I asked before, I've looked a bit and was wondering if anyone could suggest one to me. Preferably free, at first at least. I'd like to see what a host offers first hand before I go into the area of paying them money. I know there are a couple of you out there that could help.

Thanks a head of time,
KoD