Making a website..

Zacko187 · Post by **Zacko187** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:22 am

Yeah, so I am working on a website called Hypnautiq. I was wondering, what are some ideas you guys have that would make my site worth going to.. what do you guys find useful?, and if you could choose any features for my site, what would they be?. I plan to make this a profile website, where people can come, register, create a detailed profile, send messages, ect. I would appreciate any good ideas. Please only submit serious ideas though..

Thanks, Zack.

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:32 am

First things first: What is the primary focus of the website? Who are you trying to appeal to?

Are you doing this through actual HTML, JavaScript, etc..., or are you using a crappy "Do it yourself" program, like FrontPage or DreamWeaver?

Zacko187 · Post by **Zacko187** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:34 am

Well, im hoping to attract users within the age of 13-20 or around there. The main idea of this website is for users to be able to add friends, and view others' profiles, have your own profile, send messages, ect.. stuff like that.

Oh, and ill be writing it in PHP.. and Im using dreamweaver.. (it isn't a 'do it yourself' program..)

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:53 am

Well, it's a Code Generator anyways! Please note that the outcome will be slightly larger file sizes, which isn't a good thing for 56Kers... (Plus you don't get the satisfaction only gained by programming the site yourself

)

I'm going to be honest w/ you: Your website won't be successful. MySpace has a monopoly on that industry.

Your website will be constantly hacked if it gets noticed, due to the millions of security holes you'll have to be fixing due to the dynamicness of the website...

You'll have to pay at least $10/month for web hosting, since a URL like "http://example.freehosting.com/" isn't too appealing for a dynamic, profile-whatchamacallit website...

As for something positive: Good Luck!

Post by **Skyone** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 3:14 am

atari2600a wrote:First things first: What is the primary focus of the website? Who are you trying to appeal to?

Are you doing this through actual HTML, JavaScript, etc..., or are you using a crappy "Do it yourself" program, like FrontPage or DreamWeaver?

...? HTML and JavaScript are languages, not programs. Frontpage is drag and drop, but dreamweaver is just an editor with drag and drop functions. I use dreamweaver, mainly in the coding section, and last time I check, professional web designers don't use notepad.

EDIT: Lemme downgrade your next post.

Hosting is around $5 a month, at average.

I really don't think his site will get hacked, because php is hardly hackable, and it's really not hard to protect.

And why would the file be larger using dreamweaver? A blank page in dreamweaver is a blank page in notepad.

Zacko, I support your idea. Even if the site doesn't get large, you still get the feeling of accomplishment. Go for it!

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 3:27 am

Yeah man, don't bash Frontpage or Dreamweaver... No offence, but your site is very basic and could use a little work that's best done in an editor like Dreamweaver anyway.

Also, why is the left side cut off on all your pages?

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 4:00 am

...nor do professional web designers use FrontPage nor DreamWeaver! I have some friends (Who are professional web designers) who use HomeSite, or maybe other HTML editors, but if you have some code generator doing all the work, you're taking all the fun out of it!

The filesize would be larger because DreamWeaver & FrontPage always add code which is unused, unnecessary, or does very little within a web browser. As an example, my school's website was done in DreamWeaver. There's a page on the site which is the school's month calendar; table w/ very little text. The size of the page is (if I remember correctly) 200-500K, & is very horrid looking! Now if someone actually spent 10 minutes doing the page in hand-written HTML, It would've taken a lot less memory, & it would've looked a lot better!

By the way, by hacking attacks I mean more along the lines of SQL Ingections...

MY site isn't trying to appeal to the average person, it appeals to gamers, more preferably collectors. (notice that I use the color values 0000FF & 00FF00, & use the font "FixedSys", to give it a nice 8-bit feel)

Also, my website isn't exactly finished. Ever since I put 1 1/2 hours into making it, it's been online, & I've been updating it since. (I'm not the type who waits 'till everything's exactly perfect to upload it

) I really need to add a lot more dialogue to the all the pages...

By the way, what to do you mean by "left side cut off on all your pages"? You mean as in the absence of the collection links on all the pages except the home page? I haven't yet got around to putting them on their own file, putting the SSI tab on all of my pages, etc...

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:07 am

OSWD has free designs.

Zacko187 · Post by **Zacko187** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:32 am

Actually the point of me asking you guys is so that it will indeed be a success. I mean, think about it.. im gonna need to know what people WANT rather than just putting something that i want, myself.. it makes more sense. By the way, people doggin on dreamweaver, dont. i dont use the drag and drop, and you cant even do that for PHP code.. PHP code isn't drag and drop, and the reason why i have the width of the site as 800, is just because that is the width of this site. Thanks for your comments, Zack.

Zacko187 · Post by **Zacko187** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:36 am

Also, i already have my own domain, im not using some free host crap. My hosting comes along with unlimited BW, and unlimited space... url is http://hypnautiq.com and if you want to get an idea of my layout, http://hypnautiq.com/hypnofinal/register.php

Also, you guys act ilke i know nothing about wbe hosting.. i mean, i have owned quite a few hosted domains...

scherzo · Post by **scherzo** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 12:03 pm

I'm a professional web developer and I don't use anything like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Though I'm not a web designer. I don't ever claim to be an graphic artist. If I need something to be pretty, I employ someone who is specialized in that.

I'm a programmer at the core. All the web stuff I do are web applications and are very complex/dynamic. I need complete control over all aspects of server and client side scripts, so I use TextPad. And I'm not bashing tools like Dreamweaver. They work great. But you run into problems when you want to do something that it doesn't provide. You know you could code around the limitations. But then you are in a constant battle of generated code versus your tweaks. I don't like "black box" solutions. Because you end up with some frustrating work when the black box doesn't work the way you'd like it to.

Now if I am doing some design work (I'm not too horrible), I'll design a page template in Photoshop for an 800x600 or 1024x768 target; it depends. Then cut it up in ImageReady. Then I'll take what image ready generates and make it do what I want it to do.

Hell, I don't even want to do web development. I'd rather be writing native apps in C/C++ or even making games. But this is what my job calls for, so I do it.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 5:49 pm

atari2600a wrote:By the way, what to do you mean by "left side cut off on all your pages"? You mean as in the absence of the collection links on all the pages except the home page? I haven't yet got around to putting them on their own file, putting the SSI tab on all of my pages, etc...

*goes to it again to take screenshots* Well, they're... oh, I see. You optimized your site for a 1024 wide screen resolution. I was on a different computer (with an 800 wide res) when the sides were cut off. Let me switch me res and show you... wait... I see... strange. It only does this in 800x600 resolution in Firefox. I took a snapshot, but I converted it to a 16 color Bitmap and 640x480 pixels to save space. Just remember that this is actually 800x600.

Post by **Triton** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:09 pm

looks the same on my PC too, dont be dissin dreamweaver or frontpage, they are better that geocities pagebuilder which your pages appearence reminds me of (no offence) i did my page in frontpage and while it might be bigger than one in straight html it still works so i dont care, work on making your page less ugly and you will be ok. the big thing to draw people t your site is CONTENT, if you dont have anything to do/look at nobody will want to come to it

Post by **bicostp** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:25 pm

My first website was on Geocities. Yes, I admit I used geocities. 4 years ago. It's just as special now. geocities swore me off n00by webpage maker places like that for life. (Tripod, Freewebs, etc...)

Currently I use FrontPage for web authoring, but I haven't noticed what I'd call a whole ton of extraneous information. Honestly after I established the template for my content in FrontPage I made most of the rest of the pages in Notepad.

Frontpage/Dreamweaver + a text editor =

Freewebs/Tripod/Geocities/MySpace/Web Templates:

Yuck!

atari2600a, don't bash the visual web authoring programs. They have their place. A visual editor plus a text editor make a good team. (But to be honest your site looks like the server threw up.

)

Post by **Triton** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 7:09 pm

i had geocities back in the day, it sucked a LOT, so now if someone stumbles upon my old geocities page it redirects to my current page