another approach to creating your web site

My last entry was about using a cloud-based service to create your web site. When you take this approach you can create a beautiful web site with little or no HTML knowledge. The service will also optimize your site for mobile devices.

Perhaps you are a get-under-the-hood kind of person, however. If that's your style you can certainly code your site by hand. There are a lot of tools out there that will help you in this task. There is a cool open source editor from Adobe called Brackets. I have come to really like it and to rely on it for my web site.

Of course you need to make sure that your code is optimized for mobile. That is essential. I took a marvelous course from udemy entitled Build Responsive Real World Websites. (Responsive, of course, means making your site viewable on any kind of device.) The course is clear, complete, and comprehensive. The instructor includes a useful PDF manual and directs you to a number of free tools to assist you with web design in general and making your site responsive in particular. (By the way, I'm not getting any sort of kickback on this. I simply found the course extremely useful and well done. I used the principles in the course to build my web site.)

For HTML reference, the W3C HTML/Elements listing is the definitive source. However, I find the independent W3C Schools HTML Element Reference much more accessible. It is my go-to source when I have an HTML question.

Creating your site by manually coding it can be challenging if your are not an HTML expert. At the same time it can be a satisfying process to build a site from the ground up with your own hands.

 

creating your web site

When I first set up my web site in 1996 I was given a UNIX account, space on the server, and was told, in essence, "Knock yourself out." I was very much on my own and had to learn what I could from the sources I could find.

Much has changed since then. In the following years tools proliferated, from the simple and free to the complex and expensive. Some required strong HTML knowledge, while others, like Dreamweaver, provided a graphical user interface.

Today the landscape is very different. In this era of The Cloud there are many online services that not only host your web site and provide a graphical interface, but which offer drag and drop tools for creating your web site. I just finished launching a web site built on Wix, which allows your to build a complete web site via drag and drop. I was a little reluctant to give up control over the underlying HTML code, but I was doing this for a nonprofit and I wanted them to have an environment where a non-technical volunteer could update the site if they decided to go that route. Wix pricing is also reasonable, and it was easy to claim the organization's desired domain name. Both very helpful for a nonprofit.

Wix has a few limitations, but there are generally workarounds. I was able to accomplish everything I wanted to on the site. I was pleased with the results I achieved for the Student of the Month program.

There are other services that do much the same thing. My cousin is a freelance marketing consultant. He has been using Squarespace for a number of years and is very happy with it. He has also used Virb for a client and was impressed with that service.

Whatever route you choose, creating your web site today is much easier than it was in 1996.



   

the evolution of the web

I have been involved with web sites for a very long time. I acquired my domain csquared.com in 1996 and immediately started creating a web site. I have worked with web sites in one form or another ever since then.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML is the language used to create web pages and web sites. Standards for HTML are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C for short. You can find their web site at w3c.org. While the basics of HTML are unchanged, the standard has evolved to allow for the creation of more powerful and useful web sites. The current standard is HTML5, along with CSS3. CSS stands for cascading style sheet. Cascading Style Sheets provide the formatting for web pages.

Most web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) do a great job of maintaining backward compatibility, so you can continue to create web pages using older versions of HTML and the page will display properly. But you are missing out on a lot of functionality when you do. HTML5 and CSS3 also provide the framework for more efficient and logically structured code.

When my corporate career ended and I started looking at the world of freelancing I began taking online courses on HTML5 and CSS3. I was astonished at how much more powerful, efficient, and elegant the current standard is compared to the older version I had kept using out of habit and laziness. (The HTML reference manual that still sits on my shelf covers version 4.01 and has a copyright date of 2001.) You can learn about HTML5 and CSS3 on online learning sites like udemy, udacity, and edx.

Of course, you may not need these skills at all. Companies are popping up that allow you to create beautiful web sites with no knowledge of HTML and CSS. I'll talk about those next week.