New Website Build

[Bubbles Galore]

I bought my domain through Godaddy. I want to do a complete HTML revamp of my site. I have been teaching myself HTML and am pretty comfortable with my ability to design. My problem is that godaddy uses a design tool called website tonight. My question is how do I get around using their cheeseball design tools? I want to be able to build my site and just upload it when I am finished. I should be able to figure this out, but I think I am having brain lock-up.

 

[MEP001]

You should be able to build it using the web design tools included with Windows.

 

[Sequoia]

Website

If you know how to use FTP, use FTP to copy all of the .html and supporting files (like images) from your web site into a local folder on your PC.

You can then edit such files with any editing tool (including Notepad as a basic editor or any of the other higher end packages), save the file, and then use FTP to upload it back to your site after the changes are made. (I use FileZilla for FTP-- it is freely available over the web if you google it.)

If you don't want to do it that way, you can view any page on your site using Internet Explorer. Then, in the menu bar in IE, click View and then click Source. It will show you all of the source code that runs that page. You can then "cut and paste" it into Notepad and use "Save as .." to save it as a local file. Then you can edit it as described above.

Hope that helps ...

 

[pitzerwm]

Keep in mind that with places like GoDaddy, usually you don't really own the mane, they do, so if there is an issue and you want to move, guess what it will cost you a lot of money to keep/get the name.

 

[gsgriffin]

Bill,

That is no longer true about Godaddy. Wile I am not a fan of their canned services, they are a registrar in much the same vein as tucows or the thousands of other spots. I beleive you have to wait 60 days before you can move a newly registered or acquired domain name, but after that, it should only cost like $15 or so to do it. We really like the services offered by Network Solutions and we have our customers register there and they are a tier 1 registrar. I do not know if you can upload your own website with GoDaddy's basic hosting package. A call to their tech support would probably save a bunch of wasted time. That is assuming you have a speakerphone and can do other things during the 60+ minute wait time.

In My other (non carwashing) job, I am technical manager for a company that provides IT support to small businesses.

Greg

 

[Bubbles Galore]

Thanks for all the tips. I did register my site through godaddy. My initial build was with their website tonight software. It just looked a little too cookie cutter for me. I cancelled that service and switched them over to strictly hosting my site.

I was able to use the ftp server and upload my "under construction" page. So I guess I have that much right.

In my ongoing education, I took an html tutorial and learned a lot. I also saw one for css. Would this be a better one to take and design my site as a hybrid of the two? I'm pretty new to this, but I don't feel like it is something that I can't do.

Thanks!

 

[gsgriffin]

CSS would is a better method for keeping the same look and feel accross multiple paes and for changing te style accross the site without having to change each page.

Somebody else on here is robably more adept at answering this in more detail. Programming and website creating is not my forte.

Greg

 

[pitzerwm]

I use Dreamweaver, it makes things a lot easier. I don't know about now but Front Page, would "add" what the MS people thought would be better than you and therefore, you never really knew what was going to happen. Also look at your pages with both Firefox and IE, they are not always the same.

 

[Bubbles Galore]

So how exactly does Dreamweaver work? Would it be like the website tonight option that godaddy uses? I just didn't like the cookie cutter effect of the other program.

Thanks!

 

[pitzerwm]

Dreamweaver is a total web builder software, you make the pages, there are templates, but usually, I made my own. You can download it for free to test it.

 

[Red Baron]

I use Frontpage/Expression Web. I had Dreamweaver 8 but was way too stupid to use it. I simply buy a template that is editable in HTML then fill in the content with Expression Web (the new Frontpage).

Here it is (scroll to the bottom of the Car Wash Services/Touchfree Automatic page to see our new tv commercial): www.redbaroncarwash.com