I need a little guidence on building a propper webpage

[foozball3000]

Getting my priorities straight, I'm building my new website this weekend.
The tricky part is, that I'm doing it without direct internet access.

I'm a good programmer and designer, but this is fairly unfamiliar territory.
So, what do I need?

I'll be using Visual Studio 2008, and the site will cover quite a few things, from software downloads to image galleries. I can design it, but coding it is usually a different story.

Also, how do I set up my own code library? (I have no experience in using libraries)

 

[jem]

You can build a site offline with no prob. set up a local webserver with wamp or whatever floats your boat and develop away. Although if you (gasp) are developing a site with visual studio then you actually probably want to run IIS with all the ms bells and whistles though make sure your host supports whatever extensions you end up making use of.

 

[foozball3000]

You can build a site offline with no prob. set up a local webserver with wamp or whatever floats your boat and develop away. Although if you (gasp) are developing a site with visual studio then you actually probably want to run IIS with all the ms bells and whistles though make sure your host supports whatever extensions you end up making use of.

Well, the current one was developed in VS without any problems.

 

[icyrus]

Why develop your site from scratch rather than use an existing system and build on to it.

 

[foozball3000]

Why develop your site from scratch rather than use an existing system and build on to it.

The current one is just an image gallery. It was just a site I used to play around with. But it's time to take it seriously.

 

[arf9999]

My advice is to check your spelling before making the site live.

 

[icyrus]

The current one is just an image gallery. It was just a site I used to play around with. But it's time to take it seriously.

Ok, but why not use an existing content management system rather than coding your own?

 

[FarligOpptreden]

I think he wants to do it as a pet project in order to "develop" (excuse the pun) his skills... Using a prefabricated CMS is not going to help in that department.

FB, all you need is VS2005 / VS2008 and and IIS6 or later installed. If you're planning on doing any database stuff, you're gonna need SQL Server or similar installed. But I uess you knew that...

VS even has its own "hosting" engine installed for debugging purposes, in which it assigns the running instance to a specific port on your local IP, but you can always create a new web-share for your application to be accessed via http://machinename/applicationname.

 

[dequadin]

But I guess you knew that...

Ha-ha!

Grammar Nazi score:
FarligOpptreden: ∞ -1
Dequadin: 1

I'll get there eventually

 

[foozball3000]

I think he wants to do it as a pet project in order to "develop" (excuse the pun) his skills... Using a prefabricated CMS is not going to help in that department.

FB, all you need is VS2005 / VS2008 and and IIS6 or later installed. If you're planning on doing any database stuff, you're gonna need SQL Server or similar installed. But I uess you knew that...

VS even has its own "hosting" engine installed for debugging purposes, in which it assigns the running instance to a specific port on your local IP, but you can always create a new web-share for your application to be accessed via http://machinename/applicationname.

Thanks. Then I'm all set. I'll just have to remind myself to try and keep it simple, and that I can upgrade it at a later stage.

 

[foozball3000]

I'm planning on modeling the site somewhere down this line... http://www.squeezestudio.com/Animation.htm

 

[Bondizzo]

I'm planning on modeling the site somewhere down this line... http://www.squeezestudio.com/Animation.htm

Doesnt look too complicated, that can be done all in a designer writing much code, have you tried dreamweaver ?

 

[foozball3000]

Doesnt look too complicated, that can be done all in a designer writing much code, have you tried dreamweaver ?

Yes.
Visual Studio can do the same... and a lot more.

The only thing that gets to me is the image gallery. I have the code for a pretty cool one, but I want to design something rather unique.
But, first things first. I'll get the site up with the basics.

 

[Bondizzo]

Sweet, I tried Dreamweaver before and made 2 sites but its not that fun, mostly cause I dont like design/graphics work.

How unique can a image gallery be ? Theres like so many now though e.g. photobucket.

 

[foozball3000]

Sweet, I tried Dreamweaver before and made 2 sites but its not that fun, mostly cause I dont like design/graphics work.

How unique can a image gallery be ? Theres like so many now though e.g. photobucket.

Well, as my sketches are detail orientated, I want to keep that. So, the gallery must somehow only show parts of the sketch, while giving the complete idea of the image. But it's still a half baked potato, I'll chew on the idea some more.

 

[foozball3000]

Erm... Visual Studio 2005 + Vista is a bad idea. Everything is messed up!
Visual Studio 2008 + XP works brilliantly.

I'm finished with the planning of my gallery, as I've decided to keep it simple.
Now I just need to fix the other things.

The other problem that I have is that I'm a programmer, and I hate manual labor (in that sense). Isn't there a way that I can automate my website's updating?

For example, just drop a new pdf (for downloading), a text file for the description and in image in a folder on the server, and the site picks it up automatically?
The same principal for the gallery...

 

[FarligOpptreden]

You can yes, just make your code scan for content in a specific folder and the page will be built dynamically based on that... Easy, huh?

 

[foozball3000]

You can yes, just make your code scan for content in a specific folder and the page will be built dynamically based on that... Easy, huh?

I'll give it a whack tonight. The code that I'm using for my gallery does the same thing, so I'll go dissect it for my Articles page.

 

[FarligOpptreden]

The best option really is to create an upload facility on your site in which you can upload a ZIP file, the site extracts the contents to the appropriate folder (you can use SharpZipLib for this) and then creates a database entry for you. Retrieving database entries is a lot faster than scanning the contents of a folder upon each page-view...