Thread

Try:

http://www.w3schools.com
>>> HTML Tutorial
http://redmelon.net/tstme/
http://quirksmode.org/resources.html

If you must link to porn for an example (thank you for fixing that), at least put a big red text: “Adult content beware!!!” or something.

Not to sound like a prude, but I take my early mornings with coffee, not butterfly porn, eh?

😊

ok, Im on it.

thanks all of you.

Pay careful attention to the box model:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-3513-6105783.html

so I use EE to manage the content and tools such as Photoshop and Dreamweaber to “design” the web.
what tools do you use in your designs ?

I thought EE was all I needed, now I see it is far more complex.

I thought EE was all I needed, now I see it is far more complex.

Well the complexity comes from however far you wish to take it. If you want a specific format (design) to your site and you don’t have someone who can design and code this for you and you don’t have the knowledge of how to do it then you are definitely going to need to read a few books but once you have the knowledge then there are lots of programmes that do the same thing and in the end it comes down to personal preference.

Myself I use Photoshop for everything graphical based just because I am a graphic designer and so need the power of it but for web-design you could argue that this is overkill and there are many other applications that could do the job very well for the web.

I first of all design all my page templates in InDesign as wire-frames and then ‘flesh’ these out in Photoshop adding in images and icons to get a feel for the entire site, all the time paying attention to how I might get it all working inside of a CMS (EE). I then hand-code the entirety of all the fleshed templates using Coda as it is really great to work with and doesn’t mess with your code as some html programs do. After I have all the templates (static at the moment) looking right then I transfer everything into EE and the rest is then just using (most of the time) fairly standard EE tags to get it all gelled together and working.

Hope that helps a bit.

Best wishes,

Mark

Oops, I saw that Mark also answered this one simultaniously

I use Adobe illustrator to develop the design, and I never use the slice tool; it’s terrible.

If you want just a simple page but don’t want to know anything about HTML, I suggest you use the WYSYWIG functions of Dreamweaver. I started with that and gradually switched from the design panel to the code panel. But this only works if you build a site without EE. If you will never use more than ten pages and only change them every now and then, you don’t need to use EE.

If you need a more complex site where other people can contribute than you’ll need something like EE. But you won’t get it done without some decend HTML knowledge.

There are two sides to this story. Once a system like EE is build anyone can contribute content without having to know how it works and that is the beauty of it. Building such a system can however not be done with zero knowledge. Setup is pretty straightforward, but adjusting is a thing for developers. I think you got these two roles mixed up?

There are websites that you can setup with zero knowledge, hosted services like Blogger and VOX do this, but then you won’t be able to make your own design. Wordpress has a huge amount of templates to choose from, people use this with limited knowledge. If you make the website for yourself, you could try it. I would be hesitant to use it for a client, because what can you do if the system fails and you don’t really understand how it works?

You might consider reading about HTML wire framing:

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/html_wireframes_and_prototypes_all_gain_and_no_pain
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/wire-frame-your-site
http://totheweb.com/learning_center/website-wire-frame.html

BTW, that first link I’m pretty sure is a site running on EE… 😊

You could look at something like YAML, although this is fairly technical:

http://www.yaml.de/en/overview.html

I see what you are trying to say, I want to learn more about web design, not just use some prefabricated site,  and the site I am thinking to start off is like a magazine, with news every day, but not just test, images and vids too, kind of a blog but with my own design, so after its done, I just have to add the data as a weblog in EE, I dont know If this makes you picture what I want.

First be able to make a standard HTML site from your design using CSS. Then later insert the EE tags to make it flexible.

But keep in mind that you need to be able to extend the content.

EDIT: to understand how the tags work watch the video tutorials:

Yeah, that seems like the general idea. The systems that support one-touch theming and have massive “template archives” that are one-touch installable are limited by that very nature.

It’s challenging to learn how to author markup and use CSS correctly, but if you’re going to try to make a living or a side-income, or use it to build a site to make money off of, especially if you use EE, you’ll be vastly better off starting with a template prototype from practically any template store (free or not), and then gradually tweak it to where you want, learning as you go, eventually using EE tags and weblogs and all the features when you feel comfortable.

You might read this post.

Here’s some links to templates:

http://www.oswd.org/
http://www.opensourcetemplates.org/
http://www.boyink.com/splaat/weblog/category/building-an-expressionengine-site/
http://www.eedesign.org/index.php/eed/
http://expressionengine.com/templates/

And of course don’t forget the Getting Started Guide:

http://ellislab.com/forums/viewreply/362822/http://expressionengine.com/docs/#getting_started

Another great link here. This is the kind of thing that I do but I use InDesign instead. This is only because I use InDesign for magazine layouts that I make and so prefer this as my tool of choice. Also I came from using Freehand many years ago and never really got on with Illustrator and InDesign just kind of ‘worked’ for me. Anyway a good tutorial can be found at :

http://www.aiburn.com/article/building_a_website_wireframe_in_illustrator

Best wishes,

Mark

Ive been told these books are a good starting point, what can you tell me about?

HTML 4 for the World Wide Web (Visual QuickStart Guides) - Elizabeth Castro

HTML Goodies - Joe Burns

Sams Teach Yourself HTML and XHTML in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself…in 24 Hours) - Dick Oliver

I think books are fine, if you are diligent enough to read them and go through examples. Sometimes, they present a bigger-picture in a way that’s useful. But they can be an expensive choice, especially when there is so much free on the internet.

I forgot! The Building A Bug Tracker tutorial explains pretty well how to go about building a small app in EE, including how to setup a basic HTML page structure. I highly recommend!

http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/73498/
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/73002/
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/71705/
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/72331/
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/74131/
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/74713/

There’s also this blog post that may be helpful, although it uses a slightly older version for instruction:

http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/61475/

I used to buy books, $50 a piece. Me and O’Reilly became friends…

The only book I want now is the Mastering Regular Expressions book. I can’t really think of any others.

maybe EE is too much for a beginner, maybe would be better to begin in this using another cms, are they any other CMS more suitable for beginners?

There’s no point. Just jump into it, and you’ll be up to it in no time, building your first site. Yes, there is a learning curve, but you pick up a lot of things as you go along.