Help a brother out

[hellfish6 7]

Hi guys

I'm getting together with some other homies to start a mod team for OFP1/2. As I'm a total noob at some things in my life, I need to ask y'all for help, especially since I'm about 2 months behind schedule on this.

I'm tasked with creating a website for our little group. I've made a geocities-like site before, but I'd like to avoid that route if at all possible. I have otherwise never made my own site before.

What I need is to create a site with a forum (including a private team area) and a place to upload stuff to (files, betas, research, etc.)

I've got the following questions:

1. Who knows of a good, cheap, reliable host?

2. Whats the best (free) web design program for idiots like me?

3. What am I otherwise forgetting to do?

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Good thread. I want to build a site too (not OFP) but I am too unexperienced for that

[MSpencer 0]

I'd help if your moderator tag didn't intimidate me to the point of pissing myself.

[Silent N Deadly 0]

Quote[/b] ]Whats the best (free) web design program for idiots like me?

I would go with Dreamweaver or Frontpage, and you can just download them. They are fairly easy to use w/ and w/o HTML experience, and they have some very handy features.

[Silent N Deadly 0]

---Deleted--- Stupid post!

Also do you have someone to do graphics?

[hellfish6 7]

I don't know whether to laugh or PR you for spamming.

[hellfish6 7]

Harnu mentioned he could help... otherwise, no. I'm starting work right now on my own, and you wouldn't believe that I'm really not color blind.

[MSpencer 0]

Everything is PRing with you. Jesus.

I'd use FP2004 (Bad program), or Macromedia Dreamweaver (Very expensive, good program).

For an FTP Uploader, I use WSFTP 95LE. It's always served me well.

[m21man 0]

What's the mod about? And who are these other "homies"?

I could do some graphics for you if you need them...

[Mister Frag 0]

Check out http://www.powweb.com/ for hosting -- I've used them for several sites, and they've been pretty good. For $7.77/month, you can't beat them. That gets you a gig of disk space, five gigs per day of bandwidth, backups, decent admin tools, e-mail etc.

[Hit_Sqd_Maximus 0]

and you wouldn't believe that I'm really color blind.  

aaah, that explains it  

[hellfish6 7]

Check out http://www.powweb.com/ for hosting -- I've used them for several sites, and they've been pretty good. For $7.77/month, you can't beat them. That gets you a gig of disk space, five gigs per day of bandwidth, backups, decent admin tools, e-mail etc.

You rock. Thats an awesome service and I just signed up for it. Thanks.

[ralphwiggum 6]

Quote[/b] ]Whats the best (free) web design program for idiots like me?

I would go with Dreamweaver or Frontpage, and you can just download them. They are fairly easy to use w/ and w/o HTML experience, and they have some very handy features.

another vote for Dreamweaver. if not Front page would do too.

another source you might find useful

http://www.tucows.com/

[Akira 0]

Been awhile since I worked on webpages. Used Adobe GoLive ($$$$), Dreamweaver; various versions ($$$), Coffee Cup (think that was the name) ($), and when I got a lot better, just started using Notepad. They all have good and bad points. I built our division's (at work) website with Coffee.

Just remember that just because a program is more expensive doesn't mean its better.

[Mister Frag 0]

Check out http://www.powweb.com/ for hosting -- I've used them for several sites, and they've been pretty good. For $7.77/month, you can't beat them. That gets you a gig of disk space, five gigs per day of bandwidth, backups, decent admin tools, e-mail etc.

You rock. Thats an awesome service and I just signed up for it. Thanks.  

Also, if you want to set up a forum, I have used Invision Power Board with Powweb, and it's been a pleasure to work with. It allows you to create public and private forums.

All you need to do is activate the MySQL support in your Powweb package (which is optional, but free), and then upload the PHP files for Power Board. Since PHP support is already active for all Powweb packages, that's pretty much all there is to it to get started. Of course, you are probably already quite familiar with Iconboard...

[Skul 0]

Check out http://www.250free.com/. It gives you 250 MB OF SPACE FREE! And it's got a heap of other things, like a WYSIWIG HTML page builder.

This is what you get:

250MB Storage

Sub-Domain

Full FTP Access

File Transloader Free Site Enhancements

Free Help Forum

WYSIWYG Page Builder

Web-Based File Manager

Ok, now that I've told you that, I'll be expecting some money in the mail, okay?

[Gareth Gates must die]

[Longinius 1]

"1. Who knows of a good, cheap, reliable host?"

I recommend www.nomonthlyfees.com

I have my site hosted there myself. You only pay one time every year, and thats basically for the domain name and a small fee. You get:

- 600MB of Webspace! (more than enough)

- Free Domain Name! (not really true, its baked into the fee)

- 25 Gigs Transfer (good enough)

- Unlimited Sub-Domains

- Unlimited MySQL DB's (very sweet)

- Unlimited FTP Accounts (yummy)

- Unlimited Email Accounts (useful for a group of people

- FrontPage Extensions

- Personal CGI-BIN

- Server-Side Includes

- Hit Counter

- Site Search Engine

- Super Fast Servers (fast enough anyway)

- UNIX Based

- JAVA, Perl, PHP, ...

- RealAudio/Video

- URL Redirection

- Anonymous FTP

- FTP/SSH Access

- Tons Of Free Scripts

- 24/7 Tech Support (VERY good guys)

Cost: $99 For The First Year,

$70/Year Thereafter

It also has a easy to use web interface to manage the site, with good help documents available

"2. Whats the best (free) web design program for idiots like me?"

Dreamweaver is good, but I dont know if its free.

"3. What am I otherwise forgetting to do?"

At this stage, nothing. Make sure you actually learn the basics of HTML though, even if you use a "What you see is what you get"-editor.

[hellfish6 7]

I just registered my first domain. W00t!