Posted by Andy Dingley on 06/18/07 11:10

On 18 Jun, 04:15, "Nobody Important" <nob...@myfakeemailserver.org>
wrote:

> I'm trying to build a website that will feature text, images, and links to
> documents and Youtube videos. I'm a newbie but have built several FrontPage
> websites in the page on Ipowerweb. Due to the content the site will be
> hosted on a freedom of speech server that does not support FrontPage
> extensions.

FrontPage is bad for two reasons:

* It makes terrible HTML

* FrontPage extensions on the server are harder to find than simple
ftp and they're also unworkably fragile if any non-FP users move files
around. This reason _alone_ is sufficient to avoid FP if you're on any
sort of collaborative project.

I strongly suggest that you abandon the WYSIWYG trail, learn some HTML
and learn to code directly with a text editor. Provided that you learn
to to do this correctly, then it's easy. If you follow any of the
myriad "easy web tutorials" then you'll learn the wrong things, badly
and by spending far too much effort on it. This stuff is dead easy
(hey, you know C++) but it's ridiculously hard to find accurate,
reliable tutorials for it amongst all the dross.

I recommend:

* Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML (O'Reilly)
* Cascading Style Sheets, Lie & Bos

I don't recommend _any_ other books or websites. There might be some
more out there that aren't garbage, but I haven't found them yet.


> For an example of what I want - visit http://www.aboutkenpangborn.com

That's not goood enough practice that I'd recommend following it. In
particular it uses frames for trivial banners and menus. Frames are a
nuisance and these minor uses of them don't justify their downside.
CSS can do the fixed banners and SSI (or simple cut-and-paste) can do
the shared menu.

If you're going to use anything as a template, then make sure it's a
good one. Resources like A List Apart, brainjar.com and glish.com are
competent here, most others aren't.

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