Help making my first website

[qwertyasdfg]

Evening all,

I am trying my best to build my own website from scratch without cutting any corners as I want to know what I've done if anything goes wrong with it.

I've had a look at Oscommerce and got stumped even before getting to step one in the tutorial documentation :-(

I also found a site called weebly.com which pretty much does eveything for you and then charges you at the end for support which I'd rather not do.

Can anyone please point me in the right direction on where I should start, what software I will need etc... I found a sticky in the freebies bargain section posted by iceman but most of the links I clicked on were dead.

I beleive I have 55MB of webspace provided by vermin which I'm sure I can upload sh*t to experiment.

Any help and direction on this subject would be great.

Thanks in advance for your time.

 

[kal]

What kind of website (personal, online store etc) is it going to be mate and what kind of features are you expecting? Have you tried Yahoo Geocities?

 

[qwertyasdfg]

Its guna be mail order site for small consumer products, I'm making it for an older family member so its got to be easy to use for him to be able to upload woteva products he wants to sell - but its more of a learning curve for me.

I'll have a squizz at geocities now, thanks for your input.

 

[kal]

Listen mate, try ZEN CART, it is very simple and the support is AMAZING on their forum! I am thinking of building several online stores for the near future, therefore i have made a draft one using them just to master their features etc, and honestly mate can't go wrong with it

 

[qwertyasdfg]

Thanks again for the advise fellah, geocities was a bit like that weebly site, I'll give this ZEN CART a bash.

I was more looking for advise on how to start from scratch, like making a database, how to link and determine which payment methods to use and using this apache server and how to make everything come together etc.... rather than using wizards and drag and drop interfaces to do all the work for me but thanks again.

Listen mate, try ZEN CART, it is very simple and the support is AMAZING on their forum! I am thinking of building several online stores for the near future, therefore i have made a draft one using them just to master their features etc, and honestly mate can't go wrong with it

 

[kal]

Well mate, in the ZEN CART admin panel, once you are in there you will know what i mean. There is no wizards or drag and drop. It does require skill, but thats the whole point of it, you will be very glad you have learnt PHP editing etc. You can add modules to your needs such as various payment methods, side boxes etc. Good thing is, you just activate and deactivate whatever you want through your admin panel. Everything you put in there, gets linked itself, this minimizes errors.

Check some of the free templates out -

Zen Cart Templates Info!, View, Choose & Download Zen Cart Templates

 

[qwertyasdfg]

I don't think I can set this ZEN CART up using vermins free 55mb webspace so I'm trying to search for a FREE domain web host but keep on finding companies which end up charging me a set up fee aaaaarrrrrrggghhh, is there no way I can try before I buy???

Do you know of any FREE domain host providors or am I doing somin wrong here? Yes I know I am a complete noob to this.

Edit: ignore the above, I managed to find a free host!

 

[daveleebond]

Joomla is excellent but i think you would have to host it yourself since it needs php and mysql.

 

[pinkhelmets]

Building a web from scratch is a good way to learn how it all works, but building an online shopping website just isnt something a beginner can build from new imho, you do need to use a template. Also, it would help to get some experience with simple basic design webpages and then you could understand more about html php mysql css plus basics like linking, image creation etc. Also to get initial experience with editing, uploading, ftp, hosting etc.

Jumping in and learning as you go is great, but I believe you have got to accept that this project isnt basic and not something you can just immediately create from scratch. Use templates and any shortcuts available for your new web site, but free simple stuff like Geocities is worth spending some time on too if you want to learn more. Also get basic editing/creating software such as Microsoft Frontpage or Adobe Dreamweaver, that will be essential.

 

[karym6]

pinkhelmets is correct, building an online store with its own shopping cart is a very hefty project to start if you have no experience with this sort of thing.

Joomla is a CMS (content management system), so you could put a store together with this - but you would need to add a shopping cart as well as handle the transactions.

One thing that is very useful for commerce sites is paypal or google checkout. Both these services offer the transaction engine for you, I think for free. This means you dont really need to mess around with completing transactions yourself. I think osCommers works with it as well.

 

[Curly]

I don't think I can set this ZEN CART up using vermins free 55mb webspace so I'm trying to search for a FREE domain web host but keep on finding companies which end up charging me a set up fee aaaaarrrrrrggghhh, is there no way I can try before I buy???

Do you know of any FREE domain host providors or am I doing somin wrong here? Yes I know I am a complete noob to this.

Edit: ignore the above, I managed to find a free host!

Mine is hosted on freevirtualservers.com
I only had to pay to register the domain name.
I think from memory that I have 100mb web space on the free package.

My page is under construction too, so I shall follow this thread.
I did a basic index.html page using ms publisher then used a free ftp client to upload it. Worked fine, but needs finishing off. Yet another unfinished project I have lol

Curly

 

[jayfisher]

i used namecheap.com to buy a domain 8 dollars and a years hosting for 40 dollars, all in all about 30 pound-ish. then i used PHPBB which is a shareware based php forum script which is easy to use just upload to ur server and point ur browser to the install document its as easy as that, but with namecheap u also get something called fantastico which has lots of good databases and scripts such as ecommerce ect. so u could easily make ur payment page and so on.

u would be suprised, making the website is the easy part. give it a week or so on reading and researching and u will be up and running in no time! its promoting which is the hard part.

if u decide to use phpbb there is lots of mod's and support at hxxp://phpbb.com/community hope i helped

Jayfisher

 

[gecouk]

Firstly you don't need a pay server to start off with, get hold of "Wamp" it's a free server you set up on your own machine. Then use Joomla with Virtuemart or Zen and do all your learning and make all your mistakes before uploading the site to a pay server. Believe me you have many hours of struggling and headaches to come but you will be chuffed with the outcome.

There is also "Magento" which is really creating a good buzz for ecommerce sites, you may like to try it out.

All the stuff I mentioned is free and support via various forums is excellent, just google them and I wish you luck.