Creating a website

Farmer Ann

Member
I have been following this forum for some time and learnt alot from various threads:D.

I am now wanting to create my own website to advertise our farm's free range pork, and having started with a pen and paper I am now working on the code. I know Dreamweaver reasonably well, and am gaining a some knowledge of CSS but have a couple of sticking points at the moment -

Firstly I want to create a news pages in the form of a blog, is this easy to do within a website, and do I need something other than Dreamweaver to do this or any special facilities from a host?

Secondly I am trying to create a footer that moves up and down with text, I have followed a couple of tutorials on the subject but they each have a sticking point, can anyone recommend a really good tutorial?:(

I hope someone out there can help me get under way.
Thanks
 
Hi Ann,

Welcome to DF!

If you want to implement a blog, I think Wordpress would be your best option. Wordpress is a great blogging platform that you can customize with your own code to make it look the way you want it.

Many hosting companies have auto install of Wordpress, so you just have to click on a button and then it installs it on your server. Without getting into too much technical detail, you can then have a static front page as your homepage, and another page with your blog on it.

At first it can seem a bit confusing, but once you get the hang of it, it's actually quite easy and straightforward to use. Since you know some CSS already you should be able to customize it to suit your needs.

There's a big community around Wordpress and an abundance of tutorials and guides out there.

You can find the official website here: WordPress › Blog Tool and Publishing Platform

And here are some good tutorials: Top 50 Wordpress Tutorials | Nettuts+

If you need any help just give us a shout here on the forum, and I'm sure someone can assist you if you get stuck on something.

Regarding the footer. I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Can you maybe provide an example?

Thanks!
Soren
 
That actually helped me out too.
Want to create a new website and have 3-4 static pages and a blog on the end.
 
Thank Aarlev,
I thought someone may say Wordpress. Do I need to get a server supplier now, or can I develop the site off line?
 
You can develop on a testing server such as XAMPP, this runs on your machine locally.
 
Thanks Harry and Ralph for the suggestions.
I will look at both options, can you also recomend a host for the final website. I have used 123 in the past - will this give me everything I need?
 
Hay Farmer Ann,
Loving the fact that you are actually a farmer doing this for your self spot on. :clap:
A news section would depend entirely on what you need. How big will it be for starters?
As in will it be a few lines saying something like today we have released our new free range pork and mint burgers, or will it be more padded out say 500-1000 words per article.

If it the first one you would only need 1 extra page then you just have a basic news template.

For example ~
<h2>Title goes here</h2>
<p>
News goes in here
</p>
<p>
Written on: Change the date<br />
By Farmer Ann.
</p>


And there you go.

If you need more than one page
1. Create the above template on a new page.
2. Give the page a name any thing you want perferably the name of the article but instead of spaces hyphens.
3. Add a snippet to the category page and a link to the page with the full article and there you go.

Can you write HTML that, as Harry says, will help?
If not I would pick up ~ Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML: Amazon.co.uk: Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman: Books

It runs you through good XHTML and CSS it's amazingly easy to pick up, I had one of the earlier versions when I tought myself. I tend to read about a book a month and out of my huge library that is by far the easiest one to learn. I wish all books were like that.

It'll also teach you about how to create pages and link them together giving you what you want. :)
 
Thanks Jaz - great detail.
I do know HTML and getting better at CSS. I could set up a basic news page but am I right that a sites search engine rating are improved with a regularly updated blog? This is at least the method in my madness. I also think people like sites they can interact with?
 
Well yeah a sites freshness can help as in it shows the sites not dead and some positions can be effected if there freshness looks like it is stale but it depends on the site TBH. Some sites don't get updated that often, I find loads of sites that are years old and haven't been updated in years because they are relevant to the search I've just preformed. Making small changes now and again to the code, the odd word can keep it fresh, content wise you should only add it if it makes sense to your business/company, irrelevant content wont benefit anyone.

PPL like sites that load quickly and can give them what they need, information wise, as quick as possible.

Average time on any webpage is only 10seconds including page load time, then 54% of users bugger off after 2 page loads so yeah interactivity helps but only if it aids the user in finding the info, if it makes the site long to load, that will start to hurt your rankings soon, and will just get in the way.

If you can set a basic weblog up I would do that TBH, but I wouldn't relie on it for your sites overall SEO more of a benefit. :)

If you do set a weblog up think about the content you will add to it and if it will benefit your company or even get used.

Got a site and maybe I or some of the other members can give you some more beneficial SEO advice that would benefit you more. :)
 
Now you have left me in a quandary. I could set up my site using dreamweaver that I already have and am familiar with without a blog page. However I really want my site to be current and stand out to attract customers so I thought a blog may be worth the effort. Clearly I have nothing to show you at the moment, just tons more questions.
What do you think I should do?
 
Bare in mind if you use Dreamweaver but code through it it's not bad, just don't let it do the coding.
Well it's a company site right, so to be honest it should be a news page about the company, not really a weblog in my opinion.

But does it really need a weblog?
Information wise you will have to think who will come to your site. Business to business, or business to consumer?

Because if it is business customers who will come to your site then the information will have to be different but also structured differently. That needs to be your first concern in my opinion because business users will want to know more about the company to establish trust, supply lines, business cost in bulk, reliability. Consumers on the other hand will want to know more about the process that goes into the food, nutritional value of the food, where to buy it from, if its cared for because consumers who will look for your site will be to be honest people like me who are into their health and want to know where their food comes from before it enters their body.

Antibiotics used, what kind of feed, feed containing Oestrogen for example are yet more questions I would want the answer to.

You see the two different types of information needed?
We are not even talking about peoples persona's yet so is a weblog really necessary in this case?

Bare in mind if you think about it and I only thought about it for less than 30 seconds, you know your business more than me, you can come up with more info. If it is more consumer based let me know as I'm starting more and more to check out the suppliers websites as meat is not just meat. Most modern meat contains antibiotics which then enters our body making us immune and thus when we need them to cure superbugs they are useless, a lot of large fish are high in mercury and so many supplier websites are lacking in the intel I need to go to the supermarket and say I want such and such meat from such and such company, my other half really loves going shopping you can imagine especially after I read a new book. :D

For example again just thinking off the top of my head a lot of suppliers buy in meat from other supplies to meet supermarket demand. Now chicken suppliers who under no circumstances buy Danish chicken to meet demand I would want to know about as Danish chicken suppliers are notorious for adding bovine proteins to the chicken breasts so they can pump it with 50% more water and thus screw the consumer by providing less protein meat at twice the cost. Bare in mind the UK regulators have a budget of 20k a year for tests and legal action and the big companies have multimillion pound companies you can see that not many are taken to court over it, so a lot goes unchallenged, I then want to know which companies I can trust.

On top of that good supplier websites, which is so far not many, I remember and make an effort of only buying those kind of products when I next go shopping.

So your first choice shouldn't be should I have a weblog, but who comes to my website, then work out the information structure of the site, because to be honest, and trust me here you could get great positions alone just from providing great detailed intel that other suppliers just don't add to their sites.
 
Thanks Jaz,
Being a farmer I work the other end of the day to you!

My customers are going to be the consumers. As far as the lay out of my site is concerned we are majoring traceability down to knowing which pig the meat comes from, and giving the pigs a really old fashion non intensive rearing. These issues will be covered on other pages, along with choices in meat cuts through to bespoke sausages, and introducing our individual mums (very rare breed) and how to cook the perfect roast with crackling.

Our news page will be to cover everything from the birth of our latest litter, prizes won in the show ring to new sausage mixes and (hopefully) some awards for flavours.

I do write my own code and use dreamweaver manly as a viewer.
 
Aww recipes now that's a good idea, should have it's own clear section off the global nav IMO, make sure you go more then just the ideal cracking and include more fresh veg and proper recipes like that because someone who will come to your site looking for nutritional info, checking where the meat comes from that sort of thing will be more interested in that sort of info.

And that's your weblog.

Personally with some well placed ads to give you some more revenue but make it focused to organic pork based recipes you could include loads if you get creative.

I eat low simple carbs, high protein high fat, and when you eat like that all the time you want new ideas on recipes you know because of the more limited choices and pork based are in my experience limited. Chicken loads so go that route to exploit more traffic.

The other stuff IMO should be a news page, they shouldn't need dedicate pages as they wont be article style entries they will be much shorter news entries about the company.

Let me know when you have a version up. :)
 
Now I am starting to feel really ignorant (or just a farmer) - what is the global nav IMO? I like the sound of income from advertising but I would be greatful if you could explain what this means.
 
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