TIGSource Forums

So, I'm looking around to find tips on how to build a good website. Besides designing the visual look and information format, I have no clue on how to create a proper website. I've always only used html, did a bit of asp back in college but don't remember much of it. So here are a few questions, maybe you could help me. As you will see, I'm close to being totaly clueless when it comes to the creation of a website.

• Is there some easy blog module or whatchamagig to ease the writting of a blog? Seriously, besides from updating the html, I'm not sure how it works. You create a data base or something?
• How can you create a form to have people send you comments instead of using an email adress? What is the most common language tool used to do so?
• I don't know flash at all. So besides flash, what web programming language and tools would you recommend?
• I've seen many website use this before and I'd like to know... How does the "Donation" feature work? What do you guys use? What are the requirements to do so?
• What is the best web creation tool I could use to create the website? I used Frontpage like a few times but didn't really liked it so I switched to NotePad :P Which one do you use?

Thanks!

There are lots. If you have the capacity to run PHP/MySQL I recommend WordPress (http://wordpress.org/).

http://www.nconsulting.ca/nc-cms/ Simplest setup by far. Database not required.

I'm assuming you want to prevent against spambots. Use a simple PHP script, or even simpler, make the email address an image.

Look into creating a paypal button.


Notepad++ with nc-cms as backend.

I gotta second wordpress for the blog module.  You can set up a form using the Pages option.
The donation feature can easily be set up into a Paypal.

If you wanna write code for HTML, might I recommend UltraEdit?  Also, making a game (without Flash) means either going into Java or O3D.  Of course you can make a more simple game using PHP/Javascript (but it won't do too much without getting super complicated.)

Thanks guys! I'll look into your recommendations :)
Paypal eh? Hmm, never used it before. I gotta look into that.

Oh and hey, if other people are having questions about website creation, post your questions here! :)

Personally my advice is make your site very simple at first. Sites that are too cluttered, especially sites with forums that have millions of subforums but few posts, turn me off automatically. Maybe that's just my pet peeve, though.

^^^ This. I don't know if the OP wants to add a message board to his site, but I feel the exact same way when I come across a board with 20 different forums and none of them have any posts in them. It just screams "amateur". It's better to let your site/board evolve naturally as it gets more visitors, members and content.

I agree. An empty forum is so depressing. It doesn't give a good image to the website at all, in my opinion.

For the blog - gotta go with Wordpress.  It's simple, effective, and easy to use.

As for the website itself - I use dreamweaver.  I don't actually like dreamweaver too much, but someone bought a copy for me, so I use it.

As for a donation button - use paypal.  It's a relatively simple process of just registering and then putting an image with a link on it.


I actually had a question about this myself. 
Basically, how do I use these? 
Can I just grab some code somewhere and then stick it into my website and have it work already? 
How do I even go about finding that code?

In addition, I was wondering if anyone could tell me how to create a block of information to be used in multiple pages.  Like, my top menu that contains the links to [HOME,GAMES,BLOG,ABOUT].  I want that to appear in every page without having to copy and text the same code in every page.  It becomes kind of a hassle when I have to edit stuff...

For email forms you can just use a cgi script. There's one called formmail.cgi, I think, or sendmail.cgi. You just place it in your cgi-bin directory and alter the parts in the script that specify the receiver's email address. And then point the webform to this script. When a user fills in the form and hits "Send", it's sent to this script which will parse the fields of the form and submit it as an email to you.

I installed wordpress and I will try it soon. So far it looks easy to use, I just need to find out how to customize its looks to my liking.
Thanks! :)

i use drupal, which is similar to wordpress but not specific to blogs (it's designed for entire sites and has lots of plug-ins); i've tried wordpress but didn't like it as much as drupal, although wordpress's themes tend to be prettier

For a simple email contact form you could try something like this

http://www.kirupa.com/web/php_contact_form.htm

be aware that spam bots often use these things, so some sort of counter measure is usually required like a captcha image, or just filter for key text (sex nude xxx paris hilton etc) before sending the message.

yeah, i'd definitely recommend just using your email rather than a contact form due to the spam problems those give you (and all the headache it gave me): just put your email directly on your site, and let people use it