Before you start building your website

Set realistic design goals

Providing you are some-what computer literate making a website can be a piece of cake! This of course will depend on the complexity of the proposed website and which tools you choose to build your website!

It's a good idea to start with something small and simple to help build your skills and confidence. If you decide to build a huge complex website or pick the most professional and complex tools available to build your first website you could get lost in the complexity and eventually fail in producing a quality website.

Sketching the Layout and Design!!

Before I start a website I get out my drawing pad and roughly draw up a sketch of the design. This way I will know roughly where my content will be placed and in the long run this will save you valuable time! Consider placement of these content areas for your sketch:

• Logo
• Menus
• Articles
• Advertising
• News and Main Content
• Footer
• Links

If your website will contain several pages consider sketching them up too. Sketch your contact page, perhaps the layout for your links page or where you plan to place a gallery. Once you have completed your sketches you should have a basic picture of your website.

Moving Forward - Content Management Systems

What are Content Mangement Systems?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a program which is used to create the framework of a website and manage the content within. There are many Open Source (free) and Commerical (paid) CMS systems available to suit many different purposes eg, Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Websites etc.

A good CMS system is usually easy to use or relative easy to learn. These days you don't need to know any programming, HTML, PHP or SQL skills to make a professional website as many CMS systems have simple drag/drop & insert type interfaces which makes it very easy to create and manage content. Also tutorials are usually available to familiarise you with the system and if not google is not that far away!

Customisation

In most part these systems are flexible to allow you to customise the look and layout of your website to a certain degree. More popular CMS sytems have templates/themes available for download which can be applied to your website changing the overal look without changing your content. Some are available for free whilst others may be purchased. Some graphic designers may even create custom designs for your CMS.

Server Requirements

A CMS system will usually tell you what the requirements are for it to run on your web host. For example, not all web hosts allow you to run a CMS System which mimics youtube which requires certain features for users to be able to upload and run videos from your website. Also some CMS systems prefer PHP version 4+ instead of PHP version 5+.

Hosting a CMS on your computer?

As most CMS systems require Apache, mysql and php it's not possible to simply copy a CMS to your hard disk and run the files. First you will need to install software on your computer that runs apache (depending on your type of CMS). There are some packages available that will install Apache, mysql and php (the basics that many CMS's require).

Here you can find two great packages, I usually prefer Xampp but both do the job:

If you have installed one of the above programs using standard installation your website is usually available from your web browser from this address:

http://localhost

And if you already made a sub folder with your website in it:

For more information about choosing an appropriate CMS System for your website continue on to CMS Systems from my menu.

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