Well there is no easy way to ask this particularly when your a total novice. I have my own website it is rather simple and was constructed using templates provided by the host. As I have become more familiar with the internet I am aware of the sites limitations but what the hell I like it. Anyway for some reason I started to consider developing or designing a directory Oh Boy! This is proving rather daunting as I genuinely only have a limited knowledge of the internet and PC skills. However, I was in contact with someone by the name of Jim Westergen and he suggested that i post a message here. I hope you have a helpful community who does not mind sharing some of its knowledge. What I need is a package or software that will allow me to develop a directory (something similar to painting by numbers). Seriously, something that a novice could get her head round. I would then need someone to host the directory so I would also appreciate advice on this. Finally, (honest) I do not have any software that allows me to upload files to a webhost so I was wondering if this can be overcome or can anyone suggest suitable easy to follow software. Any help and advice would be appreciated and should I ever manage to get this off the ground then I would be happy to share my experiences and provide links to those who of you with directories. Shelley.
Hi Shelley Well that's quite something you're asking here. First of all, do you want to make everything yourself or do you want to use premade packages? I asume the easiest way to go is using premade packages because this doesn't require a whole lot of programming experience except the bare essentials. The first thing I would recommend you is learning the internals of a website, which technologies do what, what they're used for. To summarize it a little for you: XHTML This is that basic technology for most websites. XHTML is a markup language, meaning that it tells what the described data is. Example: <p>this is some data</p> The P element is telling the browser that "this is some data" is a paragraph. Another one: <h1>some other data</h1> The H1 elements means that "some other data" is a title. To test this in realtime, just make a new text document and put this in it: <html> <head> <title>My title</title> </head> <body> <p>Hello, I'm a paragraph</p> </body> </html> Save it as "mysite.html" and open it in your favorite browser. To learn more about this, I recommend you this website: http://www.w3schools.com/ Take the HTML tutorials first and afterwards XHTML. They will explain what HTML and XHTML is, how you use it and there's a very handy reference with all the elements. CSS Of course you want your site to look nice and have a layout. This is the job CSS does. CSS for example tells that a paragraph has this or that font, how big your title is, that your navigation is on the left side of the page, etc. At W3schools you can learn more about this. It's not that easy but some practice will get you far WYSIWYG editors If you don't want to spend too much time learn CSS and HTML you can also use a WYSIWYG editor. With these programs you make you site visually, without coding things. The most popular ones are Dreamweaver and Frontpage. I do recommend you atleast learn HTML a little. With the above technologies you have the look and feel of your website, but not the directory functionality. I asume you want to be able to login to your directory to add stuff or want visitors to fill in forms and such. To have that functionality a server side language is needed like PHP or ASP and most likely a database like MySQL. Without prior exprience it's pretty hard to learn PHP or ASP. I can recommend you the tutorials at WebMonkey, that's where I learned it. But as I said before, you can also use a premade package. You can find such applications at http://www.hotscripts.com/ (look in the PHP section). To be able to install these things you need a webhost. If you want a cheap one http://www.site5.com/ will do, if you want something very good ask at http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ If you have a host you'll need to install the package or script, which is usually described in a file you got with it or the documentation. Most of the time it goes like this: upload all the files to your server make the database. To upload your files you need an FTP program. Have a google search for FileZilla or smartFTP, two relieable FTP programs which are free and easy to install. Creating the database is a harder task. A good host will have some preinstalled scripts like PHPMyAdmin. This script lets you create and fill a database. Anyway, I believe this all may sound a little hard for you and seem a bit daunting. The best thing you do now is get a hosting account that has preinstalled scripts, and most likely a directory script will be among them. You simply activate this scripts with the click of a button and you're off to go. The only thing you have to do then is editing the layout, there's usually more info on that in the documentation of the script. It's also much easier if you go step by step and ask a question here from time to time instead of trying to ask everything at once. Learning HTML, CSS, PHP and how it all ties together will take quite a while. Just take your time reading tutorials, searching Google and asking around at these forums and first and foremost: practice a lot.
You don't say what your budget is but the fastest way to reach your goal is to obtain a script to create and maintain the directory that used PHP and MySQL. Don't let that scare you, just follow the simple instructions. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=SUNA,SUNA:2005-51,SUNA:en&q=directory+script To upload your files, I use this free program: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ Finally, for hosting your directory, I have had excellent results from: http://nomoreprograms.com/web-host/
Thank you both for your advice I have taken note of what you have said. Having read all your points it does seem a lot more daunting. However, I do not care how long it takes I will make an effort to improve my knowledge of html etc. I cannot say when i will get this project up and running, but hopefully I will be able to post a new thread providing details of my own directory. Once again thanks for your assistance and now down to the homework. Shelley
I suggest you can use one of the open source cms for your website which also has directory module. something you can looks drupal, xoops, mambo
ausidesi: Drupal doesn't have a directory module, though it had one in one of the older versions, it doesn't work in current one Shelley: look at the site in my signature, it has the select list of directory scripts. I can help you install one if you wish, for free of course.
having the following knowledge can get you on xhtml cpanel management email management php/mysql installations atleast a little knowledge of php and sql functions thats enough..to start and run your own directory.thats how i started myself at first and slowly learn other things.
phplinkdirectory wsnlinks cplinks UK Host oneandone streamlinenet fasthosts I do not use any of the above, they are just a few after looking at my isp forum. Criteria for choosing a host include reliability (uptime/support), disk space and bandwidth. Most shared hosting comes with Fantastico these days which makes it easy for novice to do site maintenance. Some hosting package also comes with a domain name. US Host asmallorange totalchoicehosting hostgator These are the ones recommended by people in this forum. You need a ftp client. coreftp and smartftp are popular choices but I use leechftp. Yes it's dead long time ago but it does its job Domain registration namecheap godaddy 123-reg As mentioned before you will need the following skills: photoshop/fireworks/paintshoppro/pen&paper - for design html/css - for layout php/(my)sql/phpmyadmin - for database management javascript - you can substitute php code with javascript for certains task, there are many free scripts around. I hope this will get you started.
To get your feet wet, most hosting cpanels have directory scripts. Just use one of those. Simple set up. The Iowa Dawg