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jimmi3577
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Newbie, needs template for NEWS site - 1/29/2008 7:28:55
Due to a near fatal medical situation I am now stuck at home. I have a News site URL that I am going to develope. Due to a severly limited income I can't afford to hire a webmaster and I have almost NO web experience. I can't upload to the site ok and I have a free template but its not what I am looking for, I want a NEWS style template. I can't find any free news template so Can I make my own? And if yes how do I do this? Photoshop?
I have photoshop, front page 2003, dreamweaver MX studio and adobe page maker availible to me.
I looked at many new oriented sites and I like www.worlnetdaily.com 's format its clean looking. I alo like the new york times site.
Any suggestions?
Any way to make a template?
Free template?
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Tailslide
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RE: Newbie, needs template for NEWS site - 1/29/2008 7:45:39
Ok this might be a bit unexpected - but have you considered using WordPress? You can use it either as a blog or as a "normal" non-blog site - I use it all the time as a content managment system for my clients so that they can easily update their sites.
There are literally hundreds of different themes (skins) out there for any sort of WP site you can think of - there must be a "news" looking one out there.
It's not horribly difficult to implement (certainly when compared with building your own site from scratch) and once up and running it's very very easy to maintain and add to. Plus it produces pretty good code so you don't need to worry about your site looking good in other browsers - it generally will anyway, plus obviously - it's free!
Might be worth a look...
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"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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jimmi3577
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RE: Newbie, needs template for NEWS site - 1/29/2008 8:02:58
Well I looked at that site, but I want to generate income from this site I already have. So I am wishing to develope it. I have a good URL name and it's starting to populate the search engines already. I am far from slow, I spent most of the mid 90's to 2004 Building isp's for the owners. Problem is I never played with the actual web site design, my thing was bringing in the bandwidth ie T-1's OC3's PRI's ect. and building the infrastructure of the ISP. But left the web server design part to someone else. So here I am trying to play catch up.
How does one build or create a template, I have searched the web and found not one site that explains this.
Any ideas?
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Tailslide
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RE: Newbie, needs template for NEWS site - 1/29/2008 8:16:13
Ah ok - not much of a good suggestion then!!
The thing is Jimmi that you'll find many different views on here about the "right" way to do things. So I'll preface my opinion on the "right" way to do things with the warning that I'm a hand-coder with a liking for web-standards, semantic code and nice clean markup.
What I'd do is first off create the structure for the page using the correct tags - e.g. headings, paragraphs, lists and divs where required. Here's a good tutorial on building the basic HTML page: http://www.htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/ So in the end you'll have just your clean tags and the content (or mock content)
Now that you've got the structure of the page you can apply a little styling to it using CSS. I'm just on my way out so can't give long examples but that same tutorial site has an excellent CSS section. You basically use the CSS to apply all styling to the page (colour, font, positioning of divs etc) including background images to provide the well backrounds! You can slice these up small in Photoshop. Also google Faux Column technique to get a good way of equal looking columns. Very useful technique that.
_____________________________
"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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jimmi3577
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RE: Newbie, needs template for NEWS site - 1/29/2008 8:27:21
I think I will also learn to code, yes it might be easier to use front page but theres things about front page I am not fond of. So I need to learn code.
I still want to know who to make a template I can use as a basis for the site, or am I off center here?
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caz
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Joined: 10/10/2001
From: Somewhere south of Chester, UK
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RE: Newbie, needs template for NEWS site - 1/29/2008 9:17:48
Hello jimmi, you could look at the templates at Opendesigns they are free and you could use them to learn as well as for your site.
If you are using FP just make sure that you work mostly in code view - no dragging and dropping in Design View - and you should be OK.
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I remember when it took less than 4hrs to fly across the Atlantic.
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Tailslide
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RE: Newbie, needs template for NEWS site - 1/29/2008 10:55:47
quote:
ORIGINAL: jimmi3577
I think I will also learn to code, yes it might be easier to use front page but theres things about front page I am not fond of.
My personal bias is to avoid all WYSIWYG editors even in code view (DW included) but then we all have different ways of working.
What I'd do once you've had a look through the tutorials etc is to aim for the following:
1. Create a basic page structure which will be common throughout most of the site. Do this by using semantic tags (e.g. h1 for the main heading, h2 for the next heading down, p for paragraphs, li for lists, divs to group bits of the page together if necessary such as "sidebar" or "footer"). Make sure you use a DOCTYPE - HTML 4.01 strict or XHTML 4.01 strict (the examples given below already have one).
2. Add in the content if you have it or your best guess using some dummy text if you don't.
3. Now add in a link to the stylesheet in the document head.
4. In the stylesheet you set up the presentational information such as fonts, colours, background images probably created in Photoshop etc where necessary plus where the bits of the page are going to be displayed (I'd advise using floats - stay well away from absolute positioning) such as the sidebar on the left and the main content on the right etc.
5. Now you can take the HTML template page and save it somewhere so you don't lose it - that's your template (DW and FP probably have some fancy way of naming it but I don't need to bother with a HTML editor).
6. So now you want to do the homepage for instance - save a copy of the template as index.html. Now you can add the homepage text. Then if you need another page - for instance, services - just save the template as services.html and add the appropriate text there.
Obviously as you go along you may find certain bits that appear on one page and not another - you can add any exceptions in after you've created the page. Make sure you check the page as you go along in at least Firefox (primary checking browser), IE7, Opera and IE6. If you run into any cross-browser issues come back here and ask and we'll help you solve them.
Here's a page with some pre-done basic layouts that you could use as a template; http://www.code-sucks.com/css%20layouts/
All you'd need to do is probably make the background images a bit fancier looking but it'll give you a good start.
< Message edited by Tailslide -- 1/29/2008 11:21:45 >
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"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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caz
Posts: 3510
Joined: 10/10/2001
From: Somewhere south of Chester, UK
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RE: Newbie, needs template for NEWS site - 1/29/2008 11:26:14
quote:
that's your template (DW and FP probably have some fancy way of naming it but I don't need to bother with a HTML editor).
IN FP2003 the extension is .tem, so you find all your own home made templates when you chose File>New>More page templates>My templates... When you build a new template you just save it as whatever.tem and save it in the current web.
That's after you have built it as Tail has described with semantic code and css. One thing that FP does very well is administration.
_____________________________
Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will dance, or more on your keyboard.
Cheshire cat. www.doracat.co.uk
I remember when it took less than 4hrs to fly across the Atlantic.
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