Numismatic and History Discussion Forums > Ancient Coin Forum
Meepzorp's coin website
Andrew McCabe:
--- Quote from: Meepzorp on October 11, 2015, 01:34:14 pm ---.
Andrew and Pete: Why are you advising me not to use Wordpress and to write the code myself? Is there a reason for that advice? What are the negative aspects of it?
--- End quote ---
Meepzorp
Since you've made clear that you are comfortable with technical matters and code, and that you were wary of an automated approach, I think at least you should learn a little basic html skills. Because ultimately everything you publish, whether written yourself or using help such as Wordpress, is translated in html. Trying it yourself allows you to understand "what's under the bonnet" (I think in the US you say "under the hood").
The disadvantage of writing the html yourself is you won't easily be able to make beautiful layout styles easily that may need complex code. And you have to learn it, and it'll take more experimentation. For example when your webpage all turns bold after a certain point, you'll need to search for where you omitted the command. There's no graphical user interface with html - you can't select text and click a "bold" button.
The advantage of writing the html yourself is that a simple webpage should look exactly as you want. If you ask for a table with varying column widths, with a picture to the right, that's exactly what you get. And you'll understand what's under the bonnet, so if something isn't right you can fix it yourself.
The advantages/disadvantages of programmed web page makers are the reciprocal of these.
Even if you decide on a WordPress approach, I think its useful, indeed essential, to understand html anyway, to know what's under the bonnet. I do recommend the w3schools tutorials as a good way to get into html. So maybe the answer is to get some basic experience with html, and do some practice pages. Then switch to a programmed web page maker to produce easy and nice results.
By the way, if you've struggled through Fortran, then html will be a doddle. There's not much in it at a basic level. You will need a good text processor, and I recommend htmlkit (find it via Google). Htmlkit colour codes the different sorts of html commands, ensuring you don't lose that I used as an example! Even better, you can preview your webpage as you are writing it.
I do worry a bit however when you say your PC doesn't have a word processor. Not so much because you need one, but because you've apparently never downloaded a free word processor such as Opendoc. If you are getting into web page publishing, you'll need to be comfortable with downloading and using tools such as htmlkit, and with searching for help, which may need you to download other things. I've made the same point about your photo editing program - you need to download and personally evaluate various tools, and if necessary know how to uninstall programmed that are not for you. And many programmes will require up to date operating systems or web browsers to work well, including necessary plugins such as Java. You can write html on a basic Windows XP machine, and htmlkit will work on such a machine, but I couldn't guarantee that XP with IE6 (if this is what you have) will be suitable for everything.
Akropolis:
Meepzorp:
I am not advocating using code.
I abhor html code, in that I am totally ignorant on it. That's why I use Frontpage 2003.
Use Wordpress if you like. Reviews by dummies like me say Wordpress is more difficult than Frontpage 2003. Others say Frontpage is stone age software. Just right for me. :-)
However, step number one for you is to take a pencil and paper and draw your home page!!! And subsequent pages.
Then go on to putting it into Wordpress or something even easier, like Frontpage.
You might find a used but registerable version of Frontpage 2003 on eBay or other places.
You just have to decide, then do it.
You would not need word processing software, in that you type directly into, say, Frontpage.
You already have a domain, but you may have to download an ftp client software, like free Filezilla, to upload your work to your domain site, if that is what Godaddy requires. Or maybe they have their own ftp client upload software.
PeteB
Meepzorp:
--- Quote from: Molinari on October 11, 2015, 02:01:16 pm ---...and the fact that you want to photograph the written tags of the descriptions (which I advise against)
Nick
--- End quote ---
Hi Nick,
Why do you advise against it?
I just spent 6 months re-writing my tags. And one of the main reasons I did that is so I can just take photos of my tags instead of writing everything out again online. If I am not going to be taking photos of my tags, then I just did all of that for nothing.
Meepzorp
Andrew McCabe:
Postscript - just to say I agree with Nick and I agree with Peter. We are all saying basically the same thing, and we all think that some low-level html skills will be very beneficial. A good webpage may last decades. Doug Smith's webpage is into its third decade (1990s, 2000s, 2010s) and hopefully will have decades to go. I used AltaVista when I made my first pages (who remembers AltaVista?). Today's programs probably won't exist in ten years. But html is forever. So even if you use other tools to make your page, understanding html will allow you to manually tweak it, and may save you from disaster in the future.
One of our Forum colleagues made a very beautiful website about 10 years ago. About 3 or 4 years ago I asked why he hadn't updated it in a while. He said it was because he no longer had any way to access the editor programme (can't recall whether it was because they'd asked for a lot of money, or because the program was no longer supported). Backs up Nick's concern.
Meepzorp:
--- Quote from: Molinari on October 11, 2015, 02:01:16 pm ---Also, why not just start a gallery here on Forvm instead of your own website?
Nick
--- End quote ---
Hi Nick,
There are 2 reasons for this:
1) As I mentioned above, I am planning on taking photos of my hand-written tags instead of re-writing everything again online. If I use Forum's gallery, I don't know how that would be "do-able". For one thing, I'd be combining 4 or 5 or 6 photos into 1 photo instead of 2 photos into 1 photo. Also, no one else does it that way. I think it would look ridiculous in that setting.
2) Considering the way that Forum's gallery is set up, I don't know if what I have in mind would be "do-able". I'd like to do multiple folders. And folders within folders within folders. Also, I'm not 100% sure of the arrangement of the coins in Forum's gallery. It appears to me that they are in simple chronological order (by when they were added). I want to be able to customize the order.
Meepzorp
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