Web Sites for amateur radio

So You want to make a Web Site? There are several things you need to know about web sites before you start to think about making one: –Free Hosting or paid hosting company? –Domain Name – is the www. XXX.UUU (this is the part after the it will be determined by the kind of hosting you are going to use. –How many pages are you going to have? Some of the answers will determine how you are going to make your web site.

Hosting There are Free and paid hosting accounts. The Free hosting will have some strings attached – so read the Fine Print –May have Ads posted on your web pages –Will have limitation on how to program site etc. –May have a limitation on number of pages etc. –Free hosting may restrict your domain name

Hosting cont’d Paid Hosting will give you a lot more flexibility (but it has costs) Most Hosting companies will have several levels of hosting (for most of us – the entry level will be adequate) The cost is ~ $ 4 - $ 7 a month This will get you 100 Gb storage, large bandwidth, addresses, 2 – 10 SQL databases

Hosting cont’d SQL Data bases – these are used for data storage and programs. Joomla & Drupal uses a SQL data base as the source of the program. If you want to use forms, this may require a data base. Some free hosting don’t have SQL data base.

There is also Google, QRZ, others. Your service provider may also give you some space.

Paid Hosting Most will have web-building software that you can use (free). You will have to register your domain name ( etc.) – registration varies depending on type.com,.net etc. ~ $ 13 / year – depending on typewww.wb5cxc.com Some will have ‘build site tonight’ (these will have a limited number of pages and usually cost more).

Domain GoDaddy

I did a search for wb5cxc.com – it is already used, but I can get others domains with wb5cxc

Paid Hosting cont’d The hosting company will have web design programs that you can install – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. (these are free web software programs) With paid hosting you will probably use a software program to program your site.

GoDaddy New customers

Control Panel for Linux hosting (GoDaddy) Most of the hosting companies will have Linux or Window (you can use Linus hosting – has better stuff)

Web Configuration Software These programs will take your configuration and make the HTML & other code needed for the web site. For our purposes the software ranges from ~ $ 50 to $ 300. The most popular programs are $ $ 200. Some have discounts for teachers and seniors. Some will discount the software when new versions come out.

Software cont’d For Windows – Web Design Studio 5 ($ 150) – Xara Web Designer Pro ($ 99) For MAC you can use Sandvox ($ 80) or Freeway 5 ($ 150). These programs are WYSIWYG, have menu development, picture handling, etc. Most of these programs will have Demo version that you can download and try.

Software cont’d The Xara Web Designer site has some very fine video tutorials on how to use their software. You can see how this kind of software works. Most of the software programs that are listed work about the same.

Software cont’d The software will also upload your web configuration to your hosting company. There are several folder in a standard web site (your pages, all the pictures and files etc.) Your software will arrange all this data for you and make it easy for you to upload it to the server.

Web Site Structure –

Design of Your Site You should start with an outline of the pages you want to build. If you have a lot of pages (> 5), then you will need to put them in categories so you can do a menu. The menu can have sub- menus etc.

Design Your Site cont’d On my program you can make a change to the menu on one page and it will change all the menus on every page (not all software will do this – this is a very good feature when you have quite a few pages and want to add pages etc. – that way you don’t have to change every page).

Design Your Site cont’d On my software (each software program is different) I picked a layout from the gallery – changed the colors and made some modification. This is used as the base and when I start a new page I would duplicate the standard page and then save it with the new page name. When I got all my pages done I started on the menu.

Menu configuration screen

Design Your Site cont’d Your program should be able to insert HTML code from other programs into the your page. There are all kinds of small HTML modules that you can insert into your web site (like the current propagation etc.) These programs have all kinds of things to help make your web site.

This is an example of what you can insert into your web site. You can go to to get the code for this. They have many different types/styles of data.

Part of page off

Design Your Site cont’d Pictures can be a major problem to include on your web site. Pictures get changed when they are added to your website. The resolution is changed to web standards (to reduce your load time). Each program will handle pictures differently. My old program was a little harder to size the picture etc. The new program is really easy to work with pictures.

Design Your Site cont’d Each program will have advantages and disadvantages. My current program handles pictures good, but don’t have tables. There is a learning curve on the software. So be prepared to put in some time in learning it.

Design Your Site cont’d The software program should have the capability to view your page. Your web page may display differently in other browsers. It should also be able to display the whole web site so you can test it out. The software should allow you to upload to your hosting server.

Web Site Page Each browser displays your page differently, that is because it doesn’t display your page, it is an interpretation of the source code for your page. About the only thing that will be the same is the text.

Part of my Home Page.

Part of the Code for my Home Page – there are 216 lines of code for this page!

View Source Code To View the Source Code – on your browser click ‘View’ and then select ‘Source’ The page will probably different languages on the page – JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc.

Keeping Web Site Up to Date Depending on your web site – keeping it up to date – can be a major problem. If it is a site that has activities, then it will need to be updated weekly and/or monthly This can be a very time consuming job if the site was not built with this in mind, or is not made to update easily, even so it will take some time to modify it each time.

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