I know a little bit about website development and have made a few in the past. But some of them I paid a company for the template and then I just maintained the site. But this time someone asked me to make one and it has to be kind of similar to ebay or craigslist so I need some questions answered.
1) Is Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 the best program to use at my skill level for creating websites? Or are there other more simple programs. (I have used FrontPage quite a bit but it is unavailable for a free trial version and I don’t really want to invest 200-400$ at first for this website seeing as this idea might not hit off.)
2)Once I do get my website done, I read that you have to get someone to host it? (My employer has already bought the url off godaddy) How exactly do I send my stuff to a webhost and then make daily or weekly changes to the website when needed? (This website idea is going to be ran from our homes. We don’t work for a big corporation that has its own servers)
3)Do you know of any good tutorials that can help me with a more advanced kind of site like ebay or craigslist?
1) Dreamweaver is probably a good choice to get started.
2) Yes, you will need web hosting. I recommend using a Virtual Private Server (VPS) type of hosting account. I use linode.com which starts at $20/m but there are many out there. With a VPS you get your own full operating system, and it seems to you like a whole server all to yourself, but really it’s run inside a virtualization container so they can run a whole bunch of them on one server. That gives you a lot of advantages, for example, you only have to pay for what you need, and when you need to upgrade, they can just change the settings so you have more CPU access, RAM, etc. without you having to change anything. Also it’s the lowest cost way to go. If you try to get cheaper, like the $5/m webhosts, you’ll find they have poor uptime, and a lot of hidden restrictions.
3) You will pretty much need to be doing more than just making a "web site" but rather, making a whole "web application." I recommend that you use RubyOnRails, because Ruby is easy to learn and makes sites like this a lot easier to build. That would also mean not using Dreamweaver, except maybe for the user interface. Instead you would use a program editor such as RadRails or Netbeans. If you choose Ruby, I recommend the book Agile Web Development with Ruby.
Another alternative is using Perl or Python. You could use PHP, which is easier for the baby steps, but making a large web app in PHP can often be more difficult than using other languages.
Expect to sink a large number of development hours into a site like this.
Also I advise not to worry about the way the site looks until after you have all the features working, otherwise you can work on it "forever" without getting it working.
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