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[chaoticag]

I'm looking to get a website up for a friend of my brother's. I'm sure we won't have problems securing a domain name, and the server we can do on this end too, but the problem comes with the actual, well, infrastructure of the whole thing.

The concept design (where everything on the page goes, and the art) down, it's just a matter of dealing with having the pages made, and possibly dealing with a database (this is going to deal with car parts and ordering them, so Google search is pretty much out since we're not searching for pages).

Does anyone have any software they'd recommend, or would be able to do this?

[Enzo]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but your options are pretty much learning HTML (and probably CSS, and PHP for the database) or hiring a web designer. There are programs that can help like Dreamweaver and Expression Web, I've never used them (notepad ftw) but I believe they require an understanding of the coding to use at all effectively. I could recommend great tutorials, but that's about all the help I can be.

[Blargityblarg]

You can make a very basic website with Dreamweaver without any experience or much trouble; just some trial and error- but it'll be *very* basic- we're talking Geocities here.

[chaoticag]

I guess HTML is the only option then. Unless someone knows a webdesigner.

[lordcooper]

A friend of mine is a pretty talented wed developer who's recently started working commercially.  Here's a link in case you're interested.

[chaoticag]

Ah, thanks, do you know of anything he personally did? I'm trying to, for lack of a better word, sell this to my brother, and he's a stickler for details, so knowing that stuff can really help.

[lordcooper]

I'm afraid he doesn't really have much online at present, being fairly new to the commercial side of things.  He's run a few personal projects over the years, encompassing everything from hosting to video sharing sites.  http://spreadyourtweets.com/ is a recent twitter app he's released which seems to be gaining popularity pretty damn quickly.  He could probably show you some more relevant examples if you drop him a message through his website.

[Sergius]

Depending on the content of the site you may want to consider a CMS system such as drupal or wordpress. You'll need to create the templates in HTML anyway.

[alway]

This website is your friend when it comes to learning web development: http://www.w3schools.com/
HTML is basic web page stuff, CSS adjusts the look/layout of things, Javascript adds various functionality, SQL is databases, PHP is server-side functionality. All these would be necessary to make a good web page. Ajax is another handy one, as that allows for loading of web content without reload the entire page; and while not required for your project, it would probably be useful.

If you aren't really good at it though, I would suggest finding someone who knows what they are doing if you plan on it being a commercial website; any sort of financial transactions done incorrectly by amateur coders is a recipe for disaster. The risk of bad code combined with the time cost of learning all the numerous things required (for a programmer, no big deal, but for a non-programmer, it will take a good long time), followed by the time of implementing and fully debugging, means you are probably better off paying for someone to put it together for you. However, if the website is merely a side note for your business and no actual financial transactions or anything complicated like that is taking place, you should do it yourself, as it requires much less knowledge and things can't get screwed up too badly; in that case it simply comes down to how much spare time you have.

[Azkanan]

Dreamweaver is magic. It's not going to make you a top-end website, that comes with skill, but it'll make you *A* website. It's great for learning the code, too.

If you wanted to make a table, for example, you click the table button and set the parameters. It makes it. You then switch to Code View, and you can see the code for it.

I'd suggest a truckload of tutorials though, so that it looks somewhat decent, or at least, not amateurish. But again, that mostly comes with Experience.

[GlyphGryph]

There are quite a few web devs on this site who might be willing to give a discount to a fellow B12er (like myself!), and if you've got the server and the design down pat and a fairly limited number of pages, it might not actually be too bad price-wise. Basic content-level database stuff isn't that pricey, but anything beyond basic html/sql can get expensive.

If you do it yourself, like others have mentioned, don't try to do any sort of buying or ordering through it. Get a vendor manager of some sort to handle those transactions. Easiest way would be just to have anything that needs to be "purchased" simply be a link to a vendor website that handles that element.

If you do decide to do it mostly as HTML, you'll need at least php for the database. And I recommend you learn (and make heavy use of) the PHP Include command. (Basically, keep shared page elements in a separate file and simply include them in the pages that need them. Saves a lot of headaches!)