Building My First Web Site: Part 1

Installing Localhost.....finally!

One of the problems I have with the way websites are designed is the editing and posting of pages.

While the old "static" HTML pages are almost a thing of the past, it was nice to be able to get on your computer at home and create pages which could easily be viewed in IE without any special software. All you needed was Notepad and IE and that combined with knowledge of HTML were the tools necessary to build pages that functioned just fine. I used to create .html files for fun and would build "websites" on my computer back in "the day". I never actually got on the internet with any site, but it was just an interesting experience. With those web sites of old, it must have been a pain in the a** to have to keep re-writing and uploading files when you wanted to change the appearance of the website, but at least it wasn't complicated. Now, with all the different stuff, like .php, .css, .xml etc... I didn't know where to begin in my quest to create a website. With the site that I do have, I had to use a template compatible with Joomla and it didn't seem possible to edit it and make it look good. (all the templates seem to look the same to me) but after days of downloading templates, reading the .css files and reading forums, tutorials etc.... I think I've figured out how it all ticks and it makes a lot of sense to "outsource" a bunch of coding for the appearance of your site to one file so that you can change one file, and change the look of all the pages linked to it.

So when I wanted to work with the template for my website and make it look good, it was hard as heck to figure out what to do. I didn't want to keep changing the appearance of the front page while the millions of people viewing my site (hope you see the sarcasm there) were browsing all the pages and I also didn't want to have a "root directory" index.html file there keeping the people out with an "under renovation" sign. What to do? Oh, yeah, it was also a pain in the but having to keep uploading, downloading or whatever to try and edit/build the pages. Needless to say, I was longing for the good ol' days when you could do it all in one folder on your PC without having to have all that mumblety gumbo stuff like SQL, Apache or whatever, but those days are over and I needed to figure out how to design, build and upload the finished product. Well, I did find out how to do just that!!!

Now, most of you savy people out there probably are laughing as you read this (all "0" of you) because you have known for a long time what needed to be done, but remember, I am a "fast-topping-out-at-middle-age", construction guy. For me, this is all new. Anyway, I found a tutorial on the net at a place called My-Guides.net and found the tutorial that showed me how I could still build the site on my own PC and then upload the finished product. It showed me where and how to download Wampserver and utilize it to create a virtual "server" environment on my own PC with "localhost".

It was about 1:00 in the morning before I had finished. It's shameful to say, maybe, but the simplest of errors made me have to uninstall and reinstall the blessed thing three times over before I figured out the simple error I was making.

I won't bother going through the steps of how to do it, the tutorial is great. Keep in mind two things however; number one, when you view the tutorial, both the joomla screen shot and the wamp server screen shot are a little outdated so you'll have to make the correction and work accordingly, but it isn't hard to see the minor differences and enter the right data in the right boxes. Number two, when it comes down to time to log in to the Joomla adminstrator page, don't do as I did and try entering your e-mail or name as the user name, just enter "admin". That's the shameful part that caused me to uninstall and reinstall three times. I kept thinking I must have entered information wrong and would never be able to log in, so I just deleted and re-did it. Eventually I looked back at the screenshot in the tutorial and saw that it showed "admin" as user name, so on the third attempt, I entered that and VIOLA! I was in. Bottom line is, if I can do it, anyone can and probably in one attempt.

So, even though I have not had the opportunity yet to start using the "localhost" and designing my site on my own PC, I am excited at the prospect and will let you know how it goes