I want to do a web site for my campaign, but I have questions...

[Felon]

I've had web sites in the past, but we're talking years ago, back before the dot-com crash when ad-free web space was easy to come by. Now I'd like to create a web site for my campaign using the space that my ISP provides.

What do folks use to create their web sites? And equally important, how do you upload them? I recall freeware FTP clients were once abundant, but again times have changed and freeware has become trialwarre.

 

[sniffles]

I don't know the answers to your questions, but I do know someone who has a really well-designed website for her games, which she maintains herself, and she helps other people with their sites too. She has her email on her site, so you can email her if you're interested.

http://rpgs.wererat.net/

I admit I'm biased because she's my friend, but I still think her site is one of the best designs I've seen, and I've seen a lot of other peoples' game-related websites.

 

[drothgery]

Really, unless you're really good at web design or have some unique things you'd have to hand-code, I'd recommend using a weblogging tool or a web discussion group tool to do 95% of the work for you...

Free weblog sites -
- http://www.blogger.com/
- http://www.livejournal.com/
- http://spaces.msn.com/

Free web discussion group sites
- http://groups.msn.com/
- http://groups.yahoo.com/

 

[Desdichado]

Text editor--I don't get really fancy with my web design, and it's harder to learn a new tool than it is to simply code in some simple html. Some table-work is about the trickiest coding I use, although I've been playing around with css and will probably convert to that at some point.

Filezilla is still a freeware ftp client. That's what I use. I used to use Geocities, with web-based file managers and file editors, which I loved, but their ads have become much more obtrusive recently.

 

[Psionicist]

If you have broadband you can host the website from your own computer, the only thing you need is webserver software such as apache. If you don't like the idea of the website going down when you turn of your computer you should probably not do this though.

 

[IronWolf]

I tend towards agreeing with drothgery. Message boards or discussion groups can handle most of what one would need to for organizing campaign information. We are using one in the current campaign I am in and it works out really well with very little administrative hassle.

But, to answer your questions. There are several apps to author your pages - some pricey others not so much. Dreamweaver and Front Page will cost some money. Or you can use Composer that comes bundled with Mozilla or Nvu which is a stand alone project. You can use notepad for that matter.

There are still free ftp clients, I believe SmartFTP still have a free version you might want to look into.

 

[Dinkeldog]

You'll probably get more help in the Software forum.

 

[GlassJaw]

For editing, I use Notepad or Dreamweaver. Front Page is crap because it puts a lot of junk code into your files. Dreamweaver ain't cheap though.

There are many free ftp clients - it's the servers that cost money (usually - I did happen to find a free one but I forgot where). I use an older, free version of WS_FTP. LeechFTP is decent too.

 

[GlassJaw]

http://rpgs.wererat.net/

Decent although I don't like the color scheme. Not that easy on the eyes.

 

[Enforcer]

Decent although I don't like the color scheme. Not that easy on the eyes.

My thoughts exactly. While the layout is pretty nice those colors are really...unique.

As for web design, if you don't want to go the easy route as mentioned above (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, of course) I can recommend the book I used to learn XHTML and thereby design the site listed in my sig. The book is called "HTML for the World Wide Web, 5th Edition" by Elizabeth Castro.

The program I used is TextWrangler for the Macintosh.