Setting up a website - help!

[NeilI]

I am thinking about setting up a website for use by my friends and I, using the webspace we get from Eclipse as part of the broadband package.
All I really want to feature is a messageboard/forum and some sort of photo gallery (at the moment anyhoo).
Please bear with me, as I am a bit of a 'newb' in these parts. Here goes;

For the main site, I'm thinking some sort of index page and maybe a frame with the differnt pages on the left.
For the message board part, we need to be able to have standard forum features, such as in vbulletin. Would it be worth the $100odd for this? Are there any cheaper/feee things that would compatible with the Eclipse service?
For the picture gallery, we need an index page, with different dates/events, then a thumbnail page for each of those links. Then I'd like every picture to open in new window.
So, what sort of software will I need?
We have office XP at home, which comes with Frontpage. Is this any good? Would I be better buying something like Dreamweaver?

Also, if I was to register my name as the domain, I assume that can be linked to the Eclipse webspace?
At the moment, we only have the 20MB space, will I need the 50MB package for this? Or would that not be enough either?

Cheers for any help.

[Iain]

If you want a forum then you really need your ISP to support PHP and MySQL. I very much doubt that the space provided by eclipse will include that so you will struggle to host something like a forum. There are other options such as CGI based message boards but to be honest you're better off with PHP and MySQL. If you find somewhere to host your site then you can get a good free forum from www.phpbb.com which isnt quite as good as vbulletin but is still very feature rich

[Kezzer]

Frontpage is quite a nasty web designing program, it seems you don't always have full control. I use notepad now and unless there's a design problem i'll have to be forced to use dreamweaver

[Iain]

If you're using Notepad then I strongly suggest you get a text editor with syntax highlighting like editplus from www.editplus.com. It will make life a lot easier

[Kezzer]

OOh, that seems handy.

Best bet would be to get to the books although i'm not a very good example for that

[NeilI]

Cheers guys.

Is a CGI style board more like a 'guest book'?
In that there are no threads and subforums, more just a single running thread?

If yes, I may opt for something like ezboard. Will I still be able to host a photo gallery using the eclipse webspace?

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

There is quite a good free message board system based on ASP with an Access database backend.

http://www.webwizguide.info/web_wiz_...asp?mode=forum

Not really sure how it would perform in a real world situation on a live server though, never tried it.

[estratosphere]

if you need some php/mysql hosting for a decent forum and gallery, check out my service : http://www.esthosting.com/ might be able to sort you something out

[Allen]

Is there any post you're gonna make that's not gonna pimp your site?

Talk about free advertising!

[estratosphere]

of course, just trying to help the guy out.
any1 who needs graphics help im ur man too!

[fonzerelli_79]

in my opinion front page sucks ass - im the same as KeZZeR in that i just use plain code - i still dont know how to use dreamweaver, not that i cant do it, just never tried

i use www.textpad.com - its free and it has a lot of good features, in particluar the find and replace function

Does the eclipse package put up ads etc for hosting your site there?

[Kezzer]

I've started to use jedit now (located at http://www.jedit.org )

Really handy, looks nice, feels nice, shows you where you're screwing up as well. Free too

[gamezfreak]

I suggest hand-coding.

Using CSS and xHTML

[Kezzer]

I do hand code. Jedit just tells you whether the syntax is correct or not which saves a lot of time. it doesn't pre-determine the syntax for you either so it _is_ hand coding. I've always used notepad anyway. I'm redesigning my site at the mo' for XHTML and CSS though. The design is going to be completely different 'cause CSS and XHTML can be difficult.

[alexforrestf]

Hehe I managed to program all my sites in notepad... everyone thinks im crazy...
I personally would advise against frames, not too great for search engines as the content is in the frame and not the page itself

[Kezzer]

I did all my websites in notepad. I've only just started using more advanced text editors as it does two things for me. Highlights invalid syntax and shows me what line i'm on. Notepad + counting what line you've got a parse error on = annoying