Anyone good with creating websites?
Winter-Moon
The Lost Sisters
@Background Pony #6234
I want to have my own fanfiction website, but I’m not a programmer. . .at all
I want to have my own fanfiction website, but I’m not a programmer. . .at all
Ciaran
Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Cyborg
Maybe give more information about the kind of site you’re looking for. I’m sure there’s maybe even tens of thousands of people on the site with WordPress experience, and thousands with Java/HTML/CSS experience, but maybe only hundreds who’ve worked with Drupa, and possible only a dozen or two who have actual hands on experience with Philomena.
So, the what you want to do might dramatically change who can help you.
@Cyborg
Oh! That actually helps narrow it down a lot. Is there a fanfiction site that you want to model yours after? Or are you hoping to create a brand new platform?
Maybe give more information about the kind of site you’re looking for. I’m sure there’s maybe even tens of thousands of people on the site with WordPress experience, and thousands with Java/HTML/CSS experience, but maybe only hundreds who’ve worked with Drupa, and possible only a dozen or two who have actual hands on experience with Philomena.
So, the what you want to do might dramatically change who can help you.
@Cyborg
Oh! That actually helps narrow it down a lot. Is there a fanfiction site that you want to model yours after? Or are you hoping to create a brand new platform?
Winter-Moon
The Lost Sisters
@Ciaran
Well, I just want the site to be called Fantasyfic, and to have a fantasy themed logo for it
Anything other than that is a “I’ll decide when we reach that point” topic
Well, I just want the site to be called Fantasyfic, and to have a fantasy themed logo for it
Anything other than that is a “I’ll decide when we reach that point” topic
Ciaran
Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Cyborg
You might be able to do it yourself with WordPress.
Here’s a how-to on creating a fanfic archive and you can always add a bb-press forum to the site and that might get you a long way toward what you want to do.
You might be able to do it yourself with WordPress.
Here’s a how-to on creating a fanfic archive and you can always add a bb-press forum to the site and that might get you a long way toward what you want to do.
Winter-Moon
The Lost Sisters
@Ciaran
Well, I don’t want an archive
I want a actual place that people can use to actually create stories, not just store them
Well, I don’t want an archive
I want a actual place that people can use to actually create stories, not just store them
Ciaran
Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Cyborg
That sounds like a cool idea.
NaNoWriMo is a global event devoted to writing stories, and a lot of those are fanfics and their community has created a ton of different options for online collaboration and creating stories.
If you check their forums you might find the framework you’d like.
I’m linking to their main page instead of the forums, because frankly they change the freaking site every year it seems, and links don’t always carry over from year to year.
November is when the event happens, so if you get hooked in there now you might find someone who has exactly what you’re looking for, and you can just port it onto your own domain?
That sounds like a cool idea.
NaNoWriMo is a global event devoted to writing stories, and a lot of those are fanfics and their community has created a ton of different options for online collaboration and creating stories.
If you check their forums you might find the framework you’d like.
I’m linking to their main page instead of the forums, because frankly they change the freaking site every year it seems, and links don’t always carry over from year to year.
November is when the event happens, so if you get hooked in there now you might find someone who has exactly what you’re looking for, and you can just port it onto your own domain?
Winter-Moon
The Lost Sisters
@Ciaran
I checked the website, and it kinda seems too complicated for me
I checked the website, and it kinda seems too complicated for me
Ciaran
Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Cyborg
It can be complex, but if you’re starting out and don’t have any web development experience, then you might be able to find a turn-key site that allows you to create your own forums and then use that as a basis for getting going and getting experience.
And, it might be that WordPress will do everything you need. It’s possible that even a bb-press forum added to WordPress will do everything that you would like.
That way you don’t have to do any development. You just need a domain and a host and everything else is free.
Once you have a community and the fanfic site is going, you could then look at ‘trading up’ to your own custom code if you get folks on board who can do that, or if you want to try it yourself.
I’m just thinking that the best developers are lazy. Reuse things when you can, use someone else’s code if its available and reliable and you’re happy with the price (often $Free).
Creating your own solutions from scratch is … well … creating the site becomes your hobby, not the fanfic forums you wanted to create. You can spend years creating the site, without ever once having anyone else using it.
So, personally, I like to find existing solutions that are easy and quick to plug-and-play that will get you up and running as fast as possible, and in a way that you are able to maintain and expand it yourself.
The trope is ‘Fast and Easy, Free, or Feature Complete - pic one.’ So if you want it free, and want it to be feature complete, expect it to take a long, long time and be really hard. But if you just want it free then it will probably be fast and not have all the features you want.
It can be complex, but if you’re starting out and don’t have any web development experience, then you might be able to find a turn-key site that allows you to create your own forums and then use that as a basis for getting going and getting experience.
And, it might be that WordPress will do everything you need. It’s possible that even a bb-press forum added to WordPress will do everything that you would like.
That way you don’t have to do any development. You just need a domain and a host and everything else is free.
Once you have a community and the fanfic site is going, you could then look at ‘trading up’ to your own custom code if you get folks on board who can do that, or if you want to try it yourself.
I’m just thinking that the best developers are lazy. Reuse things when you can, use someone else’s code if its available and reliable and you’re happy with the price (often $Free).
Creating your own solutions from scratch is … well … creating the site becomes your hobby, not the fanfic forums you wanted to create. You can spend years creating the site, without ever once having anyone else using it.
So, personally, I like to find existing solutions that are easy and quick to plug-and-play that will get you up and running as fast as possible, and in a way that you are able to maintain and expand it yourself.
The trope is ‘Fast and Easy, Free, or Feature Complete - pic one.’ So if you want it free, and want it to be feature complete, expect it to take a long, long time and be really hard. But if you just want it free then it will probably be fast and not have all the features you want.
Winter-Moon
The Lost Sisters
@Ciaran
Well, I tried Wordpress before, and it got too complicated for me
Well, I tried Wordpress before, and it got too complicated for me
Ciaran
Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Cyborg
WordPress is … fraught with rabbit holes.
Getting from an empty domain to a working and pleasing site on WordPress does often take ten or 20 tries the first time through it. I’ve done maybe a couple hundred WordPress sites so far, and I’m literally starting one over from scratch with one of my client’s sites today just because over the years it’s gotten so laden with unnecessary plugins (a lot of which aren’t even supported any more) and has such an archaic template that just redoing it from the start will be faster than trying to fix and retest everything that’s on it.
One tip I can give you for WordPress sites: Until you have content the WordPress CMS doesn’t really ‘work’. You need to get a bunch of pages and posts in place so that the whole thing starts actually looking and working as you expect. So do the minimum to get the site installed, then load a dozen of each of “whatever” you want on it, and THEN start playing with look and feel. Otherwise there’s not really enough there to see what you’re going to get.
I hope you find someone who can help you. I’m currently maxed and can’t help with any other sites for free, but hopefully some of the links I sent you can help you get started and maybe someone else here can join you in this project.
WordPress is … fraught with rabbit holes.
Getting from an empty domain to a working and pleasing site on WordPress does often take ten or 20 tries the first time through it. I’ve done maybe a couple hundred WordPress sites so far, and I’m literally starting one over from scratch with one of my client’s sites today just because over the years it’s gotten so laden with unnecessary plugins (a lot of which aren’t even supported any more) and has such an archaic template that just redoing it from the start will be faster than trying to fix and retest everything that’s on it.
One tip I can give you for WordPress sites: Until you have content the WordPress CMS doesn’t really ‘work’. You need to get a bunch of pages and posts in place so that the whole thing starts actually looking and working as you expect. So do the minimum to get the site installed, then load a dozen of each of “whatever” you want on it, and THEN start playing with look and feel. Otherwise there’s not really enough there to see what you’re going to get.
I hope you find someone who can help you. I’m currently maxed and can’t help with any other sites for free, but hopefully some of the links I sent you can help you get started and maybe someone else here can join you in this project.
Ciaran
Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Cyborg
Well, I feel like that’s a lot of ideas. Let me try to summarize:
Option 1: Find a fee bb-press forum site where you can make your own forum. Very limited freedom in how the site looks and they’ll run their adds on your site, but you can practice getting a feeling for what kind of features you want.
Option 2: Set up a free WordPress site with a FanFic template and install bb-press as a plugin. WordPress.com let’s you create a free subdomain under WordPress.com, and you can try creating your fanfic site there. Even if you don’t stay there, you’ll get a ton of experience and will have a much clearer idea what you want to do.
Option 3: Spend money every month. Wix and Squarespace will let you go a long way to getting your site as you want it, but there’s a lot of learning curves involved and there are no free lunches with these companies. The nicer you make your site - the more features and options you select - the more they’re going to charge you.
Option 4: Spend money up front and face a lot of learning curves. You can get a domain and hosting for a dollar for the first year and anywhere from $9 to $20 a year after that (assuming you stick with inexpensive stuff like .com or .net or .org) from a bunch of places, and then you learn all the various skills involved in creating a site from scratch. You can find hosts who feature WordPress installs, but those often cost more. Or you can install WordPress yourself - it’s free but you might have to buy an FTP tool to get the files onto the host. Then you use WordPress to install all the custom bits into itself for free or at a cost - your choice on which themes, plugins, etc you want. A lot of it is free, but a lot of it doesn’t work together. And a lot of the best themes and plugins have a fee associated with them that comes either every year or every month.
Option 5: Find someone to do one of the above for you. But then you’re not really going to own the site except in name, and it will be them creating the fanfic site for you and you’ll just be along for the ride.
Any of these are fine options, and there’s hundreds more ways of doing this. But I think these are the 5 that you might find most accessible right now.
If it helps you plan, I do Option 5 for people, but charge $120 an hour and can take between 20 and 2000 hours depending on what they want the final site to look like and how much they want to ‘own’ the result themselves. And I do help people do Option 4 by registering their domain and getting WordPress installed and working for them, then they do all the rest themselves, but I charge a flat rate of $250 for that and they either have to take care of the reoccurring registration and hosting fees themselves or I bill annually for it, and it doesn’t come with any maintenance. I mean, I’ll reset the whole site for free for you back to the initial state if you really blow it up, but if that happens more than a couple times a month then I might start getting grumpy about having to do it.
Personally, I’d suggest going to WordPress.com and registering a free domain, installing bb-forums and getting that configured and running, and it might get you a long way toward the site you wanted to create.
It will be free, but it might take you a long time and it probably won’t have all the features you want. But once you do it the first time, the second time will be faster and you’ll have a better idea where you want to go.
Or, what more often happens is that once you get the free stuff set up and running on WordPress.com, you’ll at least know by contrast what you wanted instead. And then the next time will go better and faster and you’ll get farther.
Creating a website is like a video game. You have to be interested in The Game of creating the site. But not so much that you lose site of the goal of a functional site.
Well, I feel like that’s a lot of ideas. Let me try to summarize:
Option 1: Find a fee bb-press forum site where you can make your own forum. Very limited freedom in how the site looks and they’ll run their adds on your site, but you can practice getting a feeling for what kind of features you want.
Option 2: Set up a free WordPress site with a FanFic template and install bb-press as a plugin. WordPress.com let’s you create a free subdomain under WordPress.com, and you can try creating your fanfic site there. Even if you don’t stay there, you’ll get a ton of experience and will have a much clearer idea what you want to do.
Option 3: Spend money every month. Wix and Squarespace will let you go a long way to getting your site as you want it, but there’s a lot of learning curves involved and there are no free lunches with these companies. The nicer you make your site - the more features and options you select - the more they’re going to charge you.
Option 4: Spend money up front and face a lot of learning curves. You can get a domain and hosting for a dollar for the first year and anywhere from $9 to $20 a year after that (assuming you stick with inexpensive stuff like .com or .net or .org) from a bunch of places, and then you learn all the various skills involved in creating a site from scratch. You can find hosts who feature WordPress installs, but those often cost more. Or you can install WordPress yourself - it’s free but you might have to buy an FTP tool to get the files onto the host. Then you use WordPress to install all the custom bits into itself for free or at a cost - your choice on which themes, plugins, etc you want. A lot of it is free, but a lot of it doesn’t work together. And a lot of the best themes and plugins have a fee associated with them that comes either every year or every month.
Option 5: Find someone to do one of the above for you. But then you’re not really going to own the site except in name, and it will be them creating the fanfic site for you and you’ll just be along for the ride.
Any of these are fine options, and there’s hundreds more ways of doing this. But I think these are the 5 that you might find most accessible right now.
If it helps you plan, I do Option 5 for people, but charge $120 an hour and can take between 20 and 2000 hours depending on what they want the final site to look like and how much they want to ‘own’ the result themselves. And I do help people do Option 4 by registering their domain and getting WordPress installed and working for them, then they do all the rest themselves, but I charge a flat rate of $250 for that and they either have to take care of the reoccurring registration and hosting fees themselves or I bill annually for it, and it doesn’t come with any maintenance. I mean, I’ll reset the whole site for free for you back to the initial state if you really blow it up, but if that happens more than a couple times a month then I might start getting grumpy about having to do it.
Personally, I’d suggest going to WordPress.com and registering a free domain, installing bb-forums and getting that configured and running, and it might get you a long way toward the site you wanted to create.
It will be free, but it might take you a long time and it probably won’t have all the features you want. But once you do it the first time, the second time will be faster and you’ll have a better idea where you want to go.
Or, what more often happens is that once you get the free stuff set up and running on WordPress.com, you’ll at least know by contrast what you wanted instead. And then the next time will go better and faster and you’ll get farther.
Creating a website is like a video game. You have to be interested in The Game of creating the site. But not so much that you lose site of the goal of a functional site.
Winter-Moon
The Lost Sisters
@Ciaran
I’ve basically been trying to do option 5, hence the name of this thread
I’ve basically been trying to do option 5, hence the name of this thread
Ciaran
Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Cyborg
Im happy to hel in any way I can, but like I said I’m already saturated with other projects and my day job. But I really believe this is something you can do yourself.
Head over to WordPress.com, stay focused on the fan fiction site you want to create, focus on doing as much as you can with as little as possible so you don’t get distracted by all of WordPress’s rabbit holes, and you might have a pretty good start in a month or two.
Im happy to hel in any way I can, but like I said I’m already saturated with other projects and my day job. But I really believe this is something you can do yourself.
Head over to WordPress.com, stay focused on the fan fiction site you want to create, focus on doing as much as you can with as little as possible so you don’t get distracted by all of WordPress’s rabbit holes, and you might have a pretty good start in a month or two.
Winter-Moon
The Lost Sisters
@Ciaran
I already tried Wordpress though
Also, I was hoping on having this new website be similar to Fimfiction, but different enough for them to not that I’m copying their ideas
That is not my intention
I already tried Wordpress though
Also, I was hoping on having this new website be similar to Fimfiction, but different enough for them to not that I’m copying their ideas
That is not my intention
Winter-Moon
The Lost Sisters
@Ciaran
Another issue I forgot was that I would have to pay
Which I cannot do because of college approaching soon
Another issue I forgot was that I would have to pay
Which I cannot do because of college approaching soon
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