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AudioGames.net Forum → Off-topic room → Creating a website with no web design experience
I would like to make a visually attractive and accessible website. However, I have no web design experience.
Can anyone recommend any accessible tools (besides Wordpress) that would allow me to make a website? The tool should be able to work with JAWS for Windows and Internet Explorer, and should allow me to have a website for free.
I know that I will have to get a domain and a hosting service. I would like to keep this as simple and as low-cost as possible.
Ahoy there,
Last when I tryed webs it didn't seem to be accessible, but that was like 3 years or so ago, so things could've improved maybe.
Besides that, you could learn html5,and css, the w3school offers some greate starting points if you'd like to try the manual way.
If you happen to be totally blind, you may have trouble with getting what color and layout is good/bad for a particular website depending on its content and so on. at least that's the thing I have the most trouble with.
I can write up html5 half asleep, and css too,but its the results design and looking good that leaves me thinking.
grryf
Learning HTML and CSS is something I want to learn, but not right now. For the moment, I just need a relatively simple website.
I think it would make sense to make a basic looking website and then have someone sighted who understands Web design make it look visually appealing afterwards, if you have no prior Web design experience. That said, unless you can find someone to do it cheaply for some reason, it could be expensive and since you've got a budget it might not be plausible.
I'm sighted and personally I have had no problems navigating websites designed only for screenreaders. They look quite plain but they are still functional.
I have hardly any Web design experience, so I'd be willing to help but I don't know how professional I could get the result to be.
I think you're looking for Content Management Systems (CMS). If you do a Google search for that term, you'll find plenty of them consisting of varying features. The recommended systems are Wordpress or Drupal. In the case of Wordpress, if you want to get a website up and running with little-to-no effort, try getting a subdomain at wordpress.com. Otherwise, you can just download the source files and host them on your own server. Unfortunately, regardless of which CMS you pick, you will have to put some effort into adjusting the content, URL scheme, etc to your liking. So, keep that in mind.
I'll go into this and CMS a bit. In my experience, there is a lot of different ways to make a website. In fact, every person on this forum either has or knows someone who has a website. They're not hard to make at all. But, these systems just expect the fact that you will be sighted, and already have ideas for how your amazing theme should look. There isn't really a good way to make something look 100%, but having someone look over your work is often very valuable. Also, find someone who can recommend a good design. I sure wish this was easier, but if someone has a service I've been missing all this time, I would be very interested to know.
+1
For Drupal, how much would I be expecting to pay to get a fairly simple website with not too much content? How much web design experience would I need to have to use it?
This website is mainly for blindness-related content anyway (I might post more about the actual content when it is ready), so visual appearance is only a very minor concern at the moment. That being said, I do think that it is important and I want to get it right.
Hi all, I was in a computer class in college and I was taught how to make a web site with MSWord. I was taught how to make links from one file to the next and more little things. but nothing with visual appeal. I in fact am wanting to start making a webpage again for my online radio station and upcoming studio that I'm working on. I wish there were a better way to get a webpage. I no nothing about HTML or anything of that sort. That's why I've opted to stick with the MSWord approach.
I would argue you don't need to "learn" HTML5. As Grif said, he can do it in his sleep, as can I. It's a mark-up language, not a code in the traditional programming language sense.
I've had some experience with Google's website builder, and it is fairly accessible. Remember that Google's main domain name will still be in your domain name so long as you go down the free route. You will also not have a clean slate. Google's site will still be embedded into your site. I'm not sure if that changes if you pay for your own domain and host it on Google's servers.
My setup at this point is hand coding HTML5 and hosting my site on GoDaddy. I pay $20 every three months and I get 100GB for all the space I need. I just host several small pages with a database for music for the alumni of my old high school choir.
It's very plain, but I don't need the bells and whistles that most sites have. I'm not trying to attract new people by grasping them with shnazzy colors, but those are just my circumstances.
W3 schools was already mentioned, and I will bolster that suggestion. It's easy to grab some tags off of sections on their site, and like I said, HTML is a mark-up language, so it's just tags and end tags, nothing too confusing if you can manage nesting.
Luke
@Tjt1234: Learning html is really not that bad. I honestly wouldn't go the free route with webs and Wordpress, because those don't give you full control over your site, and webs for example, still expects you to know a lot about the theme. They just aren't worth the time. You're better off learning html, getting a free or low-cost webhost that offers c-pannel and ftp access, and the installation of my-sql databases in case you want a forum. Other than that, you shouldn't need anything else. As for visual design, I don't know how much this guy goes for, but I'd recommend www.bpmdesigns.com. Although if it's a site for blind-related material, you shouldn't need that much graphic design.
I would even say FTP control isn't a must-have. I'm sure other services are much the same, but I know personally with GoDaddy uploading your HTML files is just as easy as going to your account and uploading them that way. You can send multiple files to the server at once, eliminating the need for the FTP protocol.
Luke
What is Google's domain and what that mean if it is shown on my website?
On my website, there really won't be very much content. There will just be a few pages of written content, and probably a couple of small text files that people can download.
Say your domain name is TJT1234.com, but you are hosting it with Google's website engine. Your site would then be google.TJT1234.com or TJT1234.google.com, I believe it's the first of the two.
Luke
I've never seen website URLs appear like that before. I would prefer if it were not like that.
If you decide to go through with the free route for Google or Wordpress, unfortunately you have no choice. They do that as a way to coerce you to pay the fee for them to make money.
Luke
Yeah when I looked into making a website for my podcast that I've been creating, let me tell you, I researched a lot... And no, it wasn't easy. There is no get lucky easy cheesey way to make a website. Would it be nice if there was a magical website builder that wasn't completely inaccessible? Yes, it sure would, for sure. But unless you have some form of actual sight that you can use, that magical witch/wizard-like website build will be a dream for a good while, 
Maybe someone will think of something someday, 
Portia.
The problem is that building a website without needing to hand write requires you to interact visually. Most of the programs out there designed to help users who can't grasp HTML5 rely heavily on what they see and where they would like to place what.
Let's put this picture in the top right. Let's put a list of links off to the left paneling down the side of the screen. That would be easily done from a sighted perspective. But inputting into a form field the data to make that happen for a blind person would more than likely be just as hard as writing the mark-up language for it.
Luke
No, I was never interested in Wordpress or Google. However, Drupal that someone else mentioned looks interesting, though I am not sure how much coding knowledge is required. I think that a website builder could be made accessible. For example, it could ask "Where do you want to put your menu bar?" and there could be options to choose from. Portia, what did you end up using as your podcast website?
Of course, it is possible to build a site without hiring a professional. Modern web design tools allow to do this with no coding skills. In my opinion, the most easiest of them are website builders (by the way, some of them are available for free, check a review on https://www.webbuildersguide.com/free-website-builders/). I used them and coped with this work by myself without any issues.
I just use wordpress with some security plugins then have a sighted person look at the website to make sure its visually appealing.
Use a drag and drop website builder if you don't have any coding experience. But you should think about seo
Self Promotion!
I can personally recommend Sunrise Waterfall because you don't need an ounce of coding knowledge to make your website, but if you want to learn, then Sunrise will teach you all the way!
https://nathantech.net/products/softwar … erfall.php
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