Old web designer needs help.

Back in the late 90's I was pretty proficient in HTML programing then picked up Dreamweaver as time went by. Well, I haven't made a website in almost 10 years now, and I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I'm almost back at square one.

Now I need to make a website where people can submit stories and other people can read, comment on, and vote on the story. I'm guessing this is some type of form. In order for people to upload stories and give comments they will have to register with the site as well.

Can all this be done using iWeb? I just started playing around with it and it seems pretty useless. Is Dreamweaver the way to go? I know nothing about java/scripts/anything that needs coding.

Sounds like you want to run a pseudo-blog. I'd look into Wordpress or Blogger- you can host either on your own domain or on the wordpress/blogger standard domains, and most of the work is already done for you.

miles01110 said:

Sounds like you want to run a pseudo-blog. I'd look into Wordpress or Blogger- you can host either on your own domain or on the wordpress/blogger standard domains, and most of the work is already done for you.

Click to expand...

I don't want everyone's, or even just the most recent stories, always showing on the front page. I need to create the page how I want it to look, not as pre-made template. The end-user should be able to pick and choose what they want to read by category, and also submit into a category of their choosing.
writing.com is an example of the type of format I'm talking about, but that site gets waaaay more involved than I need to get.

Look at Joomla or Mambo. They're pretty nice CMS packages and I think they'll do pretty much what you want with some minor tweaking and some add-ons thrown in here or there.

CoolCheech said:

I don't want everyone's, or even just the most recent stories, always showing on the front page. I need to create the page how I want it to look, not as pre-made template. The end-user should be able to pick and choose what they want to read by category, and also submit into a category of their choosing.

Click to expand...

So? You can do all this with wordpress. You'll need to know (or hire someone who knows) php.

Start off by forgetting most of what you knew to be true 10 years ago. I know, it's hard. I skipped some years myself -- though not quite as many as you -- and spent all of 2008 getting back to speed. CMS, CSS, blogging, etc -- big learning curve.

As a web designer for the last 8 years, I can tell you that any knowledge that served you 10 years ago is now so obsolete that it's useless.

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials is a good place to start to brush up on your XHTML, CSS, and PHP (which it sounds like you'll need for the form and database).

Good luck!