Newbie Attempting Websites!

[comicstrip]

Hello Xepher!

So I've been wanting to build my own website (to host a webcomic and personal artwork) for the past year or so, and after much research and consideration, I thought this community might be the best place for me to find help and advice on how to go about doing this.

There seems to be a lot of HTML/CSS savy people out there, and I was wondering if the software Kompozer is a program worth pursuing? It looks like exactly what I want in a web building software, but is it worth it? will it actually help me learn?

My biggest lack of confidence is in HTML/web building. I feel like this is the last hump I need to get over in order to get things in motion.
(or in other words, once I am able to comfortably build a site, I will apply for free hosting and get the ball rolling)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks so much!

[Xepher]

I think Kompozer is a spin-off/standalone version of the old Mozilla integrated HTML editor. I used to use that many years ago, but haven't really seen/used it (or other WYSIWYG editors) in a while now, so I can't speak directly to it's usefulness. Looking at what it offers though, it's probably a good place to start, and as it's free, there's not really a downside to trying it out for a while. One thing to note is that most modern sites on the web don't usually use static HTML anymore, and tend to run CMS systems or the like. That is to say, things like wordpress, joomla, etc. I know quite a few users here specifically use wordpress with the comicpress plugin. http://comicpress.org/ Using something like that basically lets you have all the nifty features like archives/calendars, rants/blog posts, forward/back and other navigation, etc. pretty much out of the box. The tradeoff is that it can be somewhat difficult to customize if you don't like the normal layout options (though basic customization like colors, your own art for headers and buttons and such is pretty easy.) That said though, it works pretty well for most comics, and is MUCH faster to get setup and running than learning HTML and doing things the hard/manual way. There are other comic-specific systems out there too (comikaze, comiccms, walrus, comicgallery, etc.), though I'm not really sure how they rate compared to comic press as I've never used them much directly.

[comicstrip]

I do plan on mastering HTML, seeing how I'm pretty picky when it comes to customizing my stuff. But having a general template to start with does sound nice, and I'd like to get my webcomic up and going, sooner than later.
I may be crazy, but I think I'll try to balance both learning HTML and maintaining a WordPress blog with ComicPress/Webcomic-Inkblot at the same time...

There's a lot to learn out there, I sometimes wonder if I'm starting in the right place with this whole thing xD

Thank you so much for your timely response to my question, and so helpful too!

[amuletts]

Wordpress/comicpress is a good place to start. To learn just play, see what happens when you do stuff. The important thing is always to keep a backup, then if you break something you can simply restore the backup. That's how I learnt. And I'd refer constantly to W3Schools http://www.w3schools.com - it might not make a lot of sense at first but you will grow to understand it as you learn. Go for it!