Ok, i am wanting to crete a website, but i dunno alot about programing, minimal actually... my idea for a page would have many 'departments/groups' a chat room, message boards, member profiles, reviews, along with advertisements (which would make the money) i guess what i need to know is how deep can frontpage go? and a site made with frontpage, would it be possible to set it up on a dedicated server with a hosting company? and what else if anything else should i consider?

Frontpage is only as good as the user.
You can make some template driven sites but you will never have clean coding.

You might be better off using a CMS system like Joomla or phpNuke.

thanx but sorry bro... dunno what cms is nor what those programs are... heeeelp

http://www.joomla.org/

http://www.mamboserver.com/

http://phpnuke.org/

CMS means content management system.
It is a program that creates a site for you which you can customize using plug ins.
After a bit of work they are pretty easy to use.
The more popular ones have many different skins you can use to change and customize the appearance of the site.

They generally all are community based and you can set permissions for access based on membership levels.

For creating websites I would advise using Dreamweaver MX or another WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, though I though Dreamweaver simply is the best.
It might look complicated when you open the program for the first time, but once you explore the toolbars, you'll get better very quickly. And if you search for Dreamweaver tutorials you'll learn even quicker.

About Frontpage, I'm sure it will help some people who want to create sites, but when I took my first steps on the world wide web 8 years ago, a friend (who designed websites for local companies) advised me to stay away from Frontpage and use Notepad After a while I found other programs to make HTML websites, and I used Photoshop for graphics.

It sounds like you would be best off with a CMS. If you decide to go this route check out E107, it is a very nice CMS with alot of add on mods available.
But if you are looking for a nice editor that produces clean code, try NVU. It will do a much better job than frontpage and it is free. I use the linux version of the program all the time. I have never used the windows version, but I hear it is just like the linux version and works just as well.

I basically "know from nothing" about programming. Even HTML. Never really did.

I have a cognitive & memory dysfunction ... so ... I can learn new stuff but can wake up one day months down the road and will have forgotten everything I have learned and have to start again.

So ... although I KNOW Frontpage is not the best & adds a bunch of useless programming into the pages ... it is a program I call "idiot proof". Even when I suddenly forgot everything I had learned ... I could still at least continue adminstering my sites.

Since one of my own sites ... and a few sites of friends that I host for free have "exploded" in size, I have started using XOOPS ... which I find to be the easiest of the CMS's I have tested. Been using it for a few years ... I love it, and so do my friends who I set their sites up with it. It too is a program I consider very close to "idiot proof". I have always been able to figure out how do what I needed to do.

JMHO
Peter

Well, I agree with your vision of Frontpage, pmhoran. I'll check XOOPS, I'm actually looking for a good cms to integrate in website templates that i sell online.

While I personally dislike Frontpage, it can make some very nice web sites. However, if you are serious about building and maintaining your site, I recommend you go another path. Frontpage does add a lot of added stuff to your script that makes it harder to read and troubleshoot.

CMS scripts like Mambo are nice and there are a lot of sites available that provide help and themes. One downside to CMS scripts is that you need to keep your site upgraded to the latest version to prevent somebody from hacking it.

Dreamweaver is an excellent program for developing your own sites. The good thing about doing it yourself is that you will be able to modify and maintain is better when you did the original design.

In my experience, Frontpage is used as a breaking ground for people who want to develop web sites. Like others said above, it does add a lot of code to your web pages, but that is to allow Frontpage to interact with certain parts of your page for future ease of updating, etc.

Most people will shy you away from FrontPage to another program, such as Dreamweaver. If you want a WYSIWYG editor, try using Dreamweaver. I enjoy using it, and it only adds minimal code to your site, if any at all, depending on how you use it.

HTH

Of course frontpage can make a good design, I use frontpage
But I think it's a stupid question... like asking if photoshop can make a good design. Sure... If you know how to use it and to design.

As far as coding goes, Frontpage isn't the best. You need to know how to go back to your code and clean it up.

In my opinion, I would just learn HTML. It is a really easy language and there is a ton of resources out there. At htmldog.com there is a handful of tutorials on basic html and css. I highly recommend them to anybody who wants to get into html.

As for frontpage, it is only as good as the user.

When I started out learning HTML I used Frontpage. It helped me learn it well enough to be able to not use a program now. I pretty much do everything I need on notepad or on the cPanel editor. I now mostly build sites with php but I still have my knowledge of HTML. I would recommend using Frontpage to learn, but once you have learned the language, move on to dreamweaver, you will have a lot more options.

Guess this is very soon going to turn into a moot question anyway. Apparently MS is going to basically mothball FrontPage in favor of its "newer & better" program ... Expression Web Designer.

Expression Web Designer is still in Beta (I believe) but it reminds me a lot of the last version of Dreamweaver I used a few years back. It confused the heck out of me too

http://www.microsoft.com/products/ex...n/default.mspx

Peter

Wow, thanks for sharing your knowledge and link. I've actually didn't hear about this at all... sounds very interesting.

Seems like they are trying to take the Photoshop market as well.
They also have advantages being such a monopoly... they can make their programs easily be intergratable with each other.