Now that my Tonopah & Tidewater RR is getting finished, I am thinking about starting a website or blog about it. For those that have websites about the model railroads, how did you go about doing it. What is the easiest and cheapest way of getting a reasonably nice website. I have some computer savvy but am not interested in learning programming or anything like that. Thoughts and recommendations. - Nevin
If you what to do a “Blog” then sites such as “http://wordpress.com” might be what you are looking for as no programing skills are needed. It’s a FREE service and you can be up and going in a few minutes. There are other such sites out there as well that others might be using…
There happens to be a sidebar on that very topic on page 39 of Great Model Railroads 2012.
I downloaded Open Office (which is free) and created a Word processed document saved as a web page. MS Word has been “clumsy” in the past being way bigger than it need be for web pages.
I use digitalzones.com as a site although I am told it gives off danger signs to certain guard programs. My own site is safe but others using the site may not be purely puritanical in just using model railroading. Uploading is easy enough. Just get your photos to a manageable size!
You can check my site www.xdford.digitalzones.com … hope this helps
Regards from Oz
Trevor
A Blog is certainly one way to do it.
If you want a web site like mine, then you will have to put a little more into it. Once you get the hang of it, it is not hard. Two things you need: First, an HTML writing program; and Second, a web server to host it on.
I use an outsourced provider for our company website as it demands better up time reliability. I use my own computer to host the Route of the Broadway LION right here on my own computers. IIS services are already a part of your operating system, and so your computer can host a website but that is one heck of a lot of computer savvy to do it right. So unless you know what you are doing (and you don’t since you had to ask) I wouldn’t try it, although I must admit that I learned it by trial and error. Mostly error.
There are free places that will host a website for you, they will usually put their ads on your site. There are ones that you need pay only $10/month which is what I use for a company site, plus of course an annual fee for the URL. (broadwaylion.com) If you find places that charge too much more than $10.00 a month you are paying more than you need to, and they should be providing you with more technical help and other service.
There are many HTML writing programs out there, many are no more difficult than Microsoft Word. (As a matter of fact, you can write a web page in Word–just save something in .htm format, and then open it on your browser!). The LION uses WebPlus, but that is his preference.
But look around under “Web Hosting” and see what you can find. there are many places that will offer you both internet space, and a simple building utility. If you would like more help from the LION then use the conversations button to the right, and I’ll see what I can do.
roar
I started with free Web Dwarf and eventually upgraded to the Payware version:
http://www.virtualmechanics.com/products/dwarf/
Works really well
I use KVChosting. It is cheap.
http://www.kvcwebsitehosting.com/
If you want web albums:
Have had a website for seven years and it is fun. Have had almost 750,000 visitors. Tried a Blog but didn’t like that format.
Visit:
http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/
Thank you if you visit
Harold
Mine is with Google Blog, it’s free up to a certain gb, after that it’s still very cheap, easy to use, very effective, and of course Google searches typically point to your blog/website. No sense making a website if no one can find it, it’s also good to have a clickable link in your sig.
If you want to invest in learning the basics of a full-featured platform on which to base and update a website, Dreamweaver is one of the more industrial grade website management programs. IIRC, not too big a deal to get started in it and it has the bells and whistles you may need later. This is especially a factor if you want a complex or frequently updated website.
On the other hand, for something simple, the proliferation of blog platforms makes things incredibly easy to just do that, as other have noted. My Dreamweaver skills are pretty rusty and I’ve been thinking to just blog if I finally decide to begin documenting things more systematically on the web for whomsoever’s benefit it might accrue.
If you need ideas, look at my website (below). I got the ideas from a bunch of other train websites and chose the ones which were most pertinent, or which I liked best.
Nevin,
You might want to check with your ISP. Mine offered 10MB of FREE web space with my monthly subscription to use for building a web site or blog. They also provided FREE software to build the site. It’s uses templates so it’s somewhat limited. However, you can still do quite a bit with it and it didn’t really take that long to get up and going.
Over time I began to push the 10MB envelope because of the number of pictures I uploaded to the site. So this past January I purchased my own domain name and additional web space (5 GB) from my ISP for a monthly fee. However, 10MB can be more than ample of you - i.e. unless you plan on uploading A LOT of pics.
Hope that helps…
Tom
I would consider a blog. I’ve made some “virtual” friends through mine.
Blogger is the platform I’m using, and am happy with. Bought my own domain name through 1and1.com and have been very happy with them through the years.
My reasons for suggesting a blog:
- People are looking for either information or fresh content on the internet. A blog encourages you to provide fresh content and the archives become information over time.
- It’s easy. Blogger allows you make changes to the template very quickly and they are automatically applied to all your pages. Doing it by hand can get complicated quick.
- Easy to incorporate photos and video
- Lets you spend time writing, not playing around with html or re-organziing your pages.
- It evolves into sort of a personal journal and you will get pleasure looking back on it over the years. http://www.look4trains.com will be three years old in the spring and I always enjoy making a birthday post, and looking back on the prior year.
You can do all these things with static web pages. My own experience has been it is more complex and you will be less likely to keep adding fresh content.
Just my suggestions.
Jim
From your stated desire NOT to learn programming, (and by programming I would guess you mean HTML), I would recommend you get a good (FREE!) WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor/web builder. There are dozens out there - enter “wysiwyg web builder free” (without the quotes) in a Google search, and you’ll get about 1.5 million hits. You’ll also get a lot of sites that have reviews and ratings of available programs. I would recommend Gizmo’s for the best and most reliable reviews. They also provide links to the reviewed programs.
I use 000webhost.com for my site. They give you 1.5GB of disk space for your site, 100GB of data transfer, and an FTP manager, as well as a bunch of useful utilities, all free. They have very good stability, consistent up-time,and a bunch of services. And for less that $5 a month, you have practically unlimited everything! I looked around for several years and tried a bunch of different sites. This one is the best I’ve found.
SInce I do know a bit of HTML, I wrote the code for my site myself, with a regular HTML editor. You can check it out by clicking the link in my signature below. I have found that while you can indeed do a web page with MS Word, the code it (Word) writes is very bulky and cluttered, and is slower to load than a web page done with an editor that is dedicated to the task. I do not recommend it as a solution.
Good luck, and have fun!
Well, you can rent a website.
Then decide how you are going to put the page(s) together. I find it easier to use a writing tool actually similar to an expanded version of Notepad. It keeps the pages small and quick to load. Then it is a matter of resizing the photos and placing them on the page, etc., etc,
I use blogger. Easy, accepts pictures, and use just type in what ever you want to say.
I am currently designing a site for my 4x8 Layout of a my Freelanced railroad. I personally use dreamweaver from Adobe, but I also am a Freelanced Web Designer and just recently graduated with a degree in Web Design. (So this is the perfect place to make my first post!)
Nevin, I know you don’t want to learn any “programming”, but a basic knowledge of HTML coding wouldn’t hurt. go to http://w3schools.com/ if you want to learn a bit of basic HTML. That site has saved my behind so many times in school it’s not funny. [:-^]
A blog is a good idea. But with your own website you have to get a domain (pay for it) and to use some program to make the website. With Word you can get a site but it’s only a first step. With Word you get an awful language.
And you need pictures. A website lives from pictures.
Wolfgang