Hello all, this is going to be my first post here and unfortunately it’s for advice, hopefully a lot of it.
Currently I have a goal of trying to create a website that I have locally on my computer, basically I want to create a “toolbox” for personal use that I can just add information and resources too that I may want for future use without having to dig around for. Sort of like a blog, but with usefulness past posts in chronological order.
I see two problems to tackle (the only two that exist with any kind of web development):
- Front-end development
- Back-end development
Front-end shouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world, I’m familiar with HTML and CSS, there’s problems I’ve encountered that have been tough for me to solve but I can make progress by finding resources related to my issues. However some things come up that go towards back-end development.
I want to be able, through my webpage, to create pages/posts/what-have-you without having to manually create a file and add it in to a HTML file for the webpage. Obviously this can be done, we’re on a forum afterall. But… how do I do this? Looking around I’m pointed at PHP but that requires a webserver. I know webservers can be done locally but this is a whole mess that I don’t know any information about.
Is there someone here willing to lend a hand or two to help me get a good grip on what I need to do?
There are some things that already exist to accomplish something like what you’re trying to do.
Have you checked out TiddlyWIki?
http://tiddlywiki.com/
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I haven’t heard about it before, no. It sounds like something I would definitely have a lot of use for though.
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I’m not sure if you’re trying to do this project as an exercise or to solve a problem you’ve got. If it’s the second, that should probably cover most of your requirements listed, but if it’s the first, I still be of some assistance.
It’s a little bit of both. It’s only a personal project, but it’s to solve a problem of trying to collect information I want to keep around that’s relevant without having to go to a lot of different places for, through the internet or locally on my computer. Information from websites or files on my computer. Stuff like that.
Okay. So the first thing you need to decide is what sort of languages you want to use. To figure that out, you should start with what you know if possible.
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Just a bit of HTML and CSS, I haven’t used them in years though so I’m relearning a lot of things. I hadn’t gotten the chance to work on any backend stuff at all.
You could just make a bunch of links to both web pages and local files. Just to test it out you can open a local file. I’m using Firefox, and I can hit alt to show the menu bar and select File > Open File. Text files, pictures, PDF’s, even MP3’s and MP4’s work. Basically any media you can consume in a browser could be stored locally and linked in a local HTML file. I’m pretty sure you could even link to files that won’t open in a browser, and it acts as if it was a file that just finished downloading, and asks you what application you want to open it with.
With this you could then organize things as you see fit. You could make pages for main and sub categories. You could write paragraphs in the .html file, or just write descriptive links. They could be in chronological order or put it in whatever order that makes sense to you. You could make pictures or diagrams into links for further explanation.
As long as you keep everything organized under a single top-level directory, you could transfer it to another computer and have it work. You shouldn’t need to mess with any online file transferring unless it is something you don’t want to keep locally. You could even download complete web pages for personal use offline. I did something very similar a long time ago when I got hurt at work and decided to learn basic HTML. I still have the files, and while it isn’t anything fancy, it still works.
@SgtAwesomesauce is on the trail. If you want to organize information in a way you can search, sort or link between items, a Wiki is a great way to do it. I use Zim Desktop Wiki for that, which saves in plain text files with wiki markup. I guess it wouldn’t be hard to have it synced across devices with something like Owncloud or Dropbox.