How to make a website?

So, I have the opportunity to make a website for an organization since I mentioned I had made a couple of FreeWeb sites and being a Content Tester here on SP (connections baby!). However...that's the only kind of website I know how to make. Everything there was already given to me with toolbars and drop-down boxes.

So, before I accept such a feat, I need to know: what do I need to know to make a website? Do I need to know C++? Java scripts? HTML stuff?

Now, I'm just giving a list of things and NOT knowing what they do. I may be into making website designs and all, but I have absolutely no clue how to use codes or anything else to create a website without the help of tools already given to me.

Can anyone give me some kind of idea of what I'm getting myself into?

To make a website, generally, you'd need knowledge of HTML, Javascript for functionality and CSS for making it all pretty. There are quite a few web-editing WYSIWYG softwares out there (I personally have used BlueGriffon) that makes it easier if you can't do all of that from scratch, but it helps a lot more if you do have knowledge of the aforementioned languages.

Unless you want to go into the more advanced areas, it's really simple and basic.

Here are some helpful websites:
http://www.codecademy.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

Eh, you might be able to do without -- well, without much Javascript, depending on what your organization wants its site to do. Like, nothing you couldn't cannibalize off Google.

FreeWebs.... Damn they are old.

Usually free website creation sites like freewebs among others (use a different one) offer the basic functionality to make everything look pretty, along with widgets that you can use your own Java or HTML or CSS. Depending on what your organization needs you could probably just code the widget yourself and slap it in there.

Judging by the fact this is for an organization, I'm guessing you would have a widget for donations which if you've got Paypal they have a pre-made one you can use if you're a verified member, I'm sure you're organization has one. Possibly people signing up for a newsletter or mass-email wouldn't be too hard either. Would your organization have a forum? You could just make an invisionFree board and get a professional theme on it and it would like rather fancy.

Again, idk what your organization does I'm just kind of brainstorming ideas here

When I bought my first domain and hosting package (last January) I knew 0 HTML and 0 CSS. Over the next few months, I dabbled with Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, and other CMS packages. They were okay but I didn't really find the need for them.

About.. March or something I had to host a contest, and realized I wanted to show off the results. I stole scripts and a web page from various sites and put together a system that uploaded images, and would show them off. It was alright, but I didnt write any of it really so I didnt think of it as my own.

Later in May or June, I wanted to start doing livestream stuff. At this point, I started learning HTML as fast as I could, and just put a page together. It was horrible.

I made revisions to the page in July, and August as I started learning CSS. I figured I was doing alright.

About September of this year, I finally put out a page that I liked. I had gotten good enough at HTML and CSS to make the page look pretty, but I thought it was missing something..... AH! PHP! I had used JS in the past, but I suck at writing it. PHP on the other hand.. I can learn that pretty easily.

This brings me up to my current page for livestreams. I learned how to write the HTML, CSS, and PHP (For the most part) by myself. The page features a "login" system, that features a backend. I even threw some jquery in there to make the page prettier and save some space.

http://elluel.com/stream/

I know what I wrote probably isnt the cleanest and best, but I got it up and working. That's what matters in the end.

I don't plan on making this website a forum. All I want to basically do is make it for information purposes with a few fun gadgets.

What I want to do is have it contain multiple pages (perhaps having a drop box to other page links like "Community" on Southperry), the ability to put in videos (non-Youtube and Youtube alike), and maybe have some fancy or pretty transitions.

Oh, and yes, a donation tab is a pretty good idea. I'll check in on that and see how beneficial that would be.

Thanks everyone for your help! If anyone else has any info or some kind of experience, please feel free to post!

I don't plan on making this website a forum. All I want to basically do is make it for information purposes with a few fun gadgets.

What I want to do is have it contain multiple pages (perhaps having a drop box to other page links like "Community" on Southperry), the ability to put in videos (non-Youtube and Youtube alike), and maybe have some fancy or pretty transitions.

Oh, and yes, a donation tab is a pretty good idea. I'll check in on that and see how beneficial that would be.

Thanks everyone for your help! If anyone else has any info or some kind of experience, please feel free to post!

If you want gadgets, transitions, and the like.. you'll be using javascript for sure. Jquery will make it easier on you since its a prebuilt library of functions for javascript. (See the "Donor List" or any of the buttons to the right for a Jquery function http://elluel.com/stream/ )

When you said transitions, were you meaning something like this?

http://www.legendarypvp.com/

http://demo.rockettheme.com/?template=reflex

When you said transitions, were you meaning something like this?

http://demo.rockettheme.com/?template=reflex

YES! I want the drop-down feature to look like this if possible. And the fade-in page makes it great! Definitely something I would think about doing.

And as for other transitions, it'd be like if there were one page and it contained 5 tabs:

|Intro|Body1|Body|Body3|Conclusion|

If I were to click on Intro, the Intro tab would show all the information that it contained (and subsequently push Body 1/2/3 and Conclusion to the right or completely off screen until you "hide" Intro by clicking it again.)

Does that make sense?

I'm mentally retarded when it comes to making websites, but DreamWeaver may or may not be a helpful program for you to use/learn. I know there are plenty of tutorials and plug ins you can use with it.

Get someone to host a wordpress installation for you. Should be enough for your needs.

Another suggestion would be using ASP.NET

There are a couple of libraries that can help you out though, off the top of my head there is bootstrap by twitter.

Another suggestion would be using ASP.NET

There are a couple of libraries that can help you out though, off the top of my head there is bootstrap by twitter.

And speaking of the devil, the last guy I know that created a webpage for them also used ASP.net. But, he never really got it running properly and isn't around anymore. I spoke to him about it when I found his email (since he was with them like...4 years ago?) and I learned a few things about the site.

I'm also looking into Wix.com since I've heard a couple of people talk about it.

PHP and ASP.NET are both server side scripts, you still need to know HTML, CSS, JS, etc to create the pages. I don't think knowing them will be much help for what you're trying to do.

And speaking of the devil, the last guy I know that created a webpage for them also used ASP.net. But, he never really got it running properly and isn't around anymore. I spoke to him about it when I found his email (since he was with them like...4 years ago?) and I learned a few things about the site.

I'm also looking into Wix.com since I've heard a couple of people talk about it.

Like XTOTHEL said, ASP.net is just for server sided scripts.

I still recommend bootstrap for the CSS/JS side of things. It's very easy to use and makes decent looking sites pretty quickly.