Building a website is easy: a guide to the first steps

Showing all posts tagged: technology

Building a website is easy: a guide to the first steps

16 October 2024

HTML for people, by American software developer Blake Watson, is a helpful resource for people wishing to build their first website, with a simple text editor. HTML for people guides first time web designers through the process of creating webpages, to uploading them, to produce a live website.

You, my friend, are about to go from zero to internet by putting your very first homemade page on the web. I will let you in on a little secret — websites are just files with text. They don’t require fancy, expensive software to create. You can literally make a website with Notepad. In fact, that’s what we’ll do right now.

It’s literally that simple, and it’s what I did — using Notepad, a simple text editor — way back in the day, to create the first version of disassociated. I was still using NotePad until recently, to create the PHP files here. If you’re on Linux, Mousepad is a simple text editor you could try there.

But even today, you can still comfortably go old-school, and build a website using component HTML files, e.g. an index page, about page, blog page, etc, using a simple text editor, without the need for CMS software, such as WordPress, if you so wanted.

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IndieWeb, technology, web design

ProRata: an AI chatbot that pays for the knowledge it disseminates

14 October 2024

ProRata is an AI chatbot that pays the content producers whose work is used to format answers to questions put to it. Yes, you read that correctly. The technology is being backed by American investor and entrepreneur Bill Gross, writes Fred Vogelstein, for Crazy Stupid Tech:

But it will do something none of the others do: Pay content providers for being the sources of those answers. He’s got written commitments from nearly two dozen top publishers to access their entire archives plus enough verbal — soon to be written — agreements to more than double that number. Meta’s LLM will parse each question. And ProRata will then use its access to this giant archive of publishers to generate answers. He’s launching it in Beta to 10,000 users some time in the next month.

This is the all-knowing chatbot we’ve been waiting for. One that pays those who contribute to it’s… knowledge. Without scaping and taking from others, without their knowledge or permission, or even offering a cent in return, behaviour some other chatbots are guilty of.

Wikipedia to remove low quality unsourced AI created content

11 October 2024

Wikipedia has created a task force to identity instances of poor quality, unsourced content, being generated by AI chatbots. The online encyclopaedia will still allow AI apps to compose articles, provided they do so in accordance with their policies:

The purpose of this project is not to restrict or ban the use of AI in articles, but to verify that its output is acceptable and constructive, and to fix or remove it otherwise.

It’s unfortunate that a resource as trusted as Wikipedia — which is assumed by many readers to be correct and accurate — has become filled with sometimes false and misleading AI made slop.

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artificial intelligence, technology

WordPress.org users required to denounce WP Engine affiliation

11 October 2024

Samantha Cole, writing at 404 Media:

The checkbox on the login page for WordPress.org asks users to confirm, “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.” Users who don’t check that box can’t log in or register a new account. As of Tuesday, that checkbox didn’t exist.

Automattic upping the ante in the on-going stouch with website hosting company WP Engine. I didn’t see this message when I logged into my WordPress (WP) account, Thursday afternoon AEDT. Maybe the roll-out is gradual, or (more fancifully) WP knows I host disassociated elsewhere.

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blogs, technology, trends

So long, thanks for all the blog posts: Microsoft cans WordPad

10 October 2024

Microsoft is doing away with their old basic, but useful, word processor, WordPad, which has been bundled with Windows Operating Systems for nearly thirty-years. It will not be a feature at all in Windows 11. Yet another reason to migrate away from Windows all together, perhaps?

Before switching to Word, I used to draft all my blog posts in WordPad. Now I use Writer. I did, still do, prep all the text and HTML tags when writing up a blog post, then copy and paste the lot into WordPress. When I migrated to WordPress in 2007, I used WordPad (heh, WP) to set out all the old blog posts from the old static, manually coded HTML webpages, onto an upload template. I later imported the template in the then new database on the WordPress install. So, WP to WP. The whole process took months, and I still look through the file today, which I’ve kept in an archive folder.

I expect the end game, on Microsoft’s part, is to push everyone onto Word. For a subscription.

Jeffrey Zeldman: I stayed, and declined an Automattic severance

8 October 2024

New York City based web designer, standards advocate, founder of A List Apart, and many other things, Jeffrey Zeldman:

I stayed because I believe in the work we do. I believe in the open web and owning your own content. I’ve devoted nearly three decades of work to this cause, and when I chose to move in-house, I knew there was only one house that would suit me. In nearly six years at Automattic, I’ve been able to do work that mattered to me and helped others, and I know that the best is yet to come.

I didn’t know Zeldman worked at Automattic, but I used to read his website/blog every day when I worked as a web designer.

Without getting involved in the WordPress/WP Engine imbroglio, the Automattic severance package seemed quite generous, given it catered for employees who disagreed with the company’s stance. It seems to me dissenting employees anywhere else would simply be shown the door.

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blogs, technology, trends, web design

All IndieWeb participants need to be vocal, not just developers

5 October 2024

Evan Sheehan, writing at The Darth Mall:

I think Jeremy Keith is right, that all that really matters is having your own website. However big or small, however you make it, whatever you choose to put on it. I just don’t think that this is what the IndieWeb is actually focused on. The IndieWeb feels like it’s something by developers, for developers, because it focuses so much on implementing certain features.

My take here, is that it’s the people developing and implementing the microformats, the webmentions, what have you (sorry, a lot of this stuff is over my head), who seem to be the most vocal in the conversation. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but you’d be forgiven for sometimes thinking IndieWeb was the exclusive domain of developers. But I’m not having a go at developers here, because, you know, if there were no developers, there’d be no web/internet.

Instead, the discussion needs more input from others in the IndieWeb community. The creatives, the writers, the artists, the photographers. The other people doing their thing on the non-corporate web. There are already such people doing that, but more need to weigh in. The topic brings to mind something American author Edgar Allen-Poe once wrote:

Shadows of Shadows passing… It is now 1831… and as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end, music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless.

It’s all very deep. But the point is that different ideas complement each other. IndieWeb, the web, needs the technical infrastructure, but then alongside that, there needs to be something else. An idea, a thought, content. Something to engage with.

It’s my roundabout way of saying IndieWeb isn’t just for the technical people, it’s for anyone who wants to be involved. And in this case, the more the merrier. Let’s hear it then, from the other IndieWeb participants.

Independent websites: vital for the survival of the hyperlink

3 October 2024

This Halifax Examiner article, by Philip Moscovitch, which features a number of quotes by Matt Pearce, a Los Angeles Times journalist, recorded on a recent episode of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, has been doing the rounds. The upshot being hyperlinks, links from one webpage to another, are in danger of becoming obsolete. Extinct. Quite unsurprisingly, social media, and some search engines, are among the culprits intent on “degrading” hyperlinks:

There is a real bias against hyperlinking that has developed on platforms and apps over the last five years in particular. It’s something that’s kind of operating hand-in-hand with the rise of algorithmic recommendations. You see this on Elon Musk’s version of Twitter, where posts with hyperlinks are degraded. Facebook itself has decided to detach itself from displaying a lot of links. That’s why you get so much AI scum on Facebook these days. Instagram itself has always been kind of hostile to linking. TikTok as well…

Threads, Meta’s micro-blogging platform, allows hyperlinks to be included in posts at the moment. Whether though they “degrade” them, in X/Twitter style, down the line, remains to be seen. Instagram has never been hyperlink friendly, but remember it started out as a platform for sharing photos, not links.

Not long after I started making websites in the late 1990’s, I read an article about Tim Berners-Lee, who created the web in 1991. The piece is long gone now, but as I recall it, Berners-Lee said when he devised HTML, the markup language used to build websites, he made it intentionally simple to use (though maybe hard to master…). This so information could be shared easily:

However, in 1991 the internet changed again. That year, a computer programmer working at the CERN research center on the Swiss-French border named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web: an internet that was not simply a way to send files from one place to another but was itself a “web” of linked information that anyone on the Internet could retrieve. Berners-Lee created the Internet that we know today.

Here we are, all these years later, where some people would like to do away with one of the web’s building blocks, which made everything we have today possible in the first place. Go figure. Well, link-haters are gonna hate, and do their best rid their web of hyperlinks, I guess. What this does though is underline the importance of an independent web, and websites that are interlinked by hyperlinks. Continue freely and abundantly sharing those links everyone.

Internet Archive Wayback Machine link replaces Google search cache

27 September 2024

Google search does away with its cache, an archived copy of an earlier version of a webpage, but now links to the Internet Archive’s (IA) Wayback Machine copy instead. Try it on your own website, assuming it’s indexed by Google that is. On the search result, click the “more about this page” button, which will take you to a page where you’ll see a Wayback Machine link.

You won’t see a copy of every website presently online, or that once was though, as Chris Freeland, writing on the IA blogs page, explains:

This collaboration with Google underscores the importance of web archiving and expands the reach of the Wayback Machine, making it even easier for users to access and explore archived content. However, the link to archived webpages will not be available in instances where the rights holder has opted out of having their site archived or if the webpage violates content policies.

The Google move seems like a much needed — maybe — shot in the arm — maybe — for the IA, which has been struggling of late.

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history, technology, trends

NSWEduChat, an AI tool for Australian teachers in NSW

27 September 2024

Australian teachers in NSW, now have access to NSWEduChat, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool, intended to help educators get a grip on AI tools:

The tool aims to provide additional support to staff in developing and delivering teaching experiences, easing workload demands, and empowering users to advance their AI skills in a safe environment.

The NSW Department of Education however urges caution while using the tool, reminding teachers the bot may not always be accurate, a government health warning, if ever there were one:

NSWEduChat can simulate many tasks that a human might perform but may not always be accurate. School leaders, teachers and trained, experienced employees in non-teaching positions should apply professional judgment when using NSWEduChat.

It sounds like NSWEduChat will eventually be available for students to use, something that is currently being trialled. A student roll-out will only happen once safety and privacy matters have been worked through.

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