Re: How to build a website?
 

[quote=mlmpetert;721898]Also i like to think my internet searching skills are pretty good, but obvisouly ive had a hard time with this. Im not really the type of person to read books (ive read 3 chapter books in my life and rarely bought books in college (i went to vcu)), so until i get through this and unless i have any real interest ill be holding off on any PHP or CSS/javascript stuff.[/quote]
The nice thing is there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Just about anything you can think of that you'd want to do on your site has been done and there are links out there that will tell you how to do it. A lot of my experience comes from learning on the fly, meaning if I can't do something, I Google it to find out how to do it, and then do it. That's how I learned to connect an access database to an ASP.net page, how to use jQuery, and how to incorporate CSS3 and make it work in browsers that don't support CSS3.

As far as CMS goes, you're better off finding your provider then worrying about what CMS they use.

Re: How to build a website?
 

[quote=mlmpetert;721898]Is there a way i can see what cms a website uses, like when you use whoishostingthis.com to see who the host is?

So ive been looking at wordpress and joomla, Ive got a lot of reading to do. It seems like wordpress is a little simplier, so im probally gonna go that route, plus if i was ever to make a real website i think it would be more along the lines of the format for one of those "news" websites i listed above.

What CMS do you think was used to make this site:
[URL="http://www.thefamouspeople.com/political-leaders.php"]Famous Political Leaders - Famous Leaders, List of World Famous Politicians[/URL]

Also i like to think my internet searching skills are pretty good, but obvisouly ive had a hard time with this. Im not really the type of person to read books (ive read 3 chapter books in my life and rarely bought books in college (i went to vcu)), so until i get through this and unless i have any real interest ill be holding off on any PHP or CSS/javascript stuff.[/quote]

If you go to that web site and view the source (right-click > view source), you will see a comment at the top mentioning "HotMetal". It appears that HotMetal is a web development software. I've never heard of it, and if you're interested in learning the fundamentals about web development you'd be better off steering clear of such things.