Web Design

[David Rogers]

Frontpage is fairly intuitive – all just type, cut & paste etc – with a load of basic templates & infinately variable colour schemes.

Dreamweaver will give you a more professional site..it’s just not the easiest thing to learn.

I like frontpage for it’s simplicity for the novice, a mate that does really nice web design uses dreamweaver…makes it look easy.

There might be a ‘For Dummies’ book to buy…trip to Waterstones!

[Warren Beard]

Hi Tony

I did the same as you, I bought a copy of Frontpage2003 of ebay, went through this tutorial and produced my own web site with no help what so ever. As for dreamweaver that is another story I know nothing about. I never knew one thing about web sites until I bought this and it is really easy. Work through the tutorial ans skip anything you are not going to do and by the end of it you will be able to not only make up web pages but also learn how to upload them to a web service provider.

It helped me a lot and I know it will help you, dream weaver will simply make the site look much better but you need to decide how "fancy" you want it.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/train … 01033.aspx

good luck

Warren

[Tony Walton]

Thanks a lot David and Warren. Ive managed to download a tuitorial for dreamweaver now, and a friend has kindly lent me his book on Frontpage. I also managed to get a copy of cute ftp. Now just to learn how to use them ! 🙁 Ive managed to design the site, its just uploading the bugger now. Thanks to you both. I got Websites for Dummies (Im definitely one) and also used the Frontpage lessons on the link. Cheers. Ill put the URL on here when Ive finsihed it for all to see, and have a laugh at.

[Robert Lambie]

hi tony
i am think that if you want a cheap website it can be done on your own.
however, you have to be realistic, how many hours reading and learning will you spend trying to create a site that still doesnt look professional?
i honestly think it is a bit of false economy.
by all means get some web page creation software, buy some cheap space etc etc but i would try steer you towards using a simple ready made template. you basically browse hundreds of reday made templates and select the one you want. purchase it for as low as £10 and upload it onto your web space.
once in place you can replace the images with images of your won, logos, links and more. you still have this cool looking website but the images/work is your own.

try websites like http://www.templatemonster.com/ or http://www.web-sites.co.uk/webdesign-templates.html

there are loads of these sites on the go… have a look.

one thing i would advise, try getting an html template, this is bare basic web coding and probably the cheapest to buy. however. when it comes to editing it is much easier to manipulate than other head bursting codes available.

[Russ Draper]

One program that I have been using in a drag & drop application called netobjects fusion, I think that it is up to version 10 at the moment! but can pick up earlier versions for about £70 at amazon!

I built my own site with it with no knowledge of coding and stuff (still don’t know much to this day either lol)

Just to show you what I have achieved check out my site here (hopefully I’m OK posting the link as its not self promotion, has nothing to do with the sign industry)

check it out

http://www.theflairschool.com

Cheers

russ
p.s i get called tom cruise all the time so please dont bother lol

[Martin Pearson]

Russ you are correct Fussion is now up to version 10 I’ve been using it for about 5 years and it is a really easy program to use as it is all drag & drop. I have kept upgrading as with each upgrade they have introduced new features and tools which have always been worth the extra money. As well as amazon for older versions it is also worth looking at computer magazines as I have a copy of version 7 ( I think) which was free on the magazine CD.

[George Kern]

quote Tony Walton:

Hi guys, not sure if Im in the right section. Sorry if Im not. Anyway, I just wondered if anyone has mastered Microsoft Front Page or Dreamweaver. Ive just started to learn both of them. I really need a tuitorial book or pdf file. Just wondered if anyone has any tips were to find an online course or good book to buy. My website is shockingly poor and Im trying make it look more professional. Any help greatly appreciated. Cheers.

Dreamweaver would be considered the industry standard out of all the web-design software packages. This is probably why Adobe has went out and acquired Macromedia for $3.4 billion back in early 2005. The nice thing about Dreamweaver is its compatibility with other extensions/plug-ins. This is something you won’t find in Frontpage which is esentially a beefed up Microsoft Word made for web-design. One of the best features of Dreamweaver is the different view modes. You cant have the "Coding" view for pure HTML coding, you can have the "WYSIWYG" view which is essentially a drag and drop view, or you can view both screens at once in a split screen. There are hundreds of books on Dreamweaver that will get you up and running in hours. Goodluck.

[Jason Xuereb]

Hey guys,

I always find that creating a mock up in photoshop or illustrator always helps. Once you know exactly what your layout is going to be you can replicate it in frontpage or dreamweaver using tables or css (cascading style sheets).

If your going to use the table approach I would construct a table which had one column then rows for things like HEADER, MAIN MENU, CONTENT, FOOTER. That is depending on your design of course. Then inside these rows you can insert more tables or just have your content inside of them.

Both software packages will give you the ability to do this.

On the other hand you can use CSS. It is more involved but there is a sample from a book here http://www.sitepoint.com/books/css2/ which will walk you through the layout of a site and how the css is achieved to give you the layout.

Another thing I find useful is to finalise your layout template with all the menu links to each page. Then you can copy and paste each .html (or .htm) file to the newpagename.html which corresponds to the links in your menu. That way then you can open up each seperate page and just modify the content. Then you will have a working site with all menus links working.

Hope that helps.

[Chris Windebank]

Hi Tony, I have in the past built my own sites but spent hours doing so. You can get a good web designer to build and host your site, mine was 250.00 and worth it, take a look!
Regards
chris