Got my website up...

[clowning_around]

Originally Posted by Sir Toony Van Dukes

Fitzwilly,

I am not a fan of the hidden text you are using below your content. I think of this as trick used by a shady company to draw visitors to the website.

I agree, this sort of text can get you banned from Search engines, the shade tone has to be at least 22 (RGB) decimals difference - yours is only 16.

[clowning_around]

Originally Posted by The Infotainer

Hey, your site is beautifully designed and appears to be well constructed to be effective too. A rare combination. Clearly with a related Blog and use of internal and external links you know what you are doing.

Thanks, I work hard at it.

[clowning_around]

Originally Posted by RAZZLE_DAZZLE

Markie I love your website. Keep the Christian Symbol on your site.. Please!!!!!!!

I don't have a website for my clowning. I have a website for my business which is Embroidery and Monogramming. I need to update it by the way and I wish I could add the Clowning on my site. I just don't the best way to add it because its a different type of Business...

Personalized Shirts and More

Hi Razzle,

Believe it or not, I am creating an Embroidery site myself, don't work i'm all the way in South africa so no competition to you.... I will be glad to discuss what I've learned from it - it is a very different industry PM me for questions

[Sassy Frass]

Anyone on this thread want to throw mw some hints on how to get my website up from scratch I'd really appreciate it....Pickles too!

[Fitzwilly]

So now you are scratching pickles Sassy? I thought you were working on your website.

[Markie]

Okay, in rough order:

1. Decide to pay for hosting. Nope, I didn't say decide if you want free or paid hosting, I said decide to use paid hosting. Freebies are okay for purely personal sites, but remember a freebie site will have ads for *YOUR COMPETITION* and that's no good.

2. Find a domain name and hosting. I recommend GoDaddy - www.godaddy.com - they're cheap, the founder is a good guy, and I've had no real problems with them. You'll escape under $4 a month for one website (INCLUDING DOMAIN NAME!) if you shop around for coupon codes - Google "godaddy coupon codes". Make sure when you sign up for hosting you choose "linux hosting" and *not* "windows hosting" - this isn't the platform of your computer you use, it's what OS the server your website will be put on is running. Linux has far more cool gadgets available on the server side (things like Joomla!)

3. Decide if you want to use a content management system (CMS) or do static design. CMS makes your website super easy to edit, add content, etc. You can log in to your website from anywhere, no special software required, add and remove content, everything all from a special part of your website. A static design is way easy to create (get something like Dreamweaver and just do it), but takes a lot of work to update and change. I have two static sites - Comic Expressions - Face Painting in Kalispell, MT and the Flathead Valley of Northwest Montana and 2008 Learn Family Reunion - Home ; and two dynamic sites - Extreme Randomness - Home and Mark Uhde - Home . Check them out and you can see how I choose when to use which technique

4. If you're doing a CMS, pick a CMS. I recommend Joomla! - it's free, it's pretty easy, and it's got a HUGE amount of community support, and GoDaddy will install it for you. If you're doing a static design, pick an editor - I recommend Adobe Dreamweaver (part of Adobe Creative Suite). As part of the suite it's like $1899, so a little on the pricey side unless you qualify for discounts (I got it as a student for $360)... but it's THE industry standard. You can make do without Adobe Creative Suite, but it's hard. Designing a website (even one using Joomla since you want to edit the parts that makeup the Joomla site) without Creative Suite is a rather painful process. If you can't afford it though, let me know and I can come up with some free programs that'll give you most of the same functions if not being nearly as fast or easy to use.

5. Build the site

6. Sign up for Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Yahoo! Site Explorer to monitor your indexing and where your traffic is coming from.

7. Smile

[tim]

Originally Posted by Markie

Designing a website (even one using Joomla since you want to edit the parts that makeup the Joomla site) without Creative Suite is a rather painful process. If you can't afford it though, let me know and I can come up with some free programs that'll give you most of the same functions if not being nearly as fast or easy to use.

Yes, please.

[Sir Toony Van Dukes]

Markie,

Thanks for the good write up of the website information.

I also recommend GoDaddy. They are a great place to register a domain. I have my domains registered with them, also my Home Owners Association's website (South Riding - Home) is registered there (I am the Chair of the Website Committee), and the Opera Guild of Northern Virginia (Opera Guild of Northern Virginia - Home)
(I am their volunteer webmaster)

I have limited experience with GoDaddy as a hosting company. The Opera Guild website uses them. I have my websites hosted by Host Gator (HOSTGATOR WEB HOSTING - cPanel, Reseller, and Dedicated Website Hosting). They have hosting for $5/month if you prepay and offer coupon codes. My servers at Host Gator use CPanel which is a fairly simple to use website administration utility. You use it to create email accounts, install components, create databases.

We are running Joomla for my Home Owner Association. I am not a big fan, but it is fairly easy to use. I was not involved in the setup, so I don't know how easy it is out of the box. My websites are all hand coded in Microsoft Visual Web Developer. (Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition). Microsoft just released a new version. I assume that it is still free, but haven't checked it out lately. I use it both at home and work.

I hope this helps.

[Markie]

A good free (open source) graphics editor for web graphics is GIMP - you can get it here - GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program - It's very good and reasonably easy to use. But it's still not Photoshop, that's for sure!

I found a free HTML editor, though I've never tried it called Bluefish - Bluefish Editor : Home - I've never used it so I don't know how good it is.

Sir Toony, Joomla is a very good platform, but you have to put a lot of work into it before it's amazing. Not as much work as, say, Drupal though. If you want something easier than Joomla, there's always WordPress but it's really just a blogging platform that's not nearly as extensible.

[Fitzwilly]

Jobee mentioned Gimp back in January. I downloaded it and have played with it briefly but I see where it is going to take quite a bit of playing before I feel even the least bit comfortable with just the basics.