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Website design questions

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#1

I noticed that a lot of you guys have some really nicely designed websites and it kinda makes me jealous. I’ve been trying to get “around to” getting my own site online for more than a few years now, but between work, home life and personal 3d projects the time has never materialized. It’s been several years since I even touched Dreamweaver or Flash, so using either would be pretty much like starting over.

Does anyone have advice for me before I start my endeavor to finally create a real website for myself? Are there any templates worth checking out? Ive been to template-monster.com but most the those are too Flash-centric for my taste. What about newer approaches like Wordpress or other blog driven sites? What I really want is something clean and elegant with simple galleries to display my work, but without spending a lot of time working on it.

Thanks in advance for any advice!
-Mitch

#2

Templates are 100% crapola. If you get one you like… you usually spend twice the time to get into the mechanics of it compared to the time it would take you to create one yourself. Considering the substantial cost of the tools involved, why don;t you ‘outsource’ the task to a local developer. Make a design on paper and run it by a few local guy’s. Might cost 500$-1500$ for something cool but you’ll HAVE something cool and time to spare. One does NOT have to do everything himself… The ‘free’ tools on the web are nice if you dedicate a substantial amount of time to them. Not without a reason… all the ‘hobby’ sites look the same.

My 2 Cents
Lemo

#3

…just show images why not used something like the free Jalbum (very numerous skins… “Chamelon” is one of the best)
or the crazy Zen Porta :wink: (see example in my Albums signature section :rolleyes:
(With Porta times consuming for make something is 5 minutes :wink:
Have happy sites making :cool:

Or directly on line Flickr :eek:
See the Zbrusher Froyd :cool:
Some possibilities of presentations in Flckr!
(except the White Background out the Slide show for the moment :smiley:

#4

If you have Photoshop, then I would highly recommend using that to create your web site. I used it to create my fan site. You can use the slice function to build it and can even create rolloever buttons and Photoshop will compile it for you into an HTML page.
To create content and maintain your site, I also highly recomment using NVU ( freeware ) which is a very good WYSIWYG editor.

If you want to go the easy way, I’ll even let you download my site ( if you like it ) and you could then just change the content to suit yourself as long as you keep the “created by” credits.

NVU web site creator
http://www.nvu.com/index.php

web site downloader
http://www.httrack.com/

#5

Use photoshop design your page… and manually slice it, dont let photoshop generate generic unreadable, untileable… unoptimized crap :stuck_out_tongue:

Learn the basics of html and css… write semantic html and make optimal use of css :+1:

Sites like http://www.sitepoint.com can help allot :wink: great forum…
And perhaps sites like http://www.csszengarden.com to see what is possible.

#6

Learn the basics of html and css

…is the old school (powerful but learning curve is some long)
Prefer the Wysiwyg :smiley:

#7

The problem is that wysiwyg only really works with tables… even with dreamweaver 8 although it has improved. You can pick up html and css pretty fast, especially with code hinting and auto completion in dreamweaver :stuck_out_tongue: Serverside languages that is the hard part like php, ruby, jsp.

Also when things go wrong… and they will go wrong in the beginning its nice to know what code causes the problem and you can focus on where the problem is :slight_smile: With wysiwyg it can drive you mad if you don’t understand what is happening… also crosbrowser developing can still give many headaches as IE is still a piece of crap from 6 years old :frowning:

#8

I use Freeway for web page design. It just can’t be beaten. You can ‘write’ your pages the same way you would onstruct a page in Winword. Mix text, fonts, pictures the way you like and the system takes care of all the necessary conversions including taking care of the various browser specifics out there.
I have it since V 2.0 and would not part with it. However, as all clever applications… it’s Mac Based…

http://www.softpress.com/

Cheers
Lemo

PS:Still… if you can’t spend a couple of weeks on a good site then outsource the task. Like in 3D where you have a guy lighting a scene another animating, another texturing, you have the same in web design. The server side script programer, the designer, the guy for the content management system,the guy for the pages, the guy for the Browser side development. So, a commercial source will always be able to present something to you in half the time, half the cost, twice the value as if you do it yourself. Unfortunately they have all the fun making it. But you have the rights to brag about it 8-).

PPS: We are so busy that we had no time to create a site for ourselves LOL. And that’s for the 5th year straight hahahaha. All projects word of mouth…

#9

Photoshop is a must have. As mentioned, you can design your whole page and then slice it up and place the images.

Another thing mentioned is you should learn HTML and CSS. I agree with that too…and a GREAT place to start is http://www.w3schools.com

Good luck :+1:

#10

This was right on time. I’m doing the same. Thanks for the links. Very helpful.

#11

Whatever you do… do NOT create pages using Photoshop for anything else than the manipulation of images placed into pages using style sheets or plain html. DO NOT create pages with photoshop. Once you are into a more complex site you will realize that this is a one way street. It gives quick ‘optical’ results but barrs any further expansion or scalabiltiy. There is no ‘Easy Button’… and no free Lunch.
Cheers
Lemo

#12

Now you can BUILD a complete site ALL WITHIN Photoshop. The final output is XHTML and CSS. With no coding or wrestling with stupid HTML rules and editors. Just build the site the way you want it to look using Layers and Layer Comps in Photoshop CS or CS2, click the Build button and when it finishes load it up onto the web. Auto Gallery and thumbnail building, Forms, Flash loading, and many more powerful features.

My site (the new front-end and pages) was done entirely inside Photoshop with the Site Grinder 2 plugin. It is still in progress and will be finished next month with the latest build of Sitegrinder 2 Pro. It’s a very simple example and much more sofisticated sites can be built.

I used to use Dreamweaver and Golive. Now, thankfully, I don’t have to anymore.

http://www.acmepixel.com

Sitegrinder;
http://www.medialab.com/sitegrinder/index.html

BTW, I was a betatester for SG Pro

#13

Have you checked your site in firefox? http://www.acmepixel.com/new/index.html :confused:

Also your layout is only 3 strokes of different colour which can be done pure in html except for the logo and images offcourse :stuck_out_tongue: So it’s not really a good example complex layouts require knowledge and will always require knowledge of html… machines and software are to dumb to write it for us except simple things… tables / text markup.

#14

There we go… Good Luck fixing it. That is exactly what I was refering to.
Sad to see that such a great effort is stranded by the multiple browser issue. No doubt it will be fixed… but the time… Check out freespace… Go buy a cheap mac for it if you don’t have one already. It’s a great tool!
Lemo

#15

Just a few font tags too many. I’m impressed by photoshop, the markup looks very good. Given that it’s easy to excuse that font flaw, worth a look.

#16

I don’t understand what you guys are talking about. My site looks the same in Firefox as in any other browser.

My only complaint about SiteGrinder is that the xhtml output requires one to type the www in front of the domain name or only the text will be displayed.

My entire point about Sitegrinder is only for those of us who hate HTML editors and do our work all day in Photoshop. For my needs, SiteGrinder is the only way to go.

Also, I didn’t intend that my site be used as an example except for the extreme novice. You know, those of us who don’t know what a “tag” is, or what HTML even means.

I wanted my site to be easily searched by Google, etc. And because the text is all CSS it brings up a hit on Google every time. The only other way to get text the way I want it is to make it a graphic or a SWF. Again, too complex for me.

I dont’ have a lot of time to mess with web graphics, I just need something that’s fast and easy to throw something together. :wink:

#17

No it does not look the same… Here is a screen shot of the front page.

acmepixel.jpg
Once you are in the gallery that module does a good job presenting your cool artwork. I have not checked other bits as I am rather busy. But the Frontpage needs work.
Cheers
Lemo

#18

Like I was saying, I only use Photoshop to create the web site as far as cutting up images, creating tables, layout, buttons, etc., but I use NVU for the actual design and coding.

#19

Yikes! what a mess. are you using the pc or mac version of firefox?

I checked it and yup, it’s a bug from the beta version I had used on that page.

the final version of Sitegrinder works great with all browsers. I’ve got to fix that by re-running the photoshop file thru the latest install of Sitegrinder. But I don’t have time to fix it today.

Like i said earlier, my site is not a good example of what sitegrinder can do, they have much better samples on their website, including the website itsef, as sitegrinder 2 examples. :+1:

#20

Looking great now :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1:
Also a much much better opening Pic! I like it a lot.
Don;t get me wrong, there are many tools out there which deserve credit. But most of them are relying on a very narrow design philosophy. The result is that it is really difficult and time/money intensive to tie in shopping carts and what not in a later stage. Not that I am an advocate in ‘NOT’ using those tools, but one has to consider the options and carefuly decide on what the future of his site is.
Good luck with the site! Again, looks great!

Lemo