Website questions galore!

[trinamick]

I have a bit of a problem. I took a web page design class last semester, and I built a makeshift website for my bro-in-law's business. It was not actually usable, since most of the info was made up, but it worked for my assignment. Now he wants me to make him a real working website, convinced that he can make good money for his fledgling business.

The problem? I don't really know what I'm doing. He asked me to do it because, well, I'm free and he can't afford to have one done professionally. The one I did for my class was done in FrontPage and was a rinky-dink operation. I can admit freely that it did not look professional and really would not be the best thing for a business.

He's going to be hosting it through Yahoo! Small Business. So what I'm wondering is, what is the best (free, if possible) program to use to set up a professional(ish)- looking site? Will FrontPage work for that? Any tips, suggestions? What look do you think works the best for a business site? I'm kinda in over my head here, and I can't seem to get it through to him that his faith in my abilities is not exactly justified. He keeps saying, "I have faith in you." I keep thinking, "Well, it's not my fault you're an idiot." Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I'll even give you my firstborn. Well, I don't have one yet, but when I do, it's yours.

[Selena]

trin, don't be too hard on yourself. I have been to a ton of "business" sites that are very amateur looking but they work okay. You don't have to have every bell and whistle at a site for it to promote the business successfully.

Here's some tips for a good business site...

Is there a way to see what the business is about?
If it's a product can one see a full range or is there just one item shown?
If there are many items what are the catalog / product numbers?
Is there a place where one can find prices?
How does one contact the company? - phone, fax, e-mail and physical addresses for the company and service center (if there is one).
If there's a store on the premises what are the business hours?
How does one get there? - a map perhaps.
Will the company ship to other states and if so what shipping methods do they use?
How does one pay for the goods? - credit cards / paypal / checks? and is the online ordering info secure?

That's what I look for if I go to a business web site. If it's nice looking then that's a bonus.

I have been to lots of business sites that look great but nothing seems to work and one can't see what the company is selling and when one e-mails the company it takes days for a reply to come back only to find that they don't ship to certain states.

[janey_13]

If you already have FrontPage just use that, it's not my favorite program of choice, but if it's what you got might as well use it. To make a professional website, you have to keep several things in mind:

1) Quality information that is organized well
2) Don't use clip art, it's better to have no graphics
3) Colors that work well together that aren't too bright (or too many of them to begin with)

If you want me to take a look, you can PM me the url and I can see what help I can offer.

[trinamick]

Wow. Good thing someone else is thinking. I'd hadn't thought of some of those. No clip art. Gotcha. :D One of my biggest issues is how to set up an order form page, since it wasn't covered in my course. He has a lot of information too, so it's going to take awhile to get it sorted out.

[janey_13]

Wow. Good thing someone else is thinking. I'd hadn't thought of some of those. No clip art. Gotcha. :D One of my biggest issues is how to set up an order form page, since it wasn't covered in my course. He has a lot of information too, so it's going to take awhile to get it sorted out.

Setting up the form is not too difficult, but you have to figure out how your send the information from the form to your uncle b/c you can use Javascript or CGI or php, etc. I've never used FrontPage, there might be a default way to send form information.

[MrVesham]

I'm begging you not to use FrontPage because when not babied, it can insert a lot of proprietary IE garbage that basically damns your site from ever being standards compliant, near-universally accessible or future-proof-as-possible. Also in the hands of a novice it can also make a site lack [some|all] function in browsers other than IE, especially when handling secure transactions. This is a bit of a worst-case, but I still see it even in 2005.

I dont have much faith in design courses, so here are some good resources:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ (XHTML Spec)
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/ (CSS2 Spec)

http://www.alistapart.com (Excellent resource. Mostly presentation, some business.)
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html (Single-install local web server so that you can test your php, sql, etc. all on your local machine without having to constantly upload to a live server.)
http://www.positioniseverything.net (All presentation. How to get around design-related browser [mostly IE] bugs.)
http://www.htmlite.com (A bit of a cutesy site. Tutorials that can lead to business and presentation. Nice place to cut your teeth on PHP.)
http://www.mezzoblue.com/ (Presentation, some business, mostly just a good resource for good design/presentation logic.)
http://webstandards.org/ (Presentation logic, standards awareness.)
http://csszengarden.com/ (Heavily CSS-powered presentation demos.)

I have more but I'm at work. Me bookmarks no here!

[matt_boy]

If you need more info on the programing aspect and how to do this or that a very good place to start is W3 Schools (http://www.w3schools.com/). If they didn't teach you CSS in school and you have the time I would recommend learing it (the tutorial at W3 is great) if you are going to do any web design. It's easy to learn and lets you do neat stuff. :D

[trinamick]

Thanks. I'll take a look at those. I knew I'd come to the right place!

[generic_screenname]

I have no idea how I managed to design my site and have everything mostly word the way it's supposed to (I want to have the links that run across the top of the page be white and the ones on the side be green. No idead how to do that.)

I used Dreamweaver. I believe it can get me through the night. Dreamweaver is by no means free, but you can get a pretty good deal for it on ebay if you look hard enough. Or if you happened to have a laptop loaded with it from work, which I do. :D

[trinamick]

Well, I'm like a monkey doing a math problem here. I'd like to know why people think that just because you pass a 10-week course, suddenly you're a MENSA student. It's amazing how easy it is to do when someone else is doing it.

[Antrobus]

I got a webmaster certificate a few years ago after taking a year long course. (Of course during the course was when the dot com industry fell apart so I couldn't find any work in the field where I live.)

We learned to design webpages by hand writing the HTML from scratch which is beneficial because then you know the language that's working behind the programs like Front Page, Dreamweaver, etc. you can tweak them.

We used "Mastering HTML 4 - Second Edition" by Deborah S. Ray and Eric J. Ray for a text book. There's probably a 3rd or 4th edition out now.

Back then everyone liked Dreamweaver quite a bit, but it's costly - which is why I never bought it.

As for design, the best philosophy (IMO) is that less is more. Keep the site sleek, uncluttered and easy to navigate. And remember to have a "home" button or tab on every page. Having to use the "back" option is considered a "no-no". Also consider that screen sizes vary so be careful the page you build will fit on small monitors which many people still use.

As for something free to use for designing pages, you might check out one of my favorite sites www.tucows.com and see what they have listed for freeware. They rate the programs and you can see which ones are the most frequently downloaded.

My recomendation, if you have time, is to get a good guide and learn HTML. It really pays off and I always thought it was kind of fun. I can look at the code of various sites and figure out (usually) how they're put together. That's another good way of learning - looking at the code behind various sites.

I still wish I could have gotten a career going in Web Design, but there just isn't much available in that arena where I live....so I'm still stuck doing clinical lab work!

[Antrobus]

I used Dreamweaver. I believe it can get me through the night.

:rolleyes: Took me a few minutes to get what you were talking about!! LOL!!

[trinamick]

:lol I caught my brother singing along with that once. He denied it, but I think he might have been trying to dance too.

[AgentSun]

get this book from the library and look at the webpage section.

don't buy it, cause it's frelling expensive. or maybe buy it used. but it was my textbook last semester and the webpage section will help you IMMENSELY.

Writing for the Mass Media (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0205335470/qid=1109635127/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-0056781-2365523?v=glance&s=books)

[zelbinion]

If you need to set up secure transactions with a shopping cart, find an ISP that offers the Miva Engine. A small business could contract the site for about 25 bucks a month for start up. Miva is extremely user friendly but also has the security protocols and support that you need, plus with expansion modules you can have 1 to 100,000 products. I did a site a few years ago using it that had 5000 products and I have also used it for small businesses with less than 10 products or services.

www.cybermedics.net is the ISP I recommend because they include MIVA and it will intergrate well with Frontpage is you really want to use that (though I would not recommend it).

Zel

[Madre Farbot]

Here's another killer resource KillerSites (http://www.killersites.com/) for all us web newbies and web oldbies.

[trinamick]

Thanks, guys! He is going to want the shopping cart aspect and security will be a must. Every time I say, "What about this?", he says, "Yeah, that too." I gotta learn to shut up! :D

[trinamick]

:bump:ing so I can find this stuff again.