Forum Moderators: mack
First I have spent too much money on creating websites. I have the smarts to know what needs to be done now in regards to making an SEO friendly ecommerce retail site (sell art). However I dont have the skills to actually make it.
I did make a site one time through frontpage. I literally spent 6 months of my life indoors learning. Then I was told Frontpage is not a good program to use. Dreamweaver is the way. Problem is is that I would have to spend and start all over as the programs were really different. I would still consider myself quite the beginner at web designing.
Seeing I didnt have the time to learn when I had my first business started, I hired a web designer and had my site created for quite the $. The site was a miserable failure because everytime i wanted to add something to the site (if it wasnt possible through the backend) I had to get my web designer to do it,, then there would be complication because it wasnt done to my specs or I had not explained well enough. Lastly the site was not SEO friendly as I learned later.
So the question I am posing is, is it worth the time to go and take a course in web design? IF so what course should i take?
I am looking at it as though I would love the independence of having complete control of my website but the problem is is that it would eat up my time working on the site itself when I should be doing other things for the business such as recruiting new artists, customers, article directories, reciprocal linking, etc.
Hope you guys have some good feedback! I need some lol
That said, I'd think that if you spent six months designing a site (assuming you dedicated several hours a day) with a WYSIWYG Editor like Frontpage, then your learning curve is a bit slow and will end up bogging down your business and your personal life. If that's the kind of timeframe you'll need to put forth in order to "learn" DreamWeaver, then I would say that hiring a web designer is the way for you to go. It sounds like you spent all that time learning how to use the Frontpage application, rather than learning the code. That's not the way to go, no matter what program you use. If you learn HTML, you can design a site in any application... you could code a site on a bar napkin if you wanted to. But if you just learn the WYSIWYG apps, then you get the result you're seeing now- virtual obsolescence if you dare to switch programs.
As far as the experience you had with that designer... I'd have to say you simply hired a bad web designer (unless this occured like 6 years ago, when every shmuck was using WYSIWYG editors and wasn't paying attention to SEO). Depending on what kind of site you're looking for, you should probably seek out a designer who's going to design with CSS-P, which will yeild the best results for SEO and will make things easy for you to update yourself via a simple Content Management System. A good web designer shoulld be able to take care of those needs you mentioned, so don't let that prior experience affect you, though keep it in mind when you're interviewing designers.
The WWW is the best teacher you could possibly have
There are hundreds of great sites out there that can teach you web design. I would start with learning HTML and then CSS - both are relatively easy to learn. When you hit a snag, you can always ask for advice on WebmasterWorld. Once you've got a grasp on those, you can explore whatever your site needs next, whether it be PHP, SQL, JS, etc., etc. (if you need any of those at all)
On the other hand, it sounds like you just had a bad designer the first time around...
If you're talking about HTML, you should definitely take the time to learn it. Forget Frontpage and Dreamweaver for now, start building some pages using notepagd (i.e. hand type in the HTML code). That is definitely something you need to know.
Next step up would be programming in something like basic or php. I know how to do this (but don't personally anymore) but again it's something that's not that hard to learn and is good to know if only to understand the process. Lots of web folks do a lot of their own programming.
In terms of layout and general design, I think that's a reading/experience issue. I know how to layout a website, but that's only after a lot of years.
In terms of the graphical design, I don't have a clue and have no interest in learning. Graphic designers abound who can throw together a nice looking site on the cheap, or there's a million template places on the web. Pick up a nice looking template, then you can use your newfound HTML knowledge to make changes to it.
I think from what you guys are saying is that I should really take some spare time and put it to learning as I agree with
Don_Hoagie: "bar napkin" funny but im sure true!
Jfodole: well the current site i have is an ecommerce, almost fully automated site. Emails are going this way and that way, and just tons of options in the backend etc. I wouldnt even bother trying to figure out my site just yet but it does have Java, Mysql etc so i guess i will have to learn those in time. Guess from what you guys are saying then HTML is the first step.
Question: so if i should start on html should i start making a site for fun? I think that is the best way i learn myself, through trial and error. So if that is the case I already have a website,, obviously dont want to screw it up so what would be the first step? should i start a project? maybe try to remake my site for fun? and so can you guys give me one or two steps so i can take it from there?
I agree about using notepad so i can really get to the basics and not worry about the program. So if i start on notepad then can you guys tell me what i should do when then how would i get the notepad info to a website? should i buy a domain name? sorry too many questions!
That said you will still need to learn some HTML to design templates.
HTML is fairly easy, and there is a lot of info around.
It would be better to learn some of what ever scripting language the CMS you use is written in (most often PHP) so you can extend it if necessary.
I would start by learing some simple HTML and CSS, the setting up a non-critical site on a CMS (a personal site or blog for example) and playing with it.
Graphic design is harder to learn, and probably best left to professionals.
The biggest advantage of learning in your situation, may well be that even if you hire a designer, you understand what they are doing and what they should be doing.
Depending on where your site is hosted, there may be several options as to how to get your HTML files up to your site. There may be an admin page that lets you upload through your browser and you can always FTP it up as well.
However, if you just want to preview your work, you don't need to really upload it to your site. When you save your file in notepad, make the extension ".html". Then, you can just open the HTML file in your browser by double-clicking on it and you'll be able to see what you've done.
Before moving on to something else, make yourself a near master of HTML. I would take a look at CSS after HTML and learn how it can optimize your code and make your life easier.
I redesign websites for a living and most of my clients are those who got fed up with FrontPage and their site wasn't going anywhere because it wasn't search engine friendly and they needed someone to clean up the code.
It costs just as much to clean up the code as it does to start from scratch so if you can start out with a clean site then maybe you can edit it later--IF you know html/CSS.
Unless you can wean yourself from Frontpage/Dreamweaver you will have to constantly correct the work you have done because neither of them put out clean code.
If you want your website to be viewable in tomorrow's browsers you need to learn to code them yourself.
graeme_p : I think my site is html and php? its tough to even know as im quite a beginner at this. I understand a lot about seo but not the application of it. I guess i will just start with html?
Bill: I would honestly prefer to just use a program and go from there but if i do not know how to use the program properly like you say im most likely to mess the html up and add unnesseccary things.
GUYS THANK YOU SO MUCH IT IS REALLY APPRECIATED. IM GOING TO TRY WITH NOTEPAD AND THEN VIEW IT, MAYBE EVEN MAKE A LITTLE SITE TO PUT PICTURES OF MY DOG ON IT LOL. HOPEFULLY I WILL BE UP TO PAR WITH YOU GUYS ONE DAY!
HTML/XHTML/CSS is merely a way to put all the above together. And is really the only bit you can learn from reading web sites.
It sounds like the original poster was led astray in selecting his original web company, and they let him down. However, in the long run, it can often be cheaper to suck it up, do the research and hire a *new* company, rather than trying to teach yourself all the above.
The time it takes to learn is time you are not focusing on your core business. And the end result from your learning may be no better than your original, paid for, site. In this case, you lost even more money!
Always remember, you may own a painting, you may know all about paintings, you know how they are created, you understand the processes, you even have some paint.
This doesn't mean you are an artist!
Design 50 websites yourself in order to learn the ins and outs of coding, desing, and optimization... but as your skills (and bank accounts) grow you sould outsource the design to someone else and spend your time on content and marketing.
Yes. You need to know what you are doing to some extent, so you know whether others know what they are doing. That doesn't mean you have to be an expert. You just need to know how to identify one.
Always remember, you may own a painting, you may know all about paintings, you know how they are created, you understand the processes, you even have some paint.This doesn't mean you are an artist!
True. I'm crappy at many things, but I can spec them out for the right person. You need to be able to identify a qualified person, at the least. That requires knowledge or trusted referrals. I prefer both.
However, it really doesn't sound like a WYSIWYG editor would be the solution to your problem here. I agree with islandlizard here. You may be in over your head trying to reverse engineer this site, and getting the system done for you by a third party may be more effective in this case. You can certainly work on learning different software and code so that you know enough to maintain your site, but unless your primary job is web design you may not be spending your time in the most efficient manner by doing it on your own.
I wish i had your guys talents but its obvious it takes time and time i do not have!
Thank you everyone for your help =)
It's matter of time and patinece and surely on your efforts to learn new everyday.
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Now I suppose it is possible to turn out flawless code with dreamweaver just as much as it is possible to turn out junk with a code editor...
But it really is a bit like using a diagnostics machine to figure out what is wrong with the car versus knowing what is wrong from experience. See, my car goes to the mechanic that knows what is wrong from experience because I don't believe in paying an extra 80 dollars for diagnostics which, at this point, are redundant and worthless.
I much prefer my free syntax-based color-based code editor over paying hundreds of dollars for something that supposedly is the weaver of dreams... Not only because of the cost, but because when I run it through w3's validator, I know right away what to fix, and where to go look (for one, it looks the same).
My graphic ability is poor in the extreme so i hire graphic artists, content writers too when I dont have time.
Howvere SEO is only ever done by me and thats the way its going to stay I wouldnt trust anyone else.
Stick to what your good at!
