Design My Own Website

webdesignerscotty answers:

Depending on how customized you want it, there are a lot of ways to go about this.  Squidoo and Hubpages offer free tools to do this.  You can also do free blogs with typepad, livejournal, WordPress, and others.

Lastly, weebly.com is very good too

webdesignerscotty answers:

Search for free business sites
I’ve seen them before

also check on
orgsites.com
geocities.com

I also highly recommend free blog sites as well like Blogger.com and WordPress.com, two of the best.  For an upgrade you can place your own domain name on their free blog site.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Yahoo has its own spot for free webpages as well as msn live spaces…..both are free and easy to use.  Weebly.com is another

webdesignerscotty answers:

The program is called dreamweaver and it comes with fireworks, and flash, but the program goes up to $300. It’s a great program, but I understand some people wouldn’t like paying that kind of amount.

if you are not willing to purchase this, you can still make webpages online. Try freewebs.com, they provide everything that you need, templates, shopping carts, chat boxes, exc.  Or use free blogger systems as content management software like Blogger.com and WordPress.com

webdesignerscotty answers:

Easy.

Www.webs.com

If your still now sure take a look at this sample site. (Also made with webs)

www.entertainmenthd.webs.com

Weebly.com works too.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Yes, on Yahoo you can use 360 http://360.yahoo.com/
or Mash, but Mash is by invitation only at the moment. There are heaps of others to choose from as well, like; facebook, myspace, blogger, blogspot, xanga, friendster, etc. Do a search for free blog sites, and heaps will come up for you to choose from.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Not a lot will come out of a free webpage. The search engines don’t pick them up well and most directories won’t allow you to list them. You would do well to pay a small price (about $10) a month to build your website.

But if you want a free one, sign up for a google account and they have a free webpage maker, for a free website. The key to a web site or even just a single web page is to get people there to see it. Without that they’ll never find you.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Please visit

http://geocities.yahoo.com

It is free and very simple. Only thing is you should have a mail account with Yahoo.

 

webdesignerscotty answers:

As I know, this site has top listing of such college courses online – schools.iblogger.org

webdesignerscotty answers:

One deals with web page design, the other deals with graphic design. There is a difference.  Web user psychology is a lot different than other user psychology.  I think studying both is fine, but it might be better to specialize in one and be “aware” of the other.

 

webdesignerscotty answers:

Take the programming language courses… DW is only an extension, a WYSIWYG.

XHTML(HTML)/CSS
Photoshop
Flash
PHP/MySQL

That should be enough to keep you busy for quite some time.

Learn the NEWEST in web technologies, not old, archaic, and monolithic ways to do things like;

Tables are NOT for layouts. Tables are for tabular data.
Web Standards is a good thing and can be your friend.
There are easier and better ways to build sites too.  I personally LOVE WordPress (the site you’re looking at right now is a WordPress site!)

Good Luck.

webdesignerscotty answers:

I looked around and asked around.  If you want to take classes purely to learn the programs (not to learn any design), I would suggest www.essexcomputers.com. They are located in Clifton, NJ. I took flash classes there.

If you want to learn design, take classes at one of the art schools in NYC. The School of Visual Arts has great continuing education classes.

I would be wary of trying to take classes that teach you both – they are two different things. The program classes are hands on and you are learning the ins and outs of the program. The design classes are usually discussion classes in the classroom, and you take work home to explore.

Hope this helps! Contact me if you need more info!

webdesignerscotty answers:

Online: W3schools.com
I also search for different codes as I use them and then try them and attempt to memorize. No cheatsheets for me anymore. =)

webdesignerscotty answers:

I have friends in NC!    If not Wake Tech then maybe Durham Tech?

NC State might…but that’s more of a four-year university program.

webdesignerscotty answers:

You do need the design skills of graphic design but the two are completely different that need completely different classes to learn. web design is the making of websites. People often think that to make a website, you just place a few pictures here & there & add text in places etc… But a website is entirely created by codes, you will have to learn how to understand & type these codes both manually and using the Dreamweaver software. It is very technical to make a website. But these days, graphic design employees look for designers who have an understanding of web design so they are related but they aren’t the same. graphic design is more designing artwork for companies/ events/ brands etc. Like business cards, posters, logos, CD & DVD cover artwork, package design, magazines, flyers etc. So hopefully you can see they are two entire different fields of the design industry.

webdesignerscotty answers:

I was just checking out this site: www.learnvisualstudio.net

costs $30.00

webdesignerscotty answers:

Create great content. Everything starts with content. Give a reason why visitors will frequent your site. Why will they want to read your blog? Why will they want to spend their time in your blog? Provide value, useful information and other benefits to the readers.

As you have found, creating a blog is one thing but getting traffic is whole different story. Getting traffic is going to be your biggest challenge.  Basically anywhere where you can post a link to your site do it.  Check out this article

Backlink Building For Newbies Part 1

How do I set up a free site traffic meter on my site?

webdesignerscotty answers:

Http://www.sitemeter.com/
or

http://www.website-hit-counters.com/

Yeah it’s both free

webdesignerscotty answers:

There is a onlie tutorial should can help you.

Http://www.flash-video-mx.com/webplayer-resources/add-videos-to-blog.html

Tips: You can use the free trial version of moyea web player pro

webdesignerscotty answers:

If you are just starting out and don’t have a budget to get a domain name and hosting then I would suggest doing a combination of building websites on places like wordpress.com and also submitting relevant articles on places like ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, and more.

This should be a good start to help you learn more about internet marketing as it takes awhile to get used to all of the tips and tricks involved to make a large profit. I have personally known people who are making $100+ a day without having their own website which isn’t huge money but to many it is a great extra income.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Hi you can go to Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Typepad.com, or Livejournal.com

webdesignerscotty answers:

Optimize your blogs for the search engines, use a great title for your blogs, and optimize your content.  Then build as many backlinks as possible (links to your website).  Check out this article

Backlinks For Newbies Part One

webdesignerscotty answers:

Heya !!

There are a couple free sites where you can start blogs like:
Wordpress.com
Blogspot.com
Typepad.com

The problem with these free ones is that you are not in total control of SEo,layout or content that gets approved.

I can honestly recommend buying your own .com domain and hosting and setting up a blog on there. It will cost $10 a year for the domain and $5 a month for hosting. It will be strange if you cannot make $100 a year from your blog to cover those costs, so that means your blog will cost you nothing

webdesignerscotty answers:

Sure, you can write some blogs for companies as models and then look to sell them.  First get yourself acquainted to why business should blog, then see if you can contract yourself out.

Five Reasons How You Can Boost Your Business By Starting A Blog

webdesignerscotty answers:

Hi,

You can check our b5 media, who pays people to blog: http://www.b5media.com

Or, PayPerPost, pays bloggers per post:http://payperpost.com/bloggers/marketplace.html

Check out this feed of latest blogging jobs available on the web:http://www.lillymouse.com/blog-jobs/

Though not quite blogging, check out HubPages and Squidoo Lenses.  You can utilize those to mak emoney.

Finally, you can just put adsense or other monetization on your own blog as well.

webdesignerscotty answers:

If you have a blog with good PR , you may offering a review on your blog to online forum such as “digital point forum” they will buy a review from your blog, this is easy job you can get from blog.

webdesignerscotty answers:

You should look at doing website reviews on your blog. You can write for http://www.sponsoredreviews.com or you could write for http://www.payperpost.com
Your blog does have to be a certain number of days old before you can start earning money so you have to post some for free before you can get paid with these sites.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Do you mean getting paid to blog?  If you’re looking for that, try payperpost.com
A friend of mine is a stay-at-home mom and does that. So far, she’s made over $10000, but it took her a year or two. It really depends on how often you blog.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Make a best blog and add on your blog the Google Adsense ads it give more money and you earn more money from your blog.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Here is a huge huge list:

Www.tumblr.com/

tumblrmap.net/

www.bloglines.com/

www.blogflux.com/

www.lijit.com/

www.coveritlive.com/

www.zemanta.com/

triggit.com/

budget.rustybrick.com/

www.meemi.com/

http://blogs.mu/

http://www.blerp.com/

http://templatr.cc/

www.blogonize.com/

http://streem.us/

http://co.mments.com/

http://write4.net

http://panels.net/

www.i-want-blog.com/

weebly.com/

http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/

http://xanga.com/

blogarama.com/

createblog.com/

adwords.blogspot.com/

www.threehosts.com/blog

http://thoughts.com/

www.blogger.com/

www.blogspot.com/

www.weblog.com/

wordpress.org/

wordpress.com

webdesignerscotty answers:

I don’t know about blogger’s privacy terms, but I  like tumblr.com. They have a neat system where you can post text, a picture with a caption, a song file, or a website, and it’s really easy to design your layout. It’s just super user friendly.

webdesignerscotty answers:

WordPress.com is free and easy. Doesn’t require a login for commenters.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Have you never heard of Blogger (now owned by Google)?  Plus Tumblr, Livejournal, and Typepad.  Xanga has a really great community though.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Tumblr and Xanga are probably the two most popular blogging communities.  Other than that, wordpress, blogger/blogspot, typepad, and livejournal are very good.Hope this helps!

webdesignerscotty answers:

Xanga is one I can think of.

WordPress is another.

There are probably millions by now though.

webdesignerscotty answers:

You named a lot of really good ones.  What do you not like about them?  They are all very rich in features.  Xanga and Tumblr are very good with community blogging, the others have a lot of great features for blogging.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Make your blog entertaining and fun to read.  And then get the word out as much as possible so people know your blog exists.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Http://www.programmingtutorials.com/

http://www.geekpedia.com/

If you want to do a screen capture video (like with Camtasia) then of course the various video sharing websites (youtube, metacafe) are good choices too

webdesignerscotty answers:

Sun’s site is almost always overlooked for some reason. http://java.sun.com

webdesignerscotty answers:

Some extremely helpful websites are:

http://www.w3schools.com/

http://www.dreamincode.net/

http://www.alistapart.com

http://www.sitepoint.com/

http://www.experts-exchange.com/

As far as books go, it depends on what specific language you are trying to learn. A lot of people recommend the O’Relly books but I have found they are much better for reference, not for learning. The “Dummies” is really good, but my favorite is Sams 24 Hour Publishing. Here are two examples:

Sams 24 Hour C Language
Sams 24 Hour CSS/HTML

webdesignerscotty answers:

An acquaintance was involved with the beta testing of this software. He liked it and said it has awesome features!

Http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/events-training/tutorials.mspx

webdesignerscotty answers:

Its the same if you are looking for ‘A COMPLETE PROGRAMMING GUIDE’.

For complete programming guide:

I would suggest you to go through some basics first from(Go Step by step)
1) http://www.landofcode.com/
2) http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:How_to_Write_a_Program/
3) http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic:Computer_programming
4)http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Programming

For a crash course:
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming
2) http://www.w3schools.com (web application related, not complete programming)

webdesignerscotty answers:

Do you have a budget? Do you know html and how to edit/create graphics? Otherwise you can create logos from business clipart. There are a lot of great free and also inexpensive cilpart collections out there you can base your log off of

webdesignerscotty answers:

There are many great free websites you can use to build a website. However, for a competition you will want to host your own website with a hosting company ($5 to $10 a month) and your own domain ($15 a year). Pretty cheap to be able to host your own website! Depending on the contest, you can design your own or you can use WordPress. If you design your own, check out Web Design Mastery for a pretty complete ebook course on web design from a technical and usability point of view.

Otherwise you can use WordPress. This site you’re reading right now is designed in WordPress. Pretty simple to install. Here’s a great video I found on getting a hosting company, installing WordPress, and putting up your first blog, all in about 15 minutes

How Do You Start A Blog Video

For hosting, check out Host Monster or Host Gator.

webdesignerscotty answers:

If its anything like graphics design.. Employers are pleased to see when I make 1 site with alot of different examples
LIKE A PORTFOLIO

I have a portfolio with graphic designs, fine art designs, 3d designs.

In my opinion, I’d rather see a single website that has links to different types of writings by the same authors.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Such a website is easily achievable by yourself, this is of course providing you know what you are doing in terms of website development, however I am going to (perhaps wrongly) assume that you are not experienced with developing such a site.

Given that you are not willing or are unable to pay someone to do it, there are other options(However be aware that by not paying someone to do it, you may not get exactly what you want)

Not to worry though, you can use some pre-build systems which provide a content management system: One worth mentioning is Joomla:

www.Joomla.org provides a generic content management system for your website, all you need to do is find a suitable front end(What the customer sees) for it. There are several developers out there who spend some time developnig free(ior for low cost) front end designs which are easy to use with the joomla architecture.

The other one is WordPress. This used to be more limited than Joomla but is quickly growing in possible functionality. This site your’e reading right now is designed in WordPress and I only utilized the “easy” stuff. With plugin capability there is a lot you can do with WordPress.

Check out this video on buying a hosting company, installing WordPress, and building a WordPress blog in about 15 minutes

How Do You Start A Blog Video

I hope that helps

webdesignerscotty answers:

Depending upon what you want – static or interactive database stuff, you need a range of skills.

First off design skills – photoshop / illustrator or equivalent software and then for backend stuff if you need that database and coding skills – php/sql/asp – take your pick with whatever you’re comfotable with. There is a range of open source stuff you can get for free – Gimp and Inkscape are excellent.

I’ve been a web designer for years, and I’ve not really known anyone comfortable doing the whole thing on their own – I’m sure there are designers/coders but in my experience they’re completely different people.

Dreamweaver is (an albeit hard to edit code) fairly good web editor; get a demo from macromedia.com.

The software isn’t cheap – if you have a great idea get the professionals in to do it.

If your website only requires more simple functionality, I’m a strong proponent of WordPress (like this site you’re reading)

webdesignerscotty answers:

For books I highly recommend the “For Dummies” and “Sams 24 Hour” series. Great for reference and for learning! Sams just came out with a great new HTML and CSS book:

http://designmyownwebsite.net/go/sams24hourhtml.html

I love using it as a reference!

webdesignerscotty answers:

Learning both is extremely helpful. Start here for some great online tutorials:

http://www.w3schools.com/

webdesignerscotty answers:

I personally love learning from books. However, for video tutorials you’d be surprised how much stuff youtube has on it. Just do a keyword search for what you’re looking for on youtube and you’ll find some great video tutorials

webdesignerscotty answers:

There is no point in learning CSS until you learn HTML. Otherwise you are not really going to know how to apply what you learn about CSS.

Http://www.w3schools.com/ will give you tutorials for learning both CSS and HTML.

A great book to get offline is “Sams 24 Hour” series for HTML and CSS

http://designmyownwebsite.net/go/sams24hourhtml.html

Also for an ebook, Web Design Mastery is a fantastic reference and set of ebooks

webdesignerscotty answers:

The right book will offer more than theory. It will give you guidance, take you through the process, and help you write your own code.

No book will teach you anything worthwhile without practice, but a good book can be a priceless guide.

You can only learn web development by doing it, but it’s best to do it with the guidance of an experienced teacher who’s taught thousands of others to do it, who has carefully thought about the sequence (what order you should learn things in), who has carefully picked out the important things and culled away all the older ways of thinking that are no longer valid, and who gives you challenges appropriate to your current level of skill.

Once you know the basics, you can move on to more complex and powerful tools like JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, and AJAX,

webdesignerscotty answers:

I highly recommend PHP as it will dramatically improve any website you build. PHP is a serverside scripting language which allows you to pass information between a website and the server. You should also learn MySQL because it deals with databases. It will be best if I explain it like this:

PHP will allow you to:
-Create “locked” websites that require login.
-Display/Hide stuff based on certain conditions
-Generate HTML more efficiently (like use loops to generate the same HTML multiple times)
-Give HTML forms functionality and send data to the server to be used.

MySQL will allow you to:
-Combine with PHP to STORE data in databases. (such as login information: username, password, signup date, etc.)
-Search databases and retrieve data for PHP to use.
-Store actual forum posts and messages for others to see. (If you’ve ever been on a website’s forums, then everything you see is stored in a database and retrieved every time you load it!)

So in reality, PHP is not as powerful unless you combine it with MySQL! The ability to create forms for your users to fill out, retrieve the data and store it is a giant leap to making a good website. You will be able to store many things in a database. You could even create some sort of online store where you create a database that stores product information (Name, Cost, Description) and use PHP to do the math to calculate tax. Also both MySQL and PHP can remember information really well and create a sort of online shopping cart sort of thing.

I highly recommend PHP and MySQL.

webdesignerscotty answers:

Its relatively easy to learn HTML and CSS. But I would suggest you to start with some HTML editor in design mode. This will help you in visualizing the GUI design and check the code generated by editor. I personally prefer and recommend Dreamweaver. It generates clean HTML code and you will be able to understand how HTML can be coded effectively. Yes, it also allows you to write styles inline as well as external stylesheet.
To start with try to create a basic web page using HTML editor. Then see how HTML code has been generated by editor. You may then want to optimize it. This will give you command over HTML gradually. Similarly start with inline styles and then start writing external style sheets.