3rd party designers & gigs
 

I am curious at this point - web design in notepad is OK. What if you
want to take the next step though - design at least part time as a
side-job?

What do you people recommend? What 3rd party program should I get into
then? Would it be something that wrote so a client could do his own
maintenance & updates - something like Front Page? (do not know a whole
lot about Front Page.)

Any suggestions?

...D.

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

....D. wrote:

> I am curious at this point - web design in notepad is OK. What if you
> want to take the next step though - design at least part time as a
> side-job?

Get an editor that does nice syntax colouring. Crimson editor is the one I
use. There are others.

> something like Front Page?

*NO*. Never, ever use frontpage. It inserts rubbish into your code.


--
Cheers
Richard.

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

"...D." <d@no_usenet_email..org> wrote in message
news:31m2q0l43narbiltoede424i0lctdim570@4ax.com...
> I am curious at this point - web design in notepad is OK. What if you
> want to take the next step though - design at least part time as a
> side-job?

So... the next step is doing web design as a side job?

I kid you not, but some of us actually do this full time for a living!!
(where its neither a side job, or a job where we have a side job)


> What do you people recommend? What 3rd party program should I get into
> then? Would it be something that wrote so a client could do his own
> maintenance & updates - something like Front Page? (do not know a whole
> lot about Front Page.)

Well... programs like FrontPage or Dreamweaver might be "Ok" for an
inexperienced person to update their website with... but they'd still have
to buy them (and I say "might be ok" which doesn't mean 'is a good choice'
or 'is ok'... you could sit with some people and show them over and over
again for a whole day on how to update their site with FrontPage and they'll
still have no clue what they are doing a day later)

What you want to search around the net for is "Content Management System" or
"CMS"

You might want to include the programming language you prefer to work with

Personally I would prefer to write a custom CMS system myself... but it can
take alot of time and effort to build a good system. If you are just
thinking of doing this as some side gig to make a few extra bucks here and
there, then you might want to just buy a premade CMS system... if you want
to do this web design stuff for a living then you might want to work on
writing your own (a good, though potentially extremely complex, project to
develop and learn the ropes with)

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

In article <31m2q0l43narbiltoede424i0lctdim570@4ax.com>,
...D. <d@no_usenet_email..org> wrote:

> I am curious at this point - web design in notepad is OK. What if you
> want to take the next step though - design at least part time as a
> side-job?
>
> What do you people recommend? What 3rd party program should I get into
> then? Would it be something that wrote so a client could do his own
> maintenance & updates - something like Front Page? (do not know a whole
> lot about Front Page.)

No no no, don't use front-page! Although, I'm currently developing a
site for a university dept. and part of the requirements from the
universities Information Services Dept on web design regulations are
that it has to be editable in Front-page!! I've tried to tell them that
serious web-designers don't use Front Page, but they won't have any of
it.
I don't have Front Page myself, so I've convinved them to have a simple
Content Management System instead. I think you'll find most people will
use a text-editor, but one that colour-codes your syntax. I use an app
called PageSpinner on my Mac which also has built in ftp support and
lots of other features (including a preview page). Another Mac app that
looks good is TextMate which has loads of good features (auto tag
completion, site management etc etc.)

Lots of people do use Dreamweaver and then encourage their clients to
purchase Macromedia Contribute to allow them to maintain their sites.
personally I've never got on with Dreamweaver and most of my clients
couldn't afford to purchase a Contribute license so I just build them
quick and easy Content Management Systems. A simple CMS allowing them to
just change the text on each page using php and a MySQL database takes
no longer to build that a normal html + css page. You can of course
charge a little more for CMS features.

HTH
Al.

>
> Any suggestions?
>
> ...D.

--
Alan Cole. E-mail: justal at lineone dot net
http://www.forces-of-nature.co.uk [Coastal Sports]
http://www.tsunami-site-design.co.uk [Website Design]
http://tinyurl.com/64xrd [Plusnet ISP]

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

....D. wrote:
> I am curious at this point - web design in notepad is OK. What if you
> want to take the next step though - design at least part time as a
> side-job?
>
> What do you people recommend? What 3rd party program should I get into
> then? Would it be something that wrote so a client could do his own
> maintenance & updates - something like Front Page? (do not know a whole
> lot about Front Page.)
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> ...D.

DreamWeaver MX 2004, without a doubt. It makes life VERY easy. But only
if you're an experienced HTML writer, and never in "WYSIWYG" mode.

--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:15:20 -0800, ...D. <d@no_usenet_email..org> wrote:

>I am curious at this point - web design in notepad is OK. What if you
>want to take the next step though - design at least part time as a
>side-job?
>
>What do you people recommend? What 3rd party program should I get into
>then? Would it be something that wrote so a client could do his own
>maintenance & updates - something like Front Page? (do not know a whole
>lot about Front Page.)
>
>Any suggestions?
>
> ...D.

Ok thanks for the suggestions. I am not interested at this time in
writing or competing with full time professionals who write for big
business. I know HTML in notepad pretty good. I do not know any
additional languages. But what I want is something that an individual or
small business (on a budget) can maintain the site themselves if they so
choose.

Also would like an opinion on this - I can manipulate already made
pictures (JPGs etc) pretty well. Now it looks like flash is in. What is
your opinions on flash - if a person wanted a flash intro, would I tell
them to have one made, would I have one made, or should I learn how to do
it myself and what program should I use?

Thanks again...

...D.

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

Without quill or qualm, ...D. quothed:

> Also would like an opinion on this - I can manipulate already made
> pictures (JPGs etc) pretty well. Now it looks like flash is in. What is
> your opinions on flash - if a person wanted a flash intro, would I tell
> them to have one made, would I have one made, or should I learn how to do
> it myself and what program should I use?

I'm on dial-up. If a site has Flash, I leave.

--
Neredbojias
Contrary to popular belief, it is believable.

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

"...D." <d@no_usenet_email..org> wrote in message
news:31m2q0l43narbiltoede424i0lctdim570@4ax.com...

>What 3rd party program should I get into
> then? Would it be something that wrote so a client could do his own
> maintenance & updates - something like Front Page? (do not know a whole
> lot about Front Page.)
>
> Any suggestions?

I would suggest reading the group's archives before asking a question that
gets asked, on average, once a week.


--
-Karl Core
Please Support "Project Boneyard":
http://www.insurgence.net/info.aspx?...&item=boneyard

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

In article <MPG.1c0b88c4792712529896bf@news.intergate.com>, neredbojias
says...
> Without quill or qualm, ...D. quothed:
>
> > Also would like an opinion on this - I can manipulate already made
> > pictures (JPGs etc) pretty well. Now it looks like flash is in. What is
> > your opinions on flash - if a person wanted a flash intro, would I tell
> > them to have one made, would I have one made, or should I learn how to do
> > it myself and what program should I use?
>
> I'm on dial-up. If a site has Flash, I leave.

Some clients have their hearts set on pointless flash intros. Often the
best thing to do is give them what they want, include a 'skip intro'
link and take their money.

--
Dan Ruscoe

Re: 3rd party designers & gigs
 

>"...D." <d@no_usenet_email..org> wrote in message
>news:31m2q0l43narbiltoede424i0lctdim570@4ax.com.. .
>
>>What 3rd party program should I get into
>> then? Would it be something that wrote so a client could do his own
>> maintenance & updates - something like Front Page? (do not know a whole
>> lot about Front Page.)
>>
>> Any suggestions?

"Karl Core" <karl@NOSPAMkarlcore.com> wrote:
>I would suggest reading the group's archives before asking a question that
>gets asked, on average, once a week.

Now see, Karl, everything was going nicely. I just re-subscribed into
this newsgroup after not having it for a while. In the time it took you
to write that sentence you could have written a one liner saying "learn to
do it yourself because bla bla bla." or" don't do it yourself because bla
bla bla." or "have someone else do it because blabla bla"..

There is kind of an "expert club" in this newsgroup I noticed before when
I looked in on (subscribed breifly) this newsgroup that some people here
belong to, and if you are not savvy enough, they want you to go reasearch
it on your own. Well, I don't see in the title of this newsgroup where it
says anything about "beginners excluded" or whatever. That is what I feel
newsgroups are for, to ask questions - hell I could do all kinds of Google
searches and read and read and search and come up with an answer. Of
course this is not aimed at most people in this newsgroup, or at least the
other 6 people who responded so far.
...D.