Anyone has their own personal website?

[adrian]

I need help in making my colors coordinate with each other, while being "different" from everyone else's. My website was made using a combination of Adobe ImageReady and Microsoft's Frontpage editor.

I'm trying to get a website up for fellow websurfers to visit, but everytime I have visitors, they don't return (even though I update the site).

Any help is appreciated!

[pzarquon]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

There are a number of automated online utilities that can suggest complimentary color schemes for website design. Pick one color you like, and it'll suggest a few others to use for best contrast and the least conflict. I've used VisiBone's Color Lab, and liked their overall site so much, I bought their color palette wall poster.

Anyone has their own personal website?

I do web design for my day job, as well as my "everything else freelance stuff" job, and have an unstoppable addiction to buying and developing (and usually abandoning) web domains. A couple of years ago, I owned nearly 50 domain names. I've got it down to maybe 30 now.

So, of course, at least one is a strictly personal site, an all-me, all-the-time cyber ego hut. If you ever wanted to prove to yourself that you really can know too much about a person, my home on the web is lightfantastic.org.

Good luck with your own site, Adri. Though I suppose FrontPage makes things easy, I'd suggest you graduate to something else as soon as you become comfortable with web development in general. Like anything else, Microsoft might be easy, but she'll hurt you in the end.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

Color schemer worked very well for me for the blog. The rest of the site I was winging it, when I didn't know as much as I do now.

I found a set of utilities called Personal Web Page Designer from Pro Venture at Office Depot once for $15 with a $15 rebate, so I bought it (and got the rebate, eventually), but I think they've been bought out by somebody. It's basically an HTML editor, and there are lots of those.

[adrian]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

Thanks guys.

Now I feel so inferior, because you all have your own web addresses, and I have to stay with Geocities

I'll check those color matching sites out. And I only got Frontpage, and I'll learn it while I'm in school, so I'll just stick to it.

Anyone suggests any good "alternatives"? I don't want anything hard, and updating the individual pages is a top concern (for that, I used frames, but since people told me that it was getting "old", I ditched it.

[pzarquon]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

I do 90 percent of my development in a straight HTML editor. Anything from Notepad to Macromedia's HomeSite (which is part of the larger Dreamweaver suite). There are all kinds of options at this level, from beefed up text editors that do special things with HTML (color coded tags, validation, etc.) to full coding applications (that do HTML as well as CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, etc.).

That said, if you're still learning web design and need WYSIWYG, you could do worse than FrontPage.

Geocities hosting is fine... you can't beat the price. You can also get a domain name that forwards to your Geocities URL... domains go for as cheap as $8, and I never pay more than $15 for mine.

Dropping frames was a good idea. It was cool when, say, the Star-Bulletin first launched, but today? It actually hurts to browse their site.

Have you considered a blog-format service like Blogger.com? You can worry only about the content, and all you need to do is click "Publish." Blogger.com and similar services offer a variety of templates to choose from, so you can get a reasonably sharp design in seconds.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

I do 90 percent of my development in a straight HTML editor. Anything from Notepad to Macromedia's HomeSite (which is part of the larger Dreamweaver suite). There are all kinds of options at this level, from beefed up text editors that do special things with HTML (color coded tags, validation, etc.) to full coding applications (that do HTML as well as CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, etc.).

That said, if you're still learning web design and need WYSIWYG, you could do worse than FrontPage.

Geocities hosting is fine... you can't beat the price. You can also get a domain name that forwards to your Geocities URL... domains go for as cheap as $8, and I never pay more than $15 for mine.

Dropping frames was a good idea. It was cool when, say, the Star-Bulletin first launched, but today? It actually hurts to browse their site.

Have you considered a blog-format service like Blogger.com? You can worry only about the content, and all you need to do is click "Publish." Blogger.com and similar services offer a variety of templates to choose from, so you can get a reasonably sharp design in seconds.

I use Notepad for blog entries. Suggesting Blogger implies that Adrian wants to blog, Pzarquon! As you know, there are other reasons for websites (although you wouldn't know it from reading all the press writing about bloggers covering the Democratic convention).

[pzarquon]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

Hey, I was online long before these newfangled weblog things were all the rage. Long enough to dislike the term 'blog,' to be sure.

I only suggested it as one possibility. The 'blog format makes keeping content fresh incredibly easy, and the templates that Blogger.com lets you use for free are pretty darn nice... compared to what a corporate graphic designer would charge you to give your site a sharp look.

Obviously, Adri's site so far has a more conventional "informational website" setup... but there's really nothing there that couldn't be done as a weblog (though I'm not sure how Blogger.com manages static pages)... and you'd be able to stay away from Microsoft software to boot!

[Linkmeister]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

Thanks guys.

Now I feel so inferior, because you all have your own web addresses, and I have to stay with Geocities

I started out at Geocities, then got mad (and in a bind) when they stopped allowing ftp from outside their own system. In fact, my old Blogger archives are still trapped there, because I can't reformat them as Movable Type wants in order to migrate them over.

[mel]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

I've been doing websites since May 1995. The best way to learn is to start simple and work your way up. I think my first foray was to go to a site called "Beginner's Guide to HTML" which kind of showed me the basics to this whole thing. And pretty much through the years I've stuck with most of the basics and learned a few other "tags" along the way. I've gone through a few text to HTML editors, all of them on the Macintosh since that is the only kinds of computers I have at home.

That said, today I use a text editor called Pagespinner for the Macintosh available through Optima Systems. It is a neat HTML editor though not high end like Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive, and certainly a whole lot cheaper! I use this to do most of the sites I publish and maintain.

I think for most people, start with a simple site and a free place such as what you have on Geocities or even through your internet provider (most providers offer about 5 to 10MB of space to host a personal site)... cut your HTML skills there and then if you like web publishing branch out to different places and hosts. In time you are going to want to get domain names for at least some of the sites you publish. I have a small handful that I use and thanks to Prophet Zarquon, he led me to a site that allows me to use a few of my inactive domain names and have them point to something I actually have.

I think for domain names, if you are unsure of whether or not a domain name will work for you, just register and purchase it for a year. If you like it, then most places will let you buy into it for 2, 3, 4, 5+ years or more..... I think it is best to buy them in 3 year intervals and not buy them all at once for the same term.. otherwise they all come due at the same time and you have shell out some bucks to get them all renewed at once.

Anyway, one of the key things about a good site is to have it updated as frequently as you can... which can be a problem if you are the only person running several sites..... Where do you find the time to keep all the sites current? I know this because I have a few that remain dormant for a few weeks or even months at a time before I get around to updating them.

OK.. this is just my 2 cents on this subject.

BTW, is there any code that will allow the "cents" symbol to show up on a web page text? Or even here at Hawaii Threads....

[Albert]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

I'm very old-fashioned, use UNIX Pico to do all my web-work, stay away from things like Flash and such.

But then on my main website I'm just providing a collection of links I find useful (or in some cases, links people have asked me to include) and on my "blog" (shudder at the horrible word) there's absolutely no reason to put visual barriers between the reader and the words.

I've been fortunate to have had for many years now web-space on lava.net, but have had mercifully brief experience of Geocities and such places. Far better to spend a little money instead of using the so-called "freebies".

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

BTW, is there any code that will allow the "cents" symbol to show up on a web page text? Or even here at Hawaii Threads....

You mean like this?: 50¢

I just pulled up the Character Map application (in Windows) and cut-and-pasted it in. You can also use this trick to spell Hawaiian words properly, so you can sit on your lanai and look at Lāna'i.

This doesn't work on all web sites though; I think it depends on what character set the site is configured to use.

[Karen]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

Hi Adri,

don't feel like an outsider for only having a geocities website! I don't have one at all, and we have been online since '97. In fact, I don't know why I may want a website in the future. I don't have a clue what I may want on one, or what purpose it will/would serve, but I do enjoy websites my friends or relatives choose to put together. I know military families that have them for the family they are away from.

Mel, do you work professionally, building and maintaining websites for people, here in the islands? if you do, may I ask you if there is a thriving business for that here, or do you see a void/need, of it?

We homeschooled both our daughters here in the islands for the last ten years. Our 19yr. old returned to her home state of California last year, and she got her first job, no more than 20hrs. per week, making $15. an hour. It was her first job in her life, and we are very proud of her. She learned to build websites on her own, as part of homeschooling over the years, and is poised to make a great deal more in the field. (She also works retail parttime.)

I see that, to put it in simple terms, the whole world is going to be computerized, and any company not doing business online will have to, to remain competitive in the future. This technology fascinates me, I enjoy shopping online when I can, email is a blessing, and this internet is like having a vast library, but I don't yet know how to design a good-looking website or anything. Even some of the terms used on this thread elude me, but I think I want to learn more and be able to do what you all, and my own daughters do so well.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

Apropos of not much, I just downloaded a free copy of a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) editor from Balthisar Software. They have both Mac and Windows versions. Now I need to find a copy of the Idiot's Guide or something. There's limited help within the program and no tutorial, but hey, the price was right.

[mel]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

You mean like this?: 50¢

I just pulled up the Character Map application (in Windows)

And that's the rub. Only works with Windoze. For the Mac we can make the cents sign by pressing the OPTION+4 key combo and it should be:

¢

But what happens sometimes is that I get a funky goofy character instead of the cents sign. Like right now on my Mac in preview mode it looks great, but I don't know if this will show up as a "¢" sign on Windows computers or another browser. Anyway here goes a test to see if it works here....

¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

If you don't see a ¢ sign here then for sure this board does not support some of the Mac's character sets. If you can see the ¢ sign then great!

[Karen]

Re: Anyone has their own personal website?

Idiot's Guide! that is a wonderful idea. I bought The Windows 98 Guide for Dummies, years ago at Borders, so I bet I can find a guide for building websites for Dummies. I don't know if it would simply be called an HTML for Dummies, or would have a broader title like "Website Building for Dummies," but that is what I need.