A problem with my service?

[cfmonk]

I have to say I hate Frontpage, even if I didn't find it counter Intuitive and slow, It doesn't support any form of PHP and also forces proprietary Microsoft code into your site.

I'd have to agree with you there, I'm not frontpage's biggest fan by any stretch. I'd point you in Dreamweaver's direction instead - it's much more professional and much more widely used.

 

 

I would agree but at £200 for a legal copy I would have thought the OP would have been better with Frontpage or at least another free wysiwyg editor.

[berry120]

I have to say I hate Frontpage, even if I didn't find it counter Intuitive and slow, It doesn't support any form of PHP and also forces proprietary Microsoft code into your site.

I'd have to agree with you there, I'm not frontpage's biggest fan by any stretch. I'd point you in Dreamweaver's direction instead - it's much more professional and much more widely used.

 

 

I would agree but at £200 for a legal copy I would have thought the OP would have been better with Frontpage or at least another free wysiwyg editor.

 

IIRC the educational version of frontpage is £100. The educational version of dreamweaver, from a quick look around on google, seems to be about the £80 mark. Considering dreamweaver's considered by many including myself to actually be better, I really don't see the point in going for frontpage at all...

 

As for free ones... http://kompozer.net/ looks quite nice :)

[smalljoshua]

Proof Reading.

 

Cover the whole page, slowly reveal a word at a time, starting at the bottom. This way you don't read the word you expect, but the one you have written!

Thank you for that very useful advice Andrew.

 

[Goes off to Proof read site.]

 

Josh

[Bryson]

Just a quick rule of thumb, not always correct, but frequently true:

 

Advice signed off with "you turd" is generally not good advice.

 

Just a thought.

[lightsource]

Well, another fan of Dreamweaver.

 

I wrote my website in Dreamweaver 8, with Flash.

 

http://www.bryantacoustix.com/lsl

 

As others have said Proof read your site SLOWLY, physically read each word, rather than let you're brain anticipate what you're trying to say.

 

On my website, I've proof read a few times, and I know there's still mistakes!

 

...and omissions for those who hit the MMS and distribution pages ;) ....it'll be sorted soon :D We know what we're doing, but our web clients don't :(

 

Some criticisms,

 

And ignore as required!

 

Frames......AAARRRGGGHHH, hate them, with a passion. When I loaded you're web page, there were scroll bars everywhere! Chunky fonts as well!

 

Wording..... Sort of comes under the spelling and punctuation envelope, but needs a little more thought, as others have said.

 

Overall apperance.... Not impressed, it's too chunky and lacks in professional wording.

You've done well, so far, but need to try a little harder.

 

It's the fine touches that really make the difference.

 

I know my website isn't pefect, but I am aware of all the imperfections, just don't really have the time to sort them.

 

As far as

 

Message: hi

I\'ve been over looking your lighting \"buisness\" and have incurred a few worrying errors at my own discrepencies.

Your health and safety aspect I find literally appauling and cannot comprehend how many errors you could sued for.

I hope your company goes down the shitter.

you turd

 

I never found a Health and Safety aspect on you're website, so I think this person is creating words from his bottom, that is travelling up his spinal chord, and being .......I'll stop there!

 

Ignore it, bin it, don't take offence, move on, and remember... this guy would probably never be a customer...... Or maybe he's a twisted competitor.

[cfmonk]

I have to say I hate Frontpage, even if I didn't find it counter Intuitive and slow, It doesn't support any form of PHP and also forces proprietary Microsoft code into your site.

I'd have to agree with you there, I'm not frontpage's biggest fan by any stretch. I'd point you in Dreamweaver's direction instead - it's much more professional and much more widely used.

 

 

I would agree but at £200 for a legal copy I would have thought the OP would have been better with Frontpage or at least another free wysiwyg editor.

 

IIRC the educational version of frontpage is £100. The educational version of dreamweaver, from a quick look around on google, seems to be about the £80 mark. Considering dreamweaver's considered by many including myself to actually be better, I really don't see the point in going for frontpage at all...

 

As for free ones... http://kompozer.net/ looks quite nice :D

 

Using an educational version to make this website would be illegal.

 

I didn't realise Frontpage was that much. The last version I used came with Office 97.

 

Your best bet is to go for a free one.

 

Chris

[paulears]

Using an educational version to make this website would be illegal

I beg to differ!

 

Most of the comments about the site are that it is a student website wishing to present a 'business' impression - and we've all given advice on how to help. Indeed some of the content makes it very clear that the owner is a student, still in education, and is NOT registered as a business, doesn't have VAT number, a home phone or address.

 

We cannot have it both ways - he's either in business - when the licence requirements don't permit the educational version to be used, or he's not in business, in which case he can use it fine!

[cfmonk]

The student software I have says it is not to be used for commercial purposes.

 

I cannot find the actual licencing agreement anywhere (although am currently mid revision so have not spent all that much time looking for it) but I would say attempting to supply goods or services for remuneration is a commercial purpose.

[Ben Langfeld]

uses server side includes to allow the uniformity across it.

 

One word...Smarty

 

Also, I would disagree with the guys talking about WYSIWYG. The concept that many big web design firms and good freelance guys use WYSIWYG to generate code is a bit.....odd. If you're a designer - design. In some sort of image editor. This is a concept, that then gets translated into, hopefully, XHTML and CSS by hand, by people who know what they are doing and can do it quickly. Then in goes the backend code. As far as I am aware, you'd struggle to find a corporate website thrown together in Dreamweaver, and I'd go as far as to say you CANNOT find a corporate website produced by FrontPage. Please, someone, prove me wrong. I could do with a giggle.

 

Josh, I havn't seen the site, because I'm guessing your server's off; maybe consider some hosting, you're talking pennies. Keep going with the PHP; look at Object Oriented programming and very high level concepts. Don't get hung up on mechanics, think in terms of strategy and frameworks. After the initial bemusement at all the seemingly made up words, you will then find everything magically just happens.

[smalljoshua]

Yeah I need my server off at night so I can sleep :P

 

My Schools site is Frontpage made.

 

www.eggbuckland.com

 

Josh

[berry120]

Yeah I need my server off at night so I can sleep :P

 

My Schools site is Frontpage made.

 

www.eggbuckland.com

 

Josh

 

I need my laptop ON at night so I can sleep :P Too weird without it!

 

The site looks nice - though it has got microsoft written all over it in the source. Literally.

 

Also, I would disagree with the guys talking about WYSIWYG. The concept that many big web design firms and good freelance guys use WYSIWYG to generate code is a bit.....odd. If you're a designer - design. In some sort of image editor. This is a concept, that then gets translated into, hopefully, XHTML and CSS by hand, by people who know what they are doing and can do it quickly. Then in goes the backend code.

 

True... but in my mind, that really is practically limited to the firms that can afford that sort of flexibility. If we were talking about large corporate sites then it'd be different, much the same way as I wouldn't have quoted the education price for dreamweaver otherwise.

 

But for the scale that we're talking about here, and with a lack of coding knowledge, WYSIWYG packages in my mind are the easiest way forward. Sure you could spend a few weeks learning how to code all you needed to, a few more weeks designing the thing, then spend a few weeks putting it all together. Then another few weeks making changes because x didn't turn out the way you thought it would.

 

Or, you could just pick a nice template you liked from Dreamweaver, edit it to your requirements and then throw that up. It's far easier and greatly reduces the chance that you'll have major problems with your design from the outset. Not quite as flexible, but far far easier to produce something that looks decent and professional.

[smalljoshua]

But for the scale that we're talking about here, and with a lack of coding knowledge, WYSIWYG packages in my mind are the easiest way forward. Sure you could spend a few weeks learning how to code all you needed to, a few more weeks designing the thing, then spend a few weeks putting it all together. Then another few weeks making changes because x didn't turn out the way you thought it would.

But for I know how all of the code on my site does work and this probably reduces my problem solving greatly.

 

Or, you could just pick a nice template you liked from Dreamweaver, edit it to your requirements and then throw that up. It's far easier and greatly reduces the chance that you'll have major problems with your design from the outset. Not quite as flexible, but far far easier to produce something that looks decent and professional.

You forgot to mention Generic and Possibly bulky and slow to load.

 

Everything on my site is from the ground up custom written code. Nothing on my site is generic.

 

If I had a Dreamweaver template for the Menu for Example it would use Javascript and be over 500 lines of verbose code that can cater for every eventuality but also errors IE6 & 7 while not being 100% what I want. If I hand code a Menu in CSS and XHTML it contains just over 50 and is exactly what I want it works perfectly in any browser and I can modify it in 5 minutes.

 

Josh

[steve h]

Josh,

 

I would highly recommend two things, firstly getting your site (sites?) onto a proper dedicated server. They dont cost the world. Your last post was at 2am, when I presume you were still awake and people could still access your website. I'm now up at 8am and reading this thread and yet I cant access your site. I'm sure you would find more people would view at this time then at 2am - and yes I know its a weekend...but what about the holidays. Also im sure your parents (im presuming this...your profile does put you as 15) would like not to have to pay for your computer to be on all day everyday when you're out/at school etc.

 

Secondly I would buy a domain. Again they don't cost the earth (I wonder what the earth would cost?) and are much easier to remember than what you have now. To be honest I think I've clicked on the links 3 or 4 times, as well as from your profile and been looking at the name and cant make head or tail of it. To try and prove this I'm trying to remember it now and all I can come up with is .dynds or something like that!

 

Steve

[berry120]

But for I know how all of the code on my site does work and this probably reduces my problem solving greatly

YOU know how all of the code works, that's fine and all well and good! But others probably don't, and all I'm saying is the quickest and easiest way of getting a nice looking site up if this is the case is to use Dreamweaver. Things can look generic in Dreamweaver but it's incredibly easy to modify templates so they're not so generic anymore. As for bulky and slow to load, while they may be a tad slower than a custom built webpage, it's really not too noticeable nowadays, if at all.

Flash on the other hand CAN be noticeably bulky. I'm not sure where / how much you use it because as others point out your site is often down! But if you're really worried about code being as concise as it can be, flash really isn't the way forward...

If I had a Dreamweaver template for the Menu for Example it would use Javascript and be over 500 lines of verbose code that can cater for every eventuality but also errors IE6 & 7 while not being 100% what I want.

A bit confused on the wording (if it caters for every eventuality how can it cause errors in IE?) - but in essence I disagree. I've used custom dreamweaver templates before and they've worked fine in IE6 & 7.

 

On the domain / hosting front - I must say I'm quite a fan of self hosting. It gives me complete control over the server, I have physical access to it, it's dedicated and if I access it over my LAN uploading stuff is as fast as it's gonna get. It also means I can upload stuff over sftp rather than ftp, use SSL if I want to and where I want to - the list goes on. I can run other services that'd cost a great deal more at no other cost, and the cost of electricity for a server idling is also pretty low.

But - however low the cost of electricity is it's there, and your parents have to be willing to pay for it. The fact you turn your server off means people can't access your site (obviously) and are therefore perhaps turned away. If a site's dead when I try it I don't usually come back to it, I assume it's dead for good unless it's been on slashdot or digg or something similar. I also run my server as a seperate computer altogether - it's been wiped clean and had Debian installed. The entire contents of both drives in there are encrypted. It runs over a similar style free domain name to yours, but it's not (usually) open to public use! So I'm the only one that has to remember it :P For security reasons I certainly wouldn't run a server on my main machine through something like uniform server. It's fine for experimenting or personal stuff, but for anything serious it's just not a good idea. Call me paranoid, but I don't like a public server running on the same machine as a load of personal files. On the other hand, if the security on my dedicated server breaks down for some reason, even if an intruder grabs control of the whole machine the only thing they can ever touch is the site. If you're confident that your parents don't mind paying for the electricity, you can set up everything completely securely, you've got the available bandwidth and you've no problems leaving the thing on for weeks at a time without a reboot, then I think self hosting is brilliant. Otherwise, it's something best grabbed externally.

 

As for a domain name - they're well worth it if you're looking at public use. Less than £6 every 2 years to look a whole lot more professional.

 

Just my (rather big!) 2p :P

[cfmonk]

Also, I would disagree with the guys talking about WYSIWYG. The concept that many big web design firms and good freelance guys use WYSIWYG to generate code is a bit.....odd. If you're a designer - design. In some sort of image editor. This is a concept, that then gets translated into, hopefully, XHTML and CSS by hand, by people who know what they are doing and can do it quickly. Then in goes the backend code. As far as I am aware, you'd struggle to find a corporate website thrown together in Dreamweaver, and I'd go as far as to say you CANNOT find a corporate website produced by FrontPage. Please, someone, prove me wrong. I could do with a giggle.

 

 

I think you are right here Ben when you are talking about big corporate websites and web design firms. These are people who have specialised designers and specialised coders. For most people they are one and the same.

 

As for "throwing things together" I think you are being a little unfair. I was certainly NOT suggesting grabbing a template and using that and nor was I suggesting using built in Dreamweaver behaviours. What I was suggesting is using Dreamweaver rather than notepad because it is

a) Much faster for mundane things like creating tables, inserting images etc.

b) Allows you the same source code control as editing in notepad

c) Has proper site and project management tools including design notes and check in / out (not needed for the OP but I find I do need them)

d) HAS A SPELL CHECK

 

And IMHO the OP has spent too much time worrying about getting his wizzy code working and not looking at the design, content and feel of the website which I think, most people would agree, are much more important than whether the menu bar loads really quickly or not.

 

It is a good website but I think by using a Wysiwyg editor the OP would productively shift his focus towards the content bits of the site. I have been through exactly the same learning process as the OP is currently going through including time programming ASP in Notepad and I'm just trying to hurry him along the path. If he wishes to be a coder then he is focussing in the correct areas (my raw ASP programming experience led me into Excel VBA work which is now rather lucrative) BUT if he wants to create a website which will sell his business then some more time spent on design and content would not go amiss!

 

Chris