dynamix

iTrader: (3)

exactly

we are not here on an ego trip... not once have i given examples of my work (of which there are well over a hundred live websites) nor do i really want to - just giving advice on the design of the original site from an experienced point of view and from the perspective of a buyer.

you get nothing for free - you wouldnt say to BP ... you think your 102 ron petrol is so good - give me a tank full and I will let you know how it compares to shell (although I might try that )

treat your website like a proper business and it will get proper business results - treat it like a back room hobby designed by a kid in his back room and it will perform as such.

Dream Weaver

So how would you link that to a database with full bespoke design and ecommerce facilities, or allow upload of content from a web browser/mobile phone/Oracle DB/Intranet?

Im with RichB on this one sorry

The "hobby" sites that have been shown as examples are all well and good if you don't care about reputation, but apart from anything else as a designer/developer you need to know all the little things as well, and keep up to date with tech changes.

As a quick example, the funkychoc website and the property one use Flash for nav elements, but haven't included the script for the new Windows XP embedded objects issue, so people like myself with XP fully up to date cant use the sites until we click to activate the object

Unless you know about things like that, you won't get anywhere with the sites.

Not saying i'm the ultimate web designer, but been doing it for 9 years now, and i'm still learning stuff every single day - it takes time to do stuff properly

Paul3446

I appreciate what you're saying about tech updates, but the funkychoc site has apparently been praised by their customers and they are the ones that matter. The design was by the bloke at work, he just didn't know how to write it, so he got exactly what he wanted.

Here's another one I've done www.pedal.org.uk, feel free to visit and follow any of the links!

Show us some of your sites Dream Weaver, so we can compare ourselves to the professionals!

RichB

Now I'm not a designer as I said before but if you look at DWs profile you will see his home page is http://www.kreature.co.uk
Have a look there and you will see the difference between a good designer and a 'hobby' website builder.
I would actually suggest that DreamWeaver is a bit of a hybrid probably more of a programmer than a designer, (no offence intended DW), although his design work is good and perfect for the sort of companies he targets, it is not that of a dedicated graphic designer.
I also believe that good programmers dont make good designers and vice versa.
I am a programmer, I could not do the design work he has done but I work with a good designer who could not do any of the database stuff or even build the HTML for it. I am under the impression that DW does all of it.

I'm afraid to say that the sites we've seen so far are no where near the quality of DW but fair play to all of you guys who are posting examples of your work, you have to start somewhere, good luck if you go down that route.

Sorry DW - Didn't meant to dedicate that post to you

RichB

Paul - Just a polite note about your pedal site, I noticed it is using frames. If you want to do more and more sites I strongly suggest you dont use frames. Frames are evil. Look st SSI (server side includes) or use something like asp or php and have that header in its own file, include it in the others so you only have to change it in one place should you need to add another nav item.

Paul3446

Cheers for that Rich, when you say they are evil, do you mean from an admin point of view, or from a users point of view?

I've checked out DW's site and they do look very good and I could never compete with that, but then I wouldn't attempt anything that connects to databases or anything like that as I'd be way out of my depth. My sites are just handy for small business's that want an internet presence and only have a few quid to spare.

I guess DW wouldn't set his sites up for £50, so it's a different market, plus I do it coz it's a bit of fun messing around with Flash, not as a job.

EP82

Frames are pretty useless when it comes to search engines for a start..

I am just starting to learn CSS having built websites the wrong way for a long time i'm finally making the effort to get it right.

Here is the last piece of work i did without using a great deal of CSS.

http://www.meinhost.net/cars

That is a PHP/MySQL driven website, i'm currently working on an asset tracking system at work using PHP and SQL Server which is coming together really well and uses CSS as it should be used!

I really want to get into mobile websites, however finding time to start something like that is my only hurdle!

EP82

PS. ^^ that is quite old code.

The version which sits live is alot more upto date but i'm not one for advertising business where it's not due

DavidBrown

Partly true, but I would venture it's the opinions of those who visit/use the site that really matter if you're running a business.

RichB

lol - Paul - Yes, search engines always used to frown on Frames, not entirely sure that is entirely the case now but worth trying get away from them.
Also its worth getting away from using tables for layout, you can use them for tabulated data though. Image based nav is not always necessary either.
CSS is the way to go! With CSS you are reducing the amount of unneeded HTML from the main source file and separating it out in the CSS files.
This can speed up load times a little as well as help with the search engines.
A good way of determining how well a site is built is to increase the font size (on a mac CMD+'+') You will see how quickly most sites break but they shouldn't ideally. Unfortunately designers won't design for this and HTML peeps will curse at them for the stupid little shadows and tints and gradients they love to use so much

spectrum48k

Why are people so dismissive of the people behind web design & production ?

Rightly or wrongly, every business believes they should have a website these days, so you can appreciate there's a huge variation in requirements and budgets to accomodate:

SMALL CUSTOMER
At one end of the spectrum you have the small business, perhaps run by one individual, who has very little budget. Perhaps they have a five hundred quid to spend on a small site hosted on a third party server with no bells or whistles.

LARGE CUSTOMER
At the other end of the spectrum you have a corporate giant who has endless requirements and budgets. They want the website fully integrated with their their infrastructure. They want the site to be dynamically linked to their sales / warehousing / purchasing / accounts and manufacturing components. The web dsigners needs to be fully conversant with:

- Scripting Languages (CF, ASP, PHP, etc...)
- Database technology (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL)
- Graphic design, both conventional and computer orientated (Photoshop,etc)
- Server management (site may need to run from a dedicated box)
- Security (SSL, VPN, etc...)
- Application integration (website talks to customers existing systems)

With the introduction of WYSIWYG site creation tools like Frontpage, just about anyone can cobble together a website within a couple of hours. I don't have a probkem with that - its good people can express themselves, but don't confuse these people with professional web designers, because you're doing a lot of them all a disservice if you do.

carl

The meinhost site is fine, but the pedal.org.uk site looks terrible in Firefox. I can only scroll down the main bit of the page, not the menu.

wannascoobydoo

This is why i love this forum so much, great opinions and no arguments

RichB

you started it



lol

Paul3446

Carl, the Sponsor Us button is at the top of the menu, you don't need to scroll down!

I accept that frames aren't the latest way of doing things, but I don't really see the difference from a normal user's point of view?