What to buy or avoid for a newbie

[riley454]

Hey guys,

I've found a potentially profitable market segment in my area of work that seriously needs some help with their crappy sites that were developed by amateurs years ago. By current standards they are unattractive, unhelpful(as far prospective clients would see) and very hard to navigate. A totally unpleasant and potentially(if not already) client losing environment.

I have no qualified computer expertise, much the same as the market that I feel needs a lot of help, but I am very much an above competent user of most MS programs and also AutoCad. Self-taught through trial and error and useful help files or manuals.

By no means am I going to(at this stage) make web design my sole form of income, but I have no doubt that I can make a handy supplemental income by helping some of those who have paid someone to design a crap web presence several years ago, and now need to update and make that presence more enticing.

With all that in mind, what is the best product to purchase?

So far as I can establish, Dreamweaver and Frontpage are the favoured products. Am I better off self-learning a potentially non-upgradeable Frontpage, or attempting the currently available and upgradeable Dreamweaver? Or should I grit my teeth and be a guineapig with the replacement MS products? I've always found MS products fairly easy to learn, through their back-up help options, but have no experience with Adobe.

What do you guys recommend for a (quick) self-learner who is looking to make a few dollars out of a part-time hobby in web design?

Any advice is appreciated

 

[zkiller]

i would suggest staying away from front page. in the past it has been known for very bad code and also, microsoft generally doesn't seem to have an interest in W3C standards.

adobe dreamweaver, formerly of macromedia, is a decent what you see is what you get client for designing and developing web sites. the code it puts out isn't perfect by all means either, but it is by far the best i have seen from any WYSIWYG client.

i also own adobe golive... maybe i am just a spoiled dreamweaver user, but i really don't care for it to much. i really just use the code view and hand code in it whenever i have to use it. it's not a bad program, but just not my cup of tea i guess.

however, before throwing all your money out for new software, i would suggest getting some books and learning at least the basics of html and possibly a scripting language. you don't need a cutting edge application to get started. notepad works just fine and their are several free apps out their that give some added tools and better code view over notepad.

basically, the point i am trying to make is that i would make sure it is something i really want to do before spending several hundreds of dollars on software you may not even use in a month or two from now.

for graphics, i would suggest giving "the gimp" a try. it's free and does just about everything you need. it's kind of like a mini photoshop i guess.

 

[qadisha]

Website design aids

I would say: learn it the proper way with HTML and CSS, that way you will always be able to evolve. You can download HTML-Kit for free. If you insist you need a design programme, try Webstudio. It is very easy to understand and they have a friendly forum.

 

[AainaA]

dreamweaver is standard these days - forego FP altogether. If you really want to learn, go by CSS/HTML.

 

[riley454]

Thanks Z and QAD,

Sounds like getting a bit of HTML and scripting knowledge is a better place to start than learning through playing with some of the total software programs for sale.

Any suggestions on finding suitable publications/websites etc to get me started on that(HTML/scripting) journey? I am so much out of my comfort zone on this, with a lot of potential ideas, but no idea where to start.

 

[zkiller]

here is a few good sites for getting started...

W3 Schools - http://www.w3schools.com/
Sitepoint - http://www.sitepoint.de
ASP 101 - http://www.asp101.com
PHP.net Tutorials - http://de2.php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php

hope that helps.

 

[qadisha]

A book on HTML

You can certainly get a great deal from website tutorials, etc. This is one I refer to frequently: http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/quicklist.html.

It's also a good idea to put it all together by going through a book from start to finish. Here's a good one: Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML published by www.oreilly.com.

 

[riley454]

Thanks guys,

I really appreciate your willingness to offer helpful advice.

I've been going through the w3schools tutorial today and can't believe learning the basics of HTML is not as daunting as I expected. I sort of knew a couple of things already without knowing it was HTML. Thanks again everyone.