Thanks, I have fireworks, it came in a bundle with dreamweaver. Have not even tried to use it though. What about http://www.sitereportcard.com ? They have an image optimization program. What do you think about this, a little better? http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e200/aclarke00/webdesigncopy2.jpg

Personally - while I do believe in having your picture on your site, I do think that one is a bit large. I'd rather see a smaller one of you in the top perhaps, with your name and contact info there, and more homes on the main page. Of course, take that with a grain of salt, because that's only my personal opinion.

It's a nice picture, though. You look very friendly and personable.

This is a good tool for testing your load times etc: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

I have to agree, smaller picture is better. Believe it or not, some people still use dial up internet access and won't want to wait for a big graphic to load.

Cool, thanks for the feedback! I just got the Macromedia Studio for Dummies book, freebie from family. I think I am going to build a flash based site. I know that html is supposed to be better, but they just look so much better! Is there a compromise to this? Can you have flash on the homepage and your typical HTML?

CUT THE NOISE! I helped a client of mine set up their website. They used a service called http://www.elance.com they posted a website request and some freelance webmaster created this site for them in 1 week for about $600. Elance is like the eBay for services. Don't stress over doing yourself. Have someone else with the skill set do it for you.

Here is the website that they built: http://www.pipelineproducer.com

Well, I could do it for free and never have to worry about changes if I learned how to build sites myself. Besides, it's 600 now, and if I change companies or professions then I have to pay to rebuild it. No thanks, I appreciate the heads up though.

No worries. Actually, that website http://www.pipelineproducer.com was set up with a content manager for the admins, so they can change out the content whenever.

There is also this application called joomla that is open source and highly customizable. It's more of a content management system base so you can make changes yourself. You may need to brush up on your PHP, but you could learn the basics through trial and error and get it down in about 1 week.

Just a thought. Good luck!

Thanks

Search engines (not even Google) currently index Flash content. So if you (in any way) want organic search results, you'll need to go with HTML.