Ok, so I thought that if paid 400+ bucks for a program to help build a website that it would be at least kinda user friendly. My brain hurts. Can someone tell me the average pixel size of a hompage? I guess my skill set was much to shallow to start using this program. $400 bucks probably would have been better allocated to paying someone else to make me a site for me. Is it really that difficult to do a simple webpage? http://www.argent.com thats all I want, easy simple and clean. Really. Oi....

I banged my head against the wall too - and I used Front Page. It was not until I hooked up with an awesome web design community that I really got a good education. (The "For Dummies" book helped, but only slightly...)

This website, http://www.outfront.net has some excellent design help in the Forums, and I see that they have added a dreamweaver tab...I presume that they are offering some tuts for dreamweaver. Originally designed as a help resource for Front Page users, it has evolved to include help for other html editors as well.

I became a successful website designer because of that forum. The forum is AWESOME and there are several folks on there - Jaybee is one of my favorites - who really know their stuff.

Making a web page is like second nature to me now, but I did struggle at the beginning - until I found Outfront. LOL

Thanks, I really appreciate it!

Not sure if anyone could offer any advise, but I downloaded a template from http://www.bravenet.com and I downloaded the CSS file with graphics and I can't change their little logo because it is attached to the background. Is this normal?

If you put the page up online that you're having trouble with and give a link, maybe I can help? (maybe...lol)

I do mine in Dreamweaver and I have mine set to 800 width. You can also set yours to fluid. Are you using design mode or code mode? If you need help with HTML a good basic book is "Teach Yourself HTML Visually".

As with most professional apps there is usually a steep learning curve. Once you become comfortable with them however, the payoffs are rich.

Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro... I was intimidated when I began with these, but with a little persistence (and a few books) I can now bend them to my will!

I am ok with Photoshop, and I used the http://www.easywebtuts.com tutorial, but my site cam out different, my HTML didn't even look the same. I do understand what a CSS menu is though. I am using the design mode to build it and I might as well be learning chinese. I appreciate the help you guys, but remeber the title, "Dreamweaver/RETARD problem"

Prodigy, I would have put sailors to shame when I was learning HTML and trying to do different things with CSS and javascript. It usually turned out that I did some stupid little thing wrong.

This is the look that I am going for, http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e200/aclarke00/webdesigncopy.jpg no stealing my idea! Just kidding, but would this be difficult to do? Or should I say any more difficult than a regular site?

Well it looks slick but I don't think it will do well for SEO.

Indeed it does look slick. As Perky stated though, you might want to add some additional text to the index page to make it a bit more SEO friendly.

I actualy will probably work on it some more to insert some text, house pics, happy families, etc...

Does graphics make a difference on a websites load time? Just curious how that works.

Yes. If you're going to maintain your own site you should become proficient in optimizing your web images. Pet peeve of us webmasters is being able to bake a cake while waiting for unoptimized real estate images to load.

Do yourself a favor and invest in some image editing software. Fireworks is the preeminent web graphics package, Photoshop does a good job too. If you don't want to spend money Irfanview is a great free alternative.

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.