Job Discussion Forums

[Jon Taylor]

Does anyone have experience in website design.

My school does not have a website and I want to look into the possibility of having one designed.

I would appreciate any knowhow, pointers, contacts and/or potential costs.

[bornslippy1981]

I've used Microsoft FrontPage before, and find it very easy to use.

The important thing is to always save your work after every change.

It took a few weeks of playing around before I figured out how most of it worked.

You'll need to buy a domain name - www.XXX.com (or whatever) - and then set up web hosting. Hosting is like rent money for the Internet. Yahoo! and Hotmail are pretty cheap, and usually have specials that you can get the domain name for free, or very cheap.

I recommend setting up all e-mail and hosting separate from your normal e-mail account. At my last job back home, I made the website, but set up the hosting under my e-mail account. Now, whenever there's a problem, the company owners e-mail me, and it gets annoying. So, if you set it up separately, once you leave, you no longer have ties to the school.

I'm sure other people have used different programs, but I found FrontPage easy for somebody with no web design experience.

[allyismycopilot]

Use mediatemple.com as your host. I use it for every site I design.

[poof]

These days, there are many free websites around. I have 5 websites on free accounts up and running, so I know!

For these websites you don't necessarily need any programming skills. You just click on 'insert image' or 'insert text' into a pre-designed template for example and just type your entry or whatever. Even the most techno-unsavvy person can use them.

Suggested options include:
Yahoo Geocities. If you want to have multiple page options with more flexibility about the individual appearance of your page. You just need to understand how to provide links to each page you create. You are limited to 15MB of data transfer, so if you have 100's of large image files and videos that you want to add, you might need to upgrade to their paid service.
Blogger.com. Blogspot has become huge. It looks slicker than Geocities, but you are limited to a single page format. Therefore it can't be customized for each individual contributor to the site. It's really easy to use.

[Jon Taylor]

Thanks all for your suggestions.

I'm also downloading a programme; 'Total Training for Website Design'.
Its a 4GB file so should have plenty of training.