[cenutrio]

Well, I'm a scientist -bioinformatics- working in a University, some of you may be aware on how poorly this line of work can be paid. Thus, I've been thinking how to supplement my salary for the coming 2008 year.

The idea is not that spectacular, to create web sites. For wherever reason, I'm very well connected with the sailing community in my country home (Spain). Next 2008 is an olympic year and people I know well will be competing there. Most of them want to have their web sites, promote themselves, have blogs, vids, images and some adds in their sites. A large number of them are so busy that have no time -or skills- to get it done. Some are friends, but others just know me well enough and have good references including the top sailor in the team being my younger brother my younger brother. Anyhow, they have asked me if I'm willing to do it. There are 15 potential customers right now, some others considering to join too. Bios, images, videos, blog, youtube, wikipedia, email with their domain (using googlemail service), etc, are among the services i was thinking it could help. Anything else you can see it could be easy and cool?

Of course I have my site, nothing fancy, just for family and friends that follow my blog living abroad. Made in iWeb '06 and using .Mac services. Ok, that is the background, now the questions:

1. Recommended place where to get internet domains?
2. I'm very seriously considering using iWeb '08, it is simple, I know '06 very well, and with some additional tools such as widgetbox, etc, or even flash animations can be quite impressive. I can make cool/elegant sites without having to learn Pro tools. What's you input on this?
3. I have doubts about using .Mac services, a bit expensive, space/download have lot's of limits, etc. Any advice in which site should I rent space? Also, is it as easy as publishing using iweb and .mac? Easy to use, no download limits, pricewise would be priority.

Finally, among the stuff I was planning to support, some is actually free. For example, some of these guys are quite legends in the sport, thus I was thinking about including their bios in wikipedia, their videos in youtube, etc. This way they would get good hits when people googles for them. However, I do not know if this is such a good idea. I have no doubts that some want to be in wiki, and of these some really deserve it (personal opinion), but in a way I would be charging for the work, still the service is free. What's your opinion on this.

Let me know, I'll keep including questions when they emerge and show you how the site grows, in case you have any adivice. The idea is to develop my brother's firs (free of charge of course, he will promote me next although many are willing to sign right now).

Let me know, thanks

[iranfromthezoo]

I use StartLogic.com for all of my website hosting and domain registering. They are very competent and a all around great company. They are upgrading servers right now which means you'll get on the new one but for people like me, we have to wait and go through a lot of hassle and tech support to keep our site running. So far I've only had one outage and it was just for an hour.


I don't really like iWeb. I prefer DreamWeaver CS3. It's a great builder. I've started learning CSS (which is the way of the future) and it's very elegant and simple.

I never used .Mac so I don't know what the services are like.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by iranfromthezoo 

I never used .Mac so I don't know what the services are like.

Unintuitive and old school.

[cenutrio]

I was thinking about complementing it with some good tools from google, including email, youtube/videogoogle, googlephoto.

I just have not the time to get into DreamWeaver CS3, I wish, probably I could even make a better living , anyhow, this is just a temporal solution.

[Tyler McAdams]

You should check out NVU for OS X... it's an open source, ie free web design tool. Works good with CSS.

[Patrick]

If you use Firefox, I recommend downloading the Web Developer Toolkit extension. It has all kinds of useful features for testing out sites, and you allows you to edit the HTML/CSS/Javascript in the same window.

Also I recommend gaining at least a basic understaing of those languages, for 3 reasons: 1) in case you want to edit something by hand, 2) to have some idea of how your source works, and 3) because WYSIWYG programs like Dreamweaver can create source pages that aren't as easy on the eyes when you read them as text files.

[besson3c]

You need to decide whether you want to focus on the design (graphic design) aspect of web design, or the programming aspect of web design, or both.

Graphic designers generally make lousy coders. A tool like iWeb is designed a little more for such people, but the code it produces is pure ass. If you want to have high Google search rankings, want your sites to be driven by a CMS, want to develop clean, large sites, or want to include some custom programming on your site, it is in your best interest to learn to code CSS, HTML, and a middleware language of your choice (Ruby on Rails, PHP, etc.) by hand. Avoid using tools like Dreamweaver unless you intend to use it as a text editor.

If you want to avoid the programming angle and focus only on designs, I would suggest pairing up with a good programming and work on sites collaboratively.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

. A tool like iWeb is designed a little more for such people, but the code it produces is pure ass.

No argument there but in a sense who cares as long as it renders relatively quick and it looks like how you designed it.

DreamWeaver is the same, people lament on the code it produces yet many people use it because you're able to design complex websites fairly easily.

Some, not necessarily you, who code by hand have this arrogant attitude that if you don't code by hand, or use one of these tools, its a second rate site. For me, I want a tool that enables my creativity, and if that means using iweb or DW I will and actually I do. Depending on what I'm doing I'll use either tool. I've also been known to code by hand

I understand the joy of coding by hand, and producing something that has tight code,so don't get me wrong, its really the holier attitude that I'm ranting against not coding itself. Heck, I used to be a programmer for the last 20 years (until I became sys admin) and I remember the joys of trying to fit a piece of code into a 4k of memory- ahhh the good old days

bottom line as I see it - I agree if you care about what the code looks like then don't use those tools but there's nothing wrong with those tools, just because they produce copious amounts of code.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

No argument there but in a sense who cares as long as it renders relatively quick and it looks like how you designed it.

DreamWeaver is the same, people lament on the code it produces yet many people use it because you're able to design complex websites fairly easily.

Some, not necessarily you, who code by hand have this arrogant attitude that if you don't code by hand, or use one of these tools, its a second rate site. For me, I want a tool that enables my creativity, and if that means using iweb or DW I will and actually I do. Depending on what I'm doing I'll use either tool. I've also been known to code by hand

It makes a great deal of difference. Cost of Non Compliant HTML Code

For one, search engines reward properly coded sites with how search results are ranked. Secondly, if you code cleanly your page is not just based on Dreamweaver code that is based on W3C standards, which will ensure proper compatibility with any CMS tools you use, as well with all browsers. It will make your site more "future proof". Clean code is shorter and efficient which means your page will be taking up less bandwidth and take less time to load. Clean code is far easier to manage in the long run, much less to wade through and much less for any other WYSIWYG editor to interpret. Clean code works better with establishing and conceptualizing CSS since any and all style declarations can be incorporated into a site-wide stylesheet, not embedded on an ad hoc basis on each page, creating redundant styles in the process. If you plan to do any AJAX programming or Javascript work that involves modifying content on the page without a page reload, it also helps to replace text that isn't a part of a table or wrapped in some other tag beyond the confines of the div block being referenced. It is much easier to identity where tags start and end with cleaner code to work with, and the results will render in a much more predictable manner.

These are just some advantages to proper markup, off the top of my head.

I understand the joy of coding by hand, and producing something that has tight code,so don't get me wrong, its really the holier attitude that I'm ranting against not coding itself. Heck, I used to be a programmer for the last 20 years (until I became sys admin) and I remember the joys of trying to fit a piece of code into a 4k of memory- ahhh the good old days

bottom line as I see it - I agree if you care about what the code looks like then don't use those tools but there's nothing wrong with those tools, just because they produce copious amounts of code.

Sorry man, you couldn't be more wrong. There are many other pages like the one I've provided which explain why better than I can. As a Mac user that benefits from a relatively unpopular web browser, this is even more important to you than it is to others.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Sorry man, you couldn't be more wrong. There are many other pages like the one I've provided which explain why better than I can. As a Mac user that benefits from a relatively unpopular web browser, this is even more important to you than it is to others.

I'm not wrong - you just disagree with my position.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

I'm not wrong - you just disagree with my position.

*sigh* I write you an essay of a post with all sorts of technical stuff (all factual and very difficult to dispute), a link to a source, and we can't get past truthiness...

Oh well, I tried.

[Paco500]

I you can get someone to pay you to put up sites made with iWeb, go for it. I have to agree with what Besson said, but damn, I'd go for easy money.

[- - e r i k - -]

Hell yes. I'm a web designer since 1995, and I'd still take the money if I could just string together a few iWeb sites.

[cenutrio]

Hi guys, there is how it currently looks

www.fernandoechavarri.com

The basics for the site are there, I'll develop further. There are some questions I have for you guys, besides a request for feedback.

1. I will include a blog, but I want also to put a "recent comments" kind of snippets.
2. Speaking about snippets and web widgets. Anything cool out there that may be sleek to include? Referring to point 1, I would like to include a map that show from where people is signing in, i heard there's such thing, anyone knows?
3. Cool snippets that you are aware of?

Personally, I do not like how the movies section looks. I wonder it there's a way to put smaller icons with some text and when the mouse clicks, a emerging window shows the you tube stream. Just wondering.

Pictures downloads very slow, i wonder if this is .Mac poor service, or the iWeb poor coding.

Stupid question, do you like more "sponsors" or "partners", just wondering

Any more ideas?

I'll soon have it in spanish.

[Mastrap]

If you want to design websites but have little knowledge of coding you could do worse than checking out RapidWeaver. Clean, fast, standard compliant CSS sites.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Graphic designers generally make lousy coders.

I've noticed this. Just like coders generally make lousy designers. That is why a lot of the open source pages are just horrible. Maybe it's a left vs right brain thing.

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

I'm not wrong - you just disagree with my position.

And the site the OP has linked to

The only people who care that it is hand coded or something like that are other hand coding geeks. No one else cares. I see more people commenting on the LOOK or interaction of the page more so than it's insides. They care less what the insides do.

[PER3]

To the original poster:

You lost me after your first five lines.

Maybe that says something.

[Mastrap]

You have a low attention span?

[cenutrio]

Either poor writing skills on my part, or too vagus, or ...many other reasons.

Lack of patience on your part is another potential issue. Who knows (ironic).

[besson3c]

Cenutrio, I hope you won't mind my being blunt here...

Using iWeb for this sort of thing is, IMHO, a very backwards approach to doing this. If you want to invite comments, host a blog, etc. you'll want this content to be dynamic (i.e. driven by some sort of data backend, and facilitated through a "middleware" language such as PHP/Perl/Python/Ruby. .Mac and iWeb are designed to produce simple static pages. Frankly, these are pretty mickey mouse tools by today's standards... It is somewhat debatable whether you could even call .Mac/iWeb driven pages a blog, depending on what definition you use. It sounds like what you are looking for is something richer, but you won't find it in iWeb and .Mac unless you are willing to drive all of this content purely manually.

I'd look for a host that provides access to WordPress (as a countless number do).

[cenutrio]

Thanks besson3c

No question on my mind you are right, this was just a brief try. A kind of Christmas present for my brother. I'm moving ahead, there's some potential customers and the possibility of creating a small company providing these kind of services.

I'm just figuring out the tools I used, but of course iWeb/.Mac are discarded.

Some of the feed back here was great so far.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

*sigh* I write you an essay of a post with all sorts of technical stuff (all factual and very difficult to dispute), a link to a source, and we can't get past truthiness...

Oh well, I tried.

It's not worth arguing with kids

[Kevin]

That was ironic.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by Kevin 

That was ironic.

I know I got a chuckle out of it

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by cenutrio 

Thanks besson3c

No question on my mind you are right, this was just a brief try. A kind of Christmas present for my brother. I'm moving ahead, there's some potential customers and the possibility of creating a small company providing these kind of services.

I'm just figuring out the tools I used, but of course iWeb/.Mac are discarded.

Some of the feed back here was great so far.

The problem cenutrio! It is definitely of benefit for us all to discuss our techniques and tools, I do the same... It is also enlightening to hear about how others work. Best of luck!