Okay, I'm somewhat a romantic at heart. About a year ago (well, Ma 2004) I took my fiance to Mexico and proposed. I really put a lot of thought into it and everyting was perfect. I thought that it would be nice to put our engagement and all the events leading up to our wedding online. I bought a domain name and paid for hosting.

Well, one year later I still have no website! I thought MS Front Page could help me but I was more confused with it than before I started. Then I was on to flash and bought SwishMax - but I could never figure out how to do a photo gallery so I ended that endeavor. About a month ago I bought Coffee Cup and still nothing. I either can't understand it because I'm dumb or this HTML stuff is insanely hard!

My question is...is there an "easy" way to learn this stuff? I feel like a young magician who keeps buying packet tricks only to shove them in a drawer once he learns the secret.

There's a different learning curve for each of the different web design programs.

I started by learning straight HTML code so most programs came fairly easy.
Flash was the most difficult for me because I hadn't done much animation like that before.

Three programs I use most are:

-Photoshop and ImageReady for graphics, GIF animation and photo galleries.

-Flash for animation and interactivity.

-Dreamweaver for layout, some enhancements to the site.

None are cheap or all that easy to learn for the beginner.

In my opinion some HTML code knowledge will help considerably.
Perhaps the easiest programs are the drag and drop, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs that require little HTML knowledge.

I don't know who you host with but some hosts offer templates, have links to tutorals and even allow you to design pages online.

Sorry but I don't have an easy answer for you.

Good luck,

Aren't there places where you can go on the web where designing a web site is kind of like "filling in the blanks"?

Instead of trying to learn HTML, or some web design program, you might to make it easier on yourself and create a blog (short for weblog), which is effectively an online journal. I host my Grey Matter blog over at blogger.com. It's simple to start and keep updating, and you don't have to learn a lot of code in order to run a blog. Click the blogger.com link above, and you could have your first entry up in less than 10 minutes from now!

If you want to dive in and learn the real work, I highly recommend The Non-Designer's Web Book to get you started. It starts out be describing the various concepts of the internet in simple terms, and takes you all the way up to designing and programming your web page, all while keeping each step, as well as the whole process, just as simple.

If you look at WORD then you will find an HTML designer.

If you google "design a web page" then you will get advice.

If you buy HTML for dummies or such like reading material then you will understand.

If you look at some photo editing programs they may have a publish to web option.


I would suggest that you could learn how to put up a basic website in 3 hours and that you have missed some of the fundamentals and that is now causing more confusion.

I would also suggest that you goto your providers help section and review the details you need to access your webspace.

I might be old-fashioned (well, look at my icon!), but in my opinion, you can't beat HTML. It's better than any authoring program, and it's not hard. Because I have a Mac, I can use BBEdit, a really fantastic HTML editor.

Why HTML?

1. You can make your pages scream in the search engines. Some of my pages for events outrank the pages put up by the sponsors of those events.

2. The entire web is a tutorial. Use your browser to "view source" of some page that you like. You can see how it's written, and imitate it if you like.

3. Your pages load fast and display correctly. You've seen annoying web sites that don't appear to work. Why be one of them?

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Yours,

Paul

I found this site to be really helpful when I was trying to learn HTML.

3 words for you:

http://www.atlantamagician.com

http://www.atlantamagician.com

http://www.atlantamagician.com

Very nice site JUST for magicians!

Try this site called, Creating Your First HTML Document.

Build the sample site, in something like Notepad, checking it on your browser. Do this before attempting to upload to a server. Once you get the hang of a few simple pages, begin designing your own site, following the examples to add certain features to your own site.

Above all, start simply. It will take you a good while to get the hang of it.

You can also check your work for problems by using W3C Validation Service.

Try macromedia flash 8 you can download it free for 30 days - they have tutorials that help you learn how to use it -

FrontPage is a BIG OL' PRO TOOL that still confuses me after all these years (and I use a very old version)!

Get something simpler - there are shareware and even freeware programs out there that don't immediately plunge you in way over your head - see http://www.compusa.com/products/products.asp?N=200203

I personally use a combination of Photoshop and Dreamweaver. My new site was designed in Photoshop, sliced into pieces, and put into Dreamweaver.

It's all thanks to this book: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/007225......ZZZ_.jpg