Web Page Development 101

mrhenniger · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 9:01 pm

I have been asked to develop a website. The problem is that I have zero experience in this area. I am looking for tips and hints. Are there any good resources for beginners on the web? (I haven't gone to Google yet) Can anyone recommend a good book, something along the line of "Web Page Development For Dummies"?

Looking forward to any tips that you can share.

Mike

TimAPNY · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 8:14 am

I've just started the "Web Design for Dumbies". I haven't read enough to give a good review but it seems to start & stress the important parts of desaign, the planning.

systemofadown1162 · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:49 am

I found a couple of sites that may be of help to you:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/
http://www.webstyleguide.com/
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

Cvairwerks · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 1:36 pm

Mike: As a user rather than a programmer, remember the KISS principle when you do the layouts. Make it easy to read and navigate. Don't go wild on fonts and colors. Don't forget to make it easy to go back and forth through the website and make it dead simple to get back to the home page and contact info. Also don't go with heavy, high bit graphics. Remember that some still have only 56K dial-up service. Design for that level of downloads and you can't go wrong.

mrhenniger · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 4:43 pm

Thanks for all the tips so far.

cvairwerks wrote:

Mike: As a user rather than a programmer, remember the KISS principle when you do the layouts. Make it easy to read and navigate. Don't go wild on fonts and colors. Don't forget to make it easy to go back and forth through the website and make it dead simple to get back to the home page and contact info. Also don't go with heavy, high bit graphics. Remember that some still have only 56K dial-up service. Design for that level of downloads and you can't go wrong.

I think you read my mind.

Mike

O.P. · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 8:39 pm

Hi Mike!

Easiest way,

Borrow/download the site you want to emulate. Use webstripper or something like that and download the site. Take a look at the code, make some changes, play around with it for awhile. Get yourself a good text editor. The one I use is UltraEdit32, there are a lot of them out there.

I do text and look changes with a text editor. If I have to make big changes, tables, pictures, ect, I load it up in dreamweaver and place that stuff.

I don't know anything about web stuff, and I've managed to keep marketing, VP's, sales and the CEO happy for the last six years doing that.

I would recommend actually learning it if you are planning on doing it more than once. I don't have any books to recommend. The only non-Kelmscott Press kinda books I ever look at have airplanes in them.

Another recommendation is, get your client to nail down what they want to the 75 percent mark before starting on anything. Make them show you the kind of site they want. Marketing folks have a habit of changing their mind, ALOT. This will screw you bad down the road. The little web project can easily spin into a way to make everyone hate each other and hate you. Do yourself a favor and try to convince them to go with an HTML site that has static pages to start out with.

Hope this helps a little.
Orvis

mrhenniger · **Posted:** Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:28 am

More good stuff! Thanks.

O.P. wrote:

Another recommendation is, get your client to nail down what they want to the 75 percent mark before starting on anything.

Been there, done that. I am a software engineer. I have seen feature creep and I don't like it.

Mike

BLR · **Joined:** Mon May 03, 2004 2:47 pm **Posts:** 425

Hi Mike,

Try this site. http://www.webmonkey.com/

Brian....

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