I consider myself a webmaster in training and am still feeling my way around this complex, multi dimensional process. The reason I started the thread was to get an overview of the various approaches and rationale used by others who are actively putting up websites, and I want to thank you all for your input and for helping me start to get a handle on the "big picture".
The first site I designed and "developed" was created for the purpose of servicing the gallery and interior design customers who carry my functional art work- primarily lamps that I build, that are, "Inspired by Industrial Age Artifacts". I am currently working on a network of 20 or so small sites w/ keywords that are relevant to my two "master" lamp design domains, and am hopeful that they will work as pointers.
I'm totally self taught, have never taken a course, and have never worked in an office environment that was internet related and haven't worked in any office at all, since leaving my Junior Account Exec position w/ a Michigan Avenue Ad Agency in Chicago, over 30 years ago.
The upshot of all of this, is that my knowledge base has holes, (including a couple of gaping ones), throughout. In terms of internet skills, domain names are my primary strength, (they are what brought me to the party), and have been a motivator as well as the central force that my internet education has revolved around.
Having spent most of my working life in design and media related fields, I have developed an eye for what looks good, be it a piece of furniture, a print ad, a motion picture or a website. Unfortunately, at the moment, my skill level and experience in the first three areas that I mentioned, far exceeds that of the latter, and building and developing websites happens to be what I am attempting to accomplish. It can be very frustrating, at times, to know what looks good, why it looks good, why it works, and to not have the necessary skills to make it happen for oneself.
So, in a nutshell, I am at a point where I am moving away from my reliance on WYSIWYG webbuilding apps, which I find too limiting, am working out the peculiarities involved w/ using prebuilt templates, (ie How did the design get so screwed up after I laid the code in?... Why isn't that link working?!... Oh S~~t! That new banner ad just shot everything to hell!" "Man, the text just got scrunched!" -or- one of my favorites- "Hmm... Now is this happenning because of the CSS change that I just made or did I forget an HTML tag somewhere? No. I couldn't possibly have messed up the php script when I made those pastes! Nope, couldn't have done that. But oh! Where am I? Someone please tell me where I could possibly be!"
Add to this: I have just begun using dedicated servers for the first time and am learning cPanel, just switched my main OS platform over from PC->Mac in January, am still doing some of my chores on the PC, having to burn projects to disc and relay them on the Mac because I need time to learn new apps because many of the ones I know aren't made for the Mac platform. You get the picture.
But you know what? I'm having a good time w/ it all, in spite of myself, and someday, I know, (well, at least, I hope), I will be able to read this post and look back on all of this, laugh out loud, and say, "Wow! I sure did have my head up my a~~, back in those days. Glad I don't have to go through that one again!"
:wave:
