Creating a personal website

[Sketchrender]

Hi

I would like to create a personal website.

Were should I start, do you pick one out that is something like you want and try and copy it?

 

Are templets worth buying, ie flash or html.?

 

thanks for the advise.

Software is available in work so this is not the problem

 

phil

[mbr]

DO NOT COPY!! That's what's commonly referred to as a RIP. It'll get you posted here: http://www.pirated-sites.com/

 

You don't want that.

 

 

You can go with templates, but that's pretty boring, imo.

 

I'd go buy yourself a book for Dreamweaver and it should have enough information for you to make one. You can find countless tutorials online, too.

 

I'd go look at http://www.wellvetted.com for ideas of what is good out there now, look at http://www.newstoday.com (you can post for critiques there, too).

 

What you should look for is simplicity. Without knowing how to make one you don't want to get in over your head and make something the doesn't work and is ugly.

 

wellvetted is a decent example of something that works and is really simple (although a tad dry, imo). It's Flash, but you could make something similar with html and css (cascading style sheets).

[STRAT]

i hate flashy bells and balls.

 

everything i write for the web is pure html. ever so easy to learn. i learned enough to host a few web pages within 3 or 4 evenings worth of reading an idiot's guide to html. and you can code it all in Notepad too.

[Sketchrender]

Hi

Thanks for the replies.

I didn't mean copy the exact site, I ment the look and way they work.

It should represent you and not someone else.

So I hope that comes across and not pirating, that's not what i ment, anyway, show me one original idea, I dare you .

 

Thanks agian for the links and advise.

phil

[STRAT]

i thought my tuts were pretty original in their layout and design of the web pages

[chuck]

i'd check out swishmax if you are considering flash, its way easier to script than macromedia's flash, but you can still do pretty much whatever you want, and its cheap- $100 for the full program. i think i could write an average personal website in a day...

 

http://www.swishzone.com

 

flash doesnt have to be all bells and whistles...you decide what's overkill. html can be just as annoying to me. one thing i dont appreciate about a lot of websites is navigation, it seems that "originality" breeds a structure that requires the user to rethink the way they navigate, so keep it simple.

 

i'd say that if you are in the arch/cg field stay away from templates. a bad website thats mass produced says "something" about the company/person.....

 

chuck

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

i hate sites that are entirely flash. they are a pain in the arse. a mixture between the 2 is fine though. but, if this is your first site, stay away from flash altogether. maybe you can do that later, but not now. first you need to learn website design, layout, navigation, ect...

 

i recommend using dreamweaver, photoshop, imageready, and the ever handy utility notepad.

 

i think it is best to 'design' pages in photoshop. create an image complete with text, and everything in photoshop. this will not be your website, but rather a template for creating your website. it is a lot easier to make quick design decisions, and create graphics, and such for a flat image, rather than trying to do it in standard html format.

 

once you have a flat image that show the look and feel of what you want, recreate it in dreamweaver. cut the current image up if you have graphics you want to use, compress them using imageready, and then insert them in dreamweaver.

 

it is actually quite easy.

 

you can use fireworks as an alternate to imageready (i prefer to), but image ready ships free with photoshop.

[mbr]

Sorry about that, I probably got carried away with the post for pirated sites, you'd just be surprised at how many good sites are copied really well, as in the guys that copied them really know what they are doing, not just some highschool kid.

 

 

My opinions, and people have strong ones about this, is that Flash is the best tool for the web. It's flexible (html is not, you end up with a gridded site, more or less), it's powerful (the integration with databases, xml, and components is getting more and more powerful everyday), and it's very reliable (html does horrible things when confronted with older or different browsers).

Even though my site is all html, I would never do it again. It just depends on what you care about. I like sites that are engaging and stimulating, from a design standpoint. html makes it very difficult to do, as there is inherently no flexibility involved.

 

The reason why I recommended html is because beginners get easily carried away with making a circle morph into a square or some annoying sounds - skip all that, it's been done and everyone hates it.

 

I would stay away from Swish. It is basically the paramount of all the annoying effects that have been around for 5-6 years (it's been around that long) and compiled them into an easy-for-everyone plugin. It's also easy for any web designer to recognize the effect. Just save yourself and don't use it.

 

It's better to have a restrained site than one that is all Swish type stuff. Spend the time on the design, as Crazy HG suggests, do it in photoshop. That way you can get the design and layout all set. From there you can go into either Flash or html. If you can practice good restraint, go for the Flash (it's easy, it's fast - I love it, personally). You will need to know some html, at some point, though. Dreamweaver is fairly easy to do basic things with and will allow you room to grow. You won't ever need to know how to code, although a little knowledge of it is helpful.

 

Here's my site now:

 

http://www.mbrstudios.com - all html

http://www.aestheticmaneuvers.com - all flash site I did for our furniture/accessory business

http://www.briadayspa.com - site I worked on with my sister, all flash

 

 

 

Look through this site, it should have the categories broken down:

 

http://netdiver.net/

[chuck]

wow, so swish is nothing but pre-written annoying effects? that's a huge stereotype. thats like saying Max is only good for images that look computer generated, and that everyone will know that you just hit a few buttons to get the result...

 

i dont use any of their effects besides fade and transform really, but i can tell you that its much easier to use than flash...i agree that a lot of their effects are over the top, but you dont need to use them...

 

i'm pretty happy with the software, considering its $100.

 

nice site by the way mbr....restrained, clean, and well designed.

[garethace]

MBR?

 

Are you really gone digital in your exploits these days... is that what consumes you now most of all, just wondering.

 

Anyhow, in case the building thing is still in your blood at all right now, I was wondering what you thought of this:

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?p=57337&posted=1#post57337

 

Or whether, that sort of thing does get you driven, at all these days. I would just be interested to know, about someone with a long time interest in architecture and things substantial, as in real, materially speaking.... what you feel like nowadays, immersed in things pixelated and accelerated and applets, dialogue box oriented etc, etc.

 

 

Brian.

[cullen]

Hey Phillip,

I agree that all Flash sites can be rather annoying. Personally I like html sites that have a graphic look, not something that looks like a lot of text with random images.

 

I use Fireworks and Dreamweaver to build my sites. I like these because of their roundtiping features. It really helps with updating. I may occasionally use flash if I need an intro or a small video. You can do most image fades as a gif in fireworks.

 

I think it's important to search around and find sites that you like. Of course you don't copy it but if you like how they used rollovers or something it's ok to use.

 

Here are three of the sites that I've done. These are built in Fireworks with additional html editing in Dreamweaver.

WD Concepts - My personal site (still adding pages)

STAXK GUITARS - Guitar company (quite an interesting concept)

BAIT - A band from Tulsa

[GaryR50]

I'm with you, Strat. Keep it simple and mostly (if not entirely) HTML. I subscribe to the concept of web usability, myself.

 

I've done a number of sites and I'm reworking my Modern Home Design site, currently (I'll let you know when it's ready). This time, I'm including Flash movies, but it's NOT going to be one of those all Flash sites. Instead, it's a single HTML page with one JPEG, used as an image map. The "buttons" are all part of the image map and will be linked to the Flash movies, which will all play in the same "window," which is just a rectangular area on the JPEG image map. So, the whole site will consist of only one JPEG, which is only 137kb, plus four .swf files (one will load when the page loads and will run continuously until the user triggers one of the other movies by clicking on the corresponding "button") and a PDF, which is a downloadable brochure. Altogether, it will comprise one lean, efficient site.

 

The advantage to using an image map instead of an all-Flash site is that, aisde from keeping the size down, it allows for search engine indexing and user bookmarking, both of which are lost if you make your site one big Flash file.

 

Gary