MOMETEK's Guide: Web Design and Development

Showing posts with label Web Design and Development. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Making a Website for Profit? Part One.

Linkware Freebie Image use it however you like all I ask is a credit link to : thegoldguys.blogspot.com/ or www.lumaxart.com/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Found another freebie. It's another free web hosting site, but this one is quite simple. So I decided to create a mock website that might make money, and post it step by step here.

First things first: How to make your own website in minutes.

This link goes to Strikingly, a very simple website editor. I did sign up to their affiliate program but only after I messed with it.

If you don't see the link above, then you probably have adblock on. You can use the site link below, then click on "Create Your own Site With Strikingly" at the bottom. This would be a bummer, because ads like this do support this blog.

This site is quite simple. You sign up free (or you can pay for a better choice in templates and tools), then you pick a template, then you add or remove sections, modify them, then publish. It's so easy, you don't even need any knowledge of web design as the templates pretty much do that for you too.

Since this was a mock site, I went onto a random name generator. "Redonex" sounded cool, so I went with it. I'm not sure what it means, hopefully nothing offensive because that's now the name of the site:

http://redonex.strikingly.com/

The bulk of the video that's on the page was created in Flixpress (no affiliation there) , then I mashed it together in Windows Movie Maker (WMM). Then added a few of the built in (and cheesy) titles.

I don't really like the newer WMM. Perhaps it's because I like the ability to edit each track separately. The older XP version allowed me to edit the video without touching the audio. I ended up buy Magix as the open source software was too complicated for what I needed. I'll have to make another video editing software blog soon.

The sunset photo is a picture I took outside my house when I lived in Brandon. It's in one of the free download links below "Images".

The team photos of me, myself, and I were taken by my built in laptop camera. Not the best lighting, but I am surprised that they did come out okay. Use a white sheet and some lamps, and the photos will come out better.

Then of course you have to have comments. Facebook is already available in the "apps" section. So I used that.

Then I added a donate button so you can beg for money. That said, in my next blog, I'll replace it with something a little more tangible, like links to a few books I find interesting or even a book that I made myself...

Oh, did I just type that? Well, that's all you know at the moment.

Last but not least, I bought a domain name from www.GoDaddy.com, since I already have an account with them. I bought it at the time of this post, so it's not quite ready yet.

Strikingly also has a domain service that is included in the premium account.

On to Part Two

Friday, March 7, 2014

Xara Web Designer 9

web browsers (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

After ranting about copyrights and the evils on websites, I figured I would post on something more useful, this time on another WYSIWYG editor. Unlike the ones I've reviewed in the past, this one happens to not be free. The good news, it's affordable for most people and it's great for those who have very little time to learn any coding as coding is not required.

It was much easier to learn than I thought. It looks a bit more complex than it really is. I was able to get a page started with only opening the help file once.

The only problem is that I use a content management system for my websites called "Modx". After converting the webpage, I still have to hand-code the navigation bar if I want to use the built in Menu system of the cms. So I gave up on using it for one site and instead made a demo page, which can be viewed here. I only did this in about 15 minutes, but if I were to include the learning curve that I had with the previous page, I'd say my first page took about 45 minutes.

In the end, if you don't want to use the freebies I suggested, which does require some HTML knowledge, then you might want to consider spending some money. Xara does have a 30-day trial, so you can always download it, then try first before you buy.

Xara Webdesigner Demo Page

Friday, February 28, 2014

The Most EVIL hing you can do on Your Website

Artistic representation of the Devil. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I didn't want to rant about it, but after the "umpteenth" time trying to use right click (this time to check my spelling errors), and could not, I had to say something.

Disabling right-click is EVIL!

First, it does NOT prevent copying, I can easy bypass that by using the toolbar and getting the info via the "view source" there. I can STILL download images, and copy text that way. It's not that hard. Then there are some browsers that now disable the ability to disable right click anyway.

And then there are add-ons like Evernote. To test this point, I use my Evernote and copied the ENTIRE page of someone who disabled right click. Photos, text, everything. All I have to do is copy the photo and paste it into a photo editor and Viola! I now have the photo you thought you have blocked people from copying.

Second, it makes potential readers very, very angry. And you won't like it when your readers get angry. Why? Because there's actually legitimate reasons why people use right click... Like checking for spelling errors.

To be quite honest, I'm not as good of a speller as I used to be. I got lazy thanks to spell-check. Although, usually it's the weird spellings like conscience and subconscious. I usually mistakenly spell subconscious like conscience with a "sub" (subconscience), which is wrong. That's where spell-check is supposed to come in, until someone disables right-click.

Then there's the search features. If you talk about string theory, which I'm not exactly familiar with, I will highlight "string theory", use right-click, then click on "search in Google" or "Wikipedia" depending on what my search box is set to in Firefox. In a disabled right-click blog, I will first click on the "close tab" button, and still do a Google search because now I'm curios, but it's not likely I'll be participating in your blog anytime soon.

Another complaint of something I haven't used, but I guess some browsers use "gestures" and I suspect this has a lot to do with the IPad. I've heard of people complaining in other blogs about how they can't use gestures on pages that disabled right click. Essentially making your site useless.

And finally, it won't kill you if people copy sections of your text. I mean people who use it for future reference, like putting into Evernote, or to entice THEIR readers to click on a link to YOUR site. Isn't that what you would want?

FYI, click on brainyquote.com, highlight a favorite quote, copy, then paste it into a text editor and see what happens. When you paste it into a text editor, it also pastes a reference link. I happen to LOVE this. It saves me time on trying to remember where I got that information and I have considered using it on my own site.

Another link on this subject:
http://www.sitepoint.com/dont-disable-right-click/

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Refresher Courses

Before I start any serious course in web development, I thought I would first take some refresher courses in HTML and CSS via Code Academy.

It’s quite repetitive, but easy to follow. The repetitiveness does help to make sure what you learn sticks. This is something anyone can learn, and I definitely recommend it, even for homeschooling.

You can see what other links I recommend on my Resources page.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Learning Web Development

My husband thought it would be a good idea to sign up to some website to see if I could win a $10,000 scholarship to go back to school. So he signed me up (after asking me) which included filling out survey after survey from colleges that I probably might be interested in going to and finally get a Bachelor's degree in Web Development.

Of course we were inundated with phone calls from these colleges and I let them make their sales pitch. I finally settled on one college that seemed to have the flexibility that I needed to be able to get my degree online. It was accredited, so my degree would have been “legit”, unlike the home course in computer programming I took years ago. I did it mostly to get my own computer without having to pay the entire price up front as NRI allowed me to make arrangements for payments.

I narrowed my choices down to one and ask for the price. Considering My home course was only $3000 with everything, including a PC with all the latest bells and whistles and Mike when to ITT Tech for $13,000 in ‘82, but he had to go onto campus, I figure that an online course that included materials (didn’t ask if it included a new laptop, but had minimum administrative costs as I would be online instead of on campus, would probably go for about $20,000

Wrong!

$59,000. That’s right. $59,000 for a piece of paper that says that I can do what I’m told. Granted, businesses who are hiring will be looking for that specifically as that’s what colleges are for, but I don’t plan on working for someone else.

Bragging rights would be cool, but for that price, it doesn’t seem worth that much. Especially since the last time I checked, having a BS in anything doesn’t seem to have that much weight in the comments section, even if you use all caps.

So, I opted out, again, and for pretty much the same reason why I opted out of VT Tech 20 years ago. I didn’t want to go into (even more) debt with something that I may or may not use. “But what about learning the skills?” I can almost hear some people ask, “Don’t you need the skills?”

Yes, if you want to achieve anything, you need to learn the skills for whatever you plan on using to make money, but some skills, like web development, can be self taught. Of course, I don’t think I would go to a self taught brain surgeon to have a tumor removed. However, I’m not too concerned about accidentally killing someone with some bad code, or a zombie virus taking over because I didn’t follow proper procedure in hygiene before debugging an app.

So, I’m going to teach myself web development. Unfortunately, the shortcoming on being self taught is the curriculum, or the lack thereof. Since I’m not paying someone else to do it, I have to come up with a plan, or at least find a site that has some semblance of a plan. When I do, I’ll post it here on MOMETEK.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

An Impressive Free HTML WYSIWYG editor

English: M in blue square (similar to seen on ) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Microsoft surprises me again. Since I do web design as a hobby (at the moment), I am constantly on the lookout for legitimate freebies (as in, not “pirated” software). Enter Microsoft Expression Web 4 and Microsoft Expression design 4.

Expression Design 4 is a basic vector graphics editor. I typically use SWiSHmax as it does export to PNG but ED4 does have some interesting features. Because I haven’t use it much except to make a logo for my husband’s website, I don’t have much to say about it, except that it’s free and seems easy to use. Maybe I’ll be able to get into more depth in another post.

I wouldn’t exactly say that it’s comparable to Dreamweaver, but it is the best free WYSIWYG out there so far and unlike FrontPage or Word (both from Microsoft that can do webpages) it doesn’t add useless code.
It’s also not that difficult to learn as I figured it out pretty quickly without looking anything up or checking the help files. I did have get a little confused when adding styles to objects. The odd thing is, you right click on the CSS properties box on the left-hand side, and create a style, but then, the right-click no longer works and you have to click on “New style” on the right to create a new style.

It wouldn’t hurt to brush up on your HTML and CSS as there were a few times I gave up on using the design mode and switched to code, but it does have an instant code feature. Just start typing and the list of tags, objects, or properties show up.

Overall, it’s an impressive freebie and I would recommend it for the not-so-beginner web designer. If you want to learn HTML and/or CSS, you might want to check out W3Schools.com.
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Sunday, November 18, 2012

New favorite Color Selector

Adobe's Kuler (Photo credit: Special*Dark)

I had decided to stop procrastinating and finally finish my unfinished personal site. It hasn't been finished in a year or so. There has been a few false starts, but now, that I've forced myself to only go onto facebook in the morning as I have breakfast and for a little while in the evening, I'm finding more time to do things, like waste time on Imgur- er I mean, blog.

That is, until I came across this little gem: kuler.adobe.com. So I spent the better part of my allotted blogging time messing with this web gadget. I have yet to actually put in my color theme for my website as there are plenty of presets of color swatches to look at. What's more, you can upload a photo that inspires you, and it will pick out the colors for you.

So now, I'm procrastinating at least one more day to mess with this a little more.