Design Your Own Web

Thought I’d pass this one along to those of you who don’t know about it. This tool is now my favorite tool on my computer. It has saved me so much time and made my life so much easier, it’s ridiculous.

If you’re like me, keeping track of passwords and user login information is a challenge. At last count I had 70 different usernames and different passwords for various websites. Trying to remember them all was silly. But I started using a tool that makes it very easy to keep track of ALL your login infromation and passwords - securely. It’s called Roboform. And to keep track of your usernames and passwords for up to 10 websites, it’s FREE to use!! If you have different usernames and passwords for more than 10 sites then you’ll have to buy a license ($29.95), but it’s SO worth it. Why?

2 reasons why I like Roboform so much:

1) It’s a toolbar that runs on Internet Explorer and Firefox and it remembers ALL your username and all your passwords automatically. If you go to login to Google for example, Roboform recognizes it and can fill out the form and login for you. And to make it even easier, you can just go to the logins button on the Roboform Toolbar and it will show you a list of all the websites you are a member of, and you can just click the one you want to go to. It takes you to the site and logs you in with only one click.

2) It can automatically fill out forms for you. If you’ve ever had to fill out a form more than once, Roboform makes it a snap. It even has custom fields so special form data can also be stored.

So for only $29.95, it’s a no brainer. Also there is an option to put roboform on a USB key, which means if you have more than one computer, you can take roboform with you. And to top it off, they even offer tutorials for how to use it, although it’s very easy to use (because it’s mostly automatic).

Anyway, as you can tell, I am a big fan and highly recommend it (not to mention it was PC Magazines Editors choice and CNET’s Software of the Year winner), it will save you time and typing…

Click here for more about Roboform

Because of the numerous websites I’ve done over the years, I like to place different sites on different web hosting companies for many reasons. This allows me to try new companies out and see what their service and special features are. Also they will be coming from different IP addresses, which may be beneficial in the search engine optimation world.

I just recently started a new web site with a company called 1and1.com Web Hosting. And I gotta say, I like them. I have sites hosted with Yahoo!, Optimal Web Hosting, GoDaddy, and the latest is now 1and1. All are good. And they all have their own key features.

WIth 1and1.com, they had several features at the $9.99 per month level which I found to be nice to have. For example, they offer plenty of room for bandwidth (1000 GB) which is good, cause this new site will have some videos on there. You can store 100 GB of data on your site at the business level (the $9.99 per month offer). That’s alot of video space.

Some other nice features I like about 1and1.com was they had the ability to set up blogs, send out monthly newsletters (up to 1000 people per month), their control panel is very user friendly and easy to understand. They also have some other cool stuff like a live chat script you can add to your site to chat with your visitors, a form building tool to help you easily create forms to gather data, CRON jobs and more.

So in addition to the list of web hosting companies I would suggest, I also recommend this company - 1and1.com.

We created a simple site a few months ago using 1and1. A friend of mine is a psychologist (who actually has a rather legendary reputation of being one of the best in his field) and just for fun we created a site that allows people to send out free ecards. The site is called thehappyanyday.com and allows people to send funny simple e-cards for no particular reason. And using 1and1.com to host this site, we’ve had no problems installing any of the scripts or managing the site. It’s been very straight forward, fast and reliable.

So overall, I gotta say it’s a good deal. They have millions of satisfied customers and considering their current offer (some great software), it’s highly worth checking out… 1and1.com - keep it in mind the next time you start up a new site.

Need to make a logo or some cool looking text?

For those of you interested in graphics design, there is another open source program out there called InkScape. Inkscape allows you to draw scalable vector graphics (or svg).

Vector graphics are made of points, lines, curves and polygons. They are generally composed of shapes put together. This is different than something called ‘raster’ images, which is shown as pixels (.jpg compressed for the web). For example, digital photographs are considered to be a raster image.

Most logos, most cartoons, a lot of the clip art are all ‘vector’ graphics. The advantage of using a vector graphics editor is that you can resize and reshape the vector image you are working on without losing any quality. You can change the size, shape, and color very easily. In other words, it’s scalable.

As I understand it, Internet Explorer doesn’t yet the ability to display .svg graphics (there is a plug-in available though). Considering most of the world still uses Internet Explorer, it’s a probably a good idea if you are going to be creating .svg graphics for use on the web to convert them to .gif or .png files. Firefox. however, can display .svg graphics.

There are numerous and costly commercial alternative vector graphics editors out there. The most common are Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand.

Inkscape is a good resource for creating logos or custom shapes. Check it out…

I recently saw someone claim to be an expert in the ‘right’ way to build a website.

My response was…Really? I didn’t know there was a right way?

If we are going to limit ourselves into being right or wrong, then I simply don’t want to play. To me web design might be thought of as art. And the last time I checked there was no right or wrong way to be an artist. It’s whatever comes out that counts.

The last thing we need, in my opinion, is to have another set of ‘rules’ telling someone they are wrong. To me, if the site looks good in a browser and the creator of the site is happy about it, the users are happy, then that’s what counts, ultimately.

Otherwise, you get into other-peopling. Which in this case is a group of people who you don’t know, never met, telling you your web design is all “WRONG”. That you don’t have a doc statement , or you used tables instead of CSS, or you didn’t use alt tags. Give me a break already AND go get a life. Really.

If you want to build a website using tables, then go for it. If you want to make your entire site flash oriented, then screw what everyone else thinks. It’s your site, do what you want to with it. If you want to use text that doesn’t match the color scheme, then great. It’s your site. Do what you want.

Here’s what I have noticed recently. Some of the most popular sites on the net are not ‘compliant’ with the standards. Most of them aren’t even close. Does that stop them from making millions? No. Does that stop them from coming up first in the search engines? The answer is no. Not from what I have seen. So what’s the point?

The real problem, in my opinion, is that CSS really SUCKS. There, I said it. And I don’t mean that to be nice. It truly sucks. Why? Because it’s not visual. Not even close. I haven’t seen a decent visual CSS editor yet. The company who makes a drop and drag, truly WYSIWYG, visual CSS standards compliant web page editor, ought to be given the Nobel prize in usability. And will change the face of web design and probably make millions along the way.

But in the meantime, to have a beginner start with using tables or CSS? It’s a no brainer. Start visual. Drawing a table is visual. Coding in CSS is not. CSS is very left brain and if you like designing websites and like making sites, then evenutally you’ll want to go through the BS of learning CSS. But be warned, it’s not a point and click sort of deal. It’s a measure by the exact number sort of deal. It’s probably great for knit-pickers. You know the definition of a knit-picker? That’s someone who looks for the flyshit in the pepper. That’s a knit-picker.

So hey, for people who like following the speed limit, counting pixels on the screen, obsessively doing math in your head, then go for html compliance. If you’re a detailed oriented person then you’ll love CSS.

Otherwise, just have fun designing. Ultimately there really are no rules, because the rules are just made up as we go along anyway.

Robert

I don’t know how old this is, but I just saw this tool. So either I have been surfing the web on complete auto pilot, or this is a fairly recent addition by Google. In either case, I will now have to start a new category on this blog just for Google, cause they are coming out with some cool FREE stuff.

Last time it was sketch-up, now it’s Web Accelerator. Apparently made for high speed connections, it can actually speed up your browsing experience and ultimately save you time.

Finally, if you haven’t had a chance, head over to the main page and check out the updates to useful products and helpful ebooks. I have started listing (don’t worry I am just getting started…) resources that you’ll find invaluable as you begin and continue your web design adventure.

Happy Designing…

Robert

Ok, so it’s been a while since I last posted. I have been swamped. Have created numerous sites that are doing extremely well and have had me working more than I wanted to. Which ain’t a bad thing.

But on a more fun note, Google released some fun FREE drawing software last week. After downloading and playing around with it for 5 minutes I was able to draw this:

Check it out yourself at Google SketchUp. There is a lot more potential that what I have done in just beginning how to learn how to use the software.

It’s truly amazing how the computer makes drawing ridiciulously simple, even for those who didn’t think they could ever draw.

I am going to be adding some new tutorials coming soon…finally!

I downloaded the new Microsoft Internet Exlorer 7.0 Beta 2 Preview. And overall I gotta say I like it. I like the tabs, I am getting used to where they moved the home page icon to, I like the new RSS ding, etc.

All this, despite the fact that when I first installed it & restarted my computer - they very first time I ran IE 7.0 - it froze up my computer. So I had to reboot. However, since then I haven’t had any problems whatsoever.

EXCEPT….

There are a few web page display issues. And this is going to affect ALL of us. Even just casual web surfers. Why? Because the old Internet Explorer 6 displayed things a little differently, it fudged to make things look ok. Enough to now make designers have to go back and change their layout to accomodate the new IE 7 interpretation (which is technically more accurate - which is really good in the long run). Gotta start somewhere with standardization I guess.

So here’s an example of what I suspect will be a UNIVERSAL experience in the months to come:

After designing a layout for a paying client yesterday, I used the new IE 7 and Firefox to ‘test’ the page, as all competent designers are supposed to do. Obviously, it’s a good idea to see what it looks like before uploading, so I previewed it in those browsers.

Wow - it looked GREAT!! Pure table-less CSS 3 column layout. Looked very smooth and professional. Took me a few hours to get it at that point. So, proudly, I sent it to the company late last night. I felt good. Mission accomplished.

But as any new designer will figure out, things don’t always go as planned. Early this morning, on a whim, I tested it on my other computer, an old eMachines with 800 x 600 browser size still using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and guess what?? Yup, it didn’t look right. In fact it looked bad. And guess what browser the company I sent it to is using? Yup, IE 6.

So I scrambled to make changes. How long did it take to me to change the CSS code? 2 minutes. It was easy. I had a margin issue and IE 6 didn’t like my transparent .png file, which rendered ok in FireFox and Internet Explorer 7.0.

The real question is… Did I save it in time? Has the client even looked at the page yet?? I don’t know. But I can only image what the cost of a first impression is. So I don’t know if I ’saved’ it just in time or not. We’ll find out. I do know that won’t happen again next time

I’m confident this will be the first of many stories to be heard ‘world wide’ about the switch over that’s coming soon. I do think it’s for the better in the long run. Things should look the same in all the different browsers ideally. But for the time being, just imagine all the man hours and the expense that it’s going to take to make the pages have universal appeal.

Just little things, like my GoDaddy account not displaying the drop down menus I am used to. OR text being mis-aligned and overlapping onto other text. You’ll start seeing it, if you haven’t already.

For now I gotta go check out all my other sites!! Nothing like checking in 6 different browsers to see what the effect is going to look like to the rest of the world…oh well, just another step in the design process.

It’s a great metaphor though, since my map of the world is not the territory, it’s not even the same as other people’s map of the world. Not yet at least.

MySQL is an open source database that you can install and use for FREE on your computer OR more than likely it’s already installed on your web hosting company’s server. And you can access it through your web hosting company.

If you’re not familiar with what a database is, it’s just a way to save and organize information. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. And it’s a great tool for you to easily store and read data you’ve put into the database.

So what are some of the common applications involving the use of a MySQL database?

There are tons. One common one is a recipe database. If you’ve ever gone to a site and searched for recipes, those recipes are stored in a database. Another example is user registration for membership sites. If you’ve ever belonged to a site that required you to enter your username and password, then more than likely they had a database set up. How else would the compute remember your password for your particular username?

Databases are used to save information for future use. Now there are numerous databases out there. MySQL is the most popular because it’s reliable, high quality and it’s free. Others include Microsoft Access, and Microsoft SQL.

On the web, it’s pretty common to see MySQL paired with PHP (see our last post). MySQL is the database and PHP is the web language used to access the database and provide custom searches and custom results.

A database is made up of tables. Inside the tables are rows and columns containing the data. PHP can be used to access a specific row and / or column of data for a particular request. For example, if you were looking for a chicken recipe with lima beans, then a PHP script can be written to ‘read’ the database and retrieve those specific results.

If you think about it, that’s what search engines really are. Just giant databases. They have all these websites stored in gigantic databases and when type in a keyword, the search engine goes through their database and pulls out what they think you are looking for.

Now it’s important when you sign up for web hosting to look to see how many MySQL databases they give you. The more the merrier. Hopefully at least 1. Also check whether or not you’ll be using PHP with it. This is most common on Linux web servers. For Microsoft servers, the preferred database is either Access or SQL. And the language used to interact with the database is .Asp (Active Server Pages). So keep that in mind.

To learn more about MySQL here’s some helpful resources.

MySQL - This is the home page for MySQL
myPHPAdmin - This is a php program used by many web hosts that allows you an easy way to create and edit your MySQL databases & tables.
MySQL Front - This is a windows based open source way to edit and create tables on your home computer.

PHP is a computer language used pretty extensively on the internet. It too is “open source” and stands for ‘Hypertext Preprocessor’. But it’s just known as PHP.

Typically .php pages are used when more advanced web pages than just HTML are needed. With php you can easily hook up with a database (like MySql, which we’ll cover in the next post) and display information within that database.

PHP can be used in conjunction with HTML. Or it can used all by itself. Notice the next time you’re at a website what the file extension is of the website you are visiting. This can be seen in the address bar of your favorite browser. Is it .html or .htm (both are HTML files) or is it .php? Other files types are .asp (Microsofts internet language) or .csf (Cold fusion) or .jsp (Java).

PHP is used to create ‘dynamic’ web pages. Dyanmic means that the content is created each time you access the web page. It can change with each refresh. In contrast, ’static’ web pages like HTML pages will display the same information each time you refresh the screen.

For example, if a car dealer has lots of cars in their database, a php page can be written to access that information and display the contents in a easy to read and easy to use format.

Another advnatage (besides connecting to databases) is that it can also be used to dynamically change the content. For example, each time you loaded that car website, they could have a different featured car be shown on the .php page. If it were just HTML (no php & no javascript), then you’d simply see the same cars each time and you couldn’t access the database.

But there are many other uses for PHP. In fact there are thousands of scripts written in php that are available for you to use on your own website, many of them are free. I’d recommend checking out www.hotscripts.com. to see all the php scripts.

Ever wanted to have your own blog, polls, user registration, or online store on your own site? Well, that’s what PHP is for. And because there are so many scripts out there, you don’t really need to know PHP to use PHP. Many of the instructions for installing those scripts are easy to follow AND you can install them on your own website.

BUT, you do need to have PHP available on your web server (or your web host). Your hosting company at the time you signed up, gave you the option of picking ‘linux / PHP’ or ‘Windows / ASP’ or occasionally both. So you’ll have to check to see which one you have to see which scripts you can use. Essentially .asp and .php are very similiar and used for similiar purposes. But your web hosting company (like Optimal Web Hosting) MUST have them on their computers to be available to you. So check your web host first.

Now, just like in our last ‘What the heck’ about HTML. If you go to a .php page and goto View > Source. This time, as opposed to HTML, you will NOT see the php source code. It’s run on the web hosting computer, not in the browser, so you will NOT see it. You might see whatever HTML is on the page, but the PHP code remains hidden.

So keep an eye out, if you need a special function for your website, like being able to take poll, look into using a php script to do just that. There are also sevreral tutorials available online to explain further about php. And many good books available.

Ok, hopefully you have a better idea of what PHP is and why you should begin thinking about using php in your own websites. For more goto www.php.net.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It’s the computer language that most web pages are written in.

Even when using a web editor like Nvu or DreamWeaver, those easy drag and drop web page design editors, they all still just create HTML code behind the scenes. They’re specifically designed to save you the time and effort of writing HTML code by hand.

To view HTML code, go to a web page that ends in .htm or .html. It will be shown in your browsers address bar. To see the code, click on View > then Source. This will show you the HTML code. Now some pages are written in .php or .asp or .csf and we’ll cover those later. For now it’s important to look at HTML.

HTML has gone through many changes and updates since it first came out YEARS ago. And to spare you the gory details, there is a major push to standardize the code so that everyone is using the same language, so to speak.

And actually that’s what your web browser, like FireFox or Internet Explorer is for. To display the HTML code into a more enjoyable and simplified web site presentation. Which would you rather look at the source code or the web page in your favorite browser?

Now you could write an entire web page just using HTML. There are several online resources to help you do that (we are currently finishing our HTML tutorial as well). But why would you do that?

Personally, I recommend starting off with a program like the free Nvu (and our free Nvu tutorial lessons) or the more advanced Dreamweaver for all your web site needs.