Jimi Michiel

Hey all,

My project for my winter vacation (about a week and a half surrounding Christmas) is to build a website for myself. I'm hoping to put together a press kit to send out to wedding planners, etc in hopes of scaring up some work in the spring.

Does anyone have any suggestions about starting a website? I know Trent and Brent both have very nice sites, did you make them yourselves or did you hire someone to do it? I'm hoping to just do it myself, if possible. Does anyone have any programs that they could recommend to me? I can't spend a lot on a fancy "web publishing suite," but I would like to make it look professional (simple frames, maybe a guestbook and some audio samples). Thanks!

-Jimi

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joey

Jimi,

I've been toying with this idea myself. Before you spend a lot of money, you may want to try learning some HTML, then you can do the whole thing in any text-editing software (even Word). I highly recommend the book HTML for the World Wide Web 5th Edition, with XHTML and CSS by Elizabeth Castro. You can find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/032...lance&n=283155

The book is both comprehensive and easy to use. I have found it to be very informative. After you learn what you're doing, you can figure out how much money you'd like to drop on some of the software out there.

Joey

mrfabulous963

Ii Can Mail You a WORKING and LEGAL copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004
which includes:

Flash MX 2004
Dreamweaver MX 2004
Fireworks MX 2004
Freehand MX
ColdFusion MX 6.1 Developer Edition

a good review of the product here
http://webdesign.about.com/cs/htmled...studiomx04.htm


i can get it to you for about $150+shipping
you pay me when it arrives

PM me

TrentAustin

I use Dreamweaver MX 2004 and love it. I did all the design work other than the initial scroll over images which a friend of mine did (when I didn't know anything about this stuff!). It's not nearly as challenging as people think if you're willing to put some time to "shed" basic HTML.

I also found that you can really save some money with an academic discount (www.academicsuperstore.com) and get some tutorials or take a class on Dreamweaver. I think I got some very boring but informative tutorials off of ebay for around $100.

Trust me, if you talk to any web designer spending $1K-5K is not that uncommon these days for setup fees. Save the money and do it yourself, especially if you just want a simple site like mine where you can keep the basic templates and then edit as you need it.

Don't forget that you'll have to find a web host (I use superb.net) and register your domain name. Believe me I'm glad I have the rights to trentaustin.com (there's a few other Trent Austins outside of the jazz trumpeter in the world, one a christian musician and one with a much shadier profession... that being said someone can have my name for $50K)

If you understand basic HTML than you can make a very basic site like mine. I'm in the process (LONG PROCESS) of designing a completely "modernized" site with flash, an online store, and more toys.

I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to websites but if you go to the macromedia.com site I think you can check out some of the excellent sites designed using Dreamweaver.

$150 for that software bundle above is excellent.

I need to get myself a deal like that sometime ;)

Best,

T

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Trent Austin
http://www.trentaustin.com
http://www.onlinejazzimprovisation.com
Yamaha EM
Yamaha Chicago C
1939 Martin Handcraft Imperial (restored at www.osmun.com)
Olds Clark Terry Flugel
Schilke P5-4
Morrison MDT (coming SOON!)
Other horns fs in Marketplace
Wedge SST mpcs

uatrmpt

I would suggest two things:

1) getting a simple HTML editor like CuteHTML and practice writing simple code by hand

2) using a site template for your site design and then editing it to fit your needs, which is what I did with my site: http://bama.ua.edu/~field037

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--Matt--

Jimi Michiel

Thanks for all the responses. I'm somewhat familiar with HTML. Back before Java and frames I could build a pretty mean website. It looks lik my best bet would be to get a program like Dreamweaver, but I'm going to need to wait until after some of my Christmas gigs to put the mola down. Thanks again!

-Jimi

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