Web-development and domains: Requesting support/suggestions

I pretty much always use SiteKreator for that sort of thing (suggested to me by an A2K'er, Vivien), but in the last few years a lot of other new services have popped up and they tend to be both good and cheap. So while I am very happy with SiteKreator, I'm not sure if it's the best site for you.

Also, the prices have gone up. My oldest site was grandfathered in, if I bought it now it would be $20/ month but it's free. (The free sites used to offer a lot more, probably how SiteKreator got their foot in the door. They have since won all kinds of awards and have become a very popular service.)

However, there ARE still free sites available, and also cheap (starting at $2.95/ month, and you get two months free if you pay annually... I think, I'm sure that's how it works at the higher levels but maybe not the cheaper ones).

www.sitekreator.com

You have to dig around a bit for the "personal" pricing (cheaper), if you have a hard time finding it let me know and I'll get you a link.

OK, here's the personal features + pricing, I was off on a few things:

http://sitekreator.com/sitekreator/personal.html

It's not $2.95/ month, it's $2.50 paid annually. BUT that is moot because if you want your own domain you have to go up to the business package. So that starts at $19.95/ month (or $199.50/ year). So if you don't want to spend that kinda money and you do want you own domain, not so much.

If $200/ year doesn't sound bad to you, it's a pretty awesome toolkit. I really like how intuitive the whole thing is.

There are many flavors of blogging software, many of which give much more flexibility and creativity than blogger. Two that come to mind are Wordpress and Moveable Type. Have you investigated any of those?

This lists the current top 10 blogs and what software they use so you can take a look at the styles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_software


Here's a list of comparisons between content management systems (i.e., blog software, forum software, etc.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_content_management_systems

This is great feedback. So the first thing seems to be, that I need to investigate moveable type and wordpress.

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I use Wordpress for my own blog and for both of my clients (ha, I have clients!). It's easy and it is not tough to add any number of features. I am not sure, though, whether their SEO package is that good or if the key words are coming out that well (I add the key words myself but it's possible they're not being picked up properly by Google. Then again, maybe I'm just doing it wrong).

My main site is HTML/XHTML I wrote myself. I am not much of a designer but I'm not supposed to be. It shows that I can do it, which is useful for me careerwise but you might not want to sit and learn HTML/XHTML.

-- CORRECTION -- I just Googled a few terms I've been using as key words for the 'bots site and they are coming up extremely favorably so I take back anything less than wonderful that I said about the WordPress all in one SEO package.

Went with Bluehost and because of one click wordpress integration. I don't need to reinvent the wheel. Or... I should say I need to reinvent as few wheels as possible.

In other news, after meeting with some contributors to the local blog, the original name "The Hip District" got vetoed. Good reason from that meeting. I guess this is my lesson on running off and buying a domain that I don't really have a use for. This might change in the future, but for now, that brand is sunk. shopping for new domains for that project.

January is less than 2 months away.

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Working on design right now. My friend said a good method to use is to draw what you want your final product to be as a PSD file and then use the individual elements of the page to "trace" it into the html and css codes. He suggested that I add the pixel perfect and firebug add-ons to Firefox. They let me tweak the code pixel by pixel and get everything just right.

Here is a low res image of the work in process...



Now, I'm busy coding away trying to make this work. I'm sure the end product will not look exactly like this. Hopefully better.

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I'm up and running on one of the sites... with no content. Here's my rough draft. I'll be tweaking this until I like it. I haven't altered the style.css yet to adjust fonts or text color, but that's on the shortlist of things to do...

http://www.failuresart.com/

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Some questions...

Are you looking for feedback?

If so, what is your intent with the website?

Will the site header always be that large?

On the Home Page, will the large photo of you always be on the left with text in the narrow column on the right?

You have the Home tab and and Essays tab. What differences in content will be in each? Do they feed each other with current content/archive of old content?

You have a Vlography tab. I assume that is where you will store your video blogs. Will there be transcripts of them on your Home or Essays page? Will there be descriptions of them in your archive list so people will know what each is about before viewing?


Hmm, just clicked on your tag cloud and was redirected to your Essay page to read the post there. When I clicked the Home tab, I got this error and have repeatedly gotten it:



Don't know if that is because you were editing the page or what.

Yes, and thank you!


This is one of two projects I'm working on. This site www.failuresart.com purpose is to replace my old blog http://theregoesourhero.blogspot.com/ . I will be slowly bringing select content over from the old blog after rereading and editing. Also, I'll be putting up similar content in terms of theme: Essays and journal style entries.


Yes. I think you're referring to the the site and not the graphic I posted a few weeks ago. The graphic will always be large, and may even be a little larger. The banner will serve in many ways as a piece of content itself as I plan to update it frequently with new graphics for fun. The colors scheme (of the background image) may change with the season as well or be adapted for a given holiday.


Perhaps. The home page is always going to serve as a welcome of sorts and I may use the space to put some sort of featured content. I'm trying to move more and more into video production with my site and so I may keep the most recent video posted on this page with information on upcoming projects etc.


The Home page is static. I have to manually update it. The essay page is more of the "blog" page that content normally feeds into. The home page may also have some special elements placed on it such as twitter feeds or photo albums that are constantly being updated. Some content, I don't want a user to have to track backwards in the blog part of the site.


Good idea on the descriptions! I may try and add thumbnails or some sort of graphic as well.


Thanks for the catch. I tried to reproduce this error. What browser are you using?

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I'm using Firefox ver. 3.6.13.

Okay, it sounds as if you are planning to use the Homepage as mostly a splash page for your site to highlight certain videos or posts you want people to navigate to elsewhere on your site.

If this is the case, you may want to either change the text on the Essays tab to something more descriptive of a vessel for blog posts, or include a bit of textual introduction to it in a static part of the splash page. As is, it isn't at all obvious that your blog posts are located under the Essays tab.

I would also remove the comments section from the Homepage. I think that being there is what left me with the impression that the content on the Homepage was supposed to be your blog.

Under the Vlography tab, I would insert a Newest Video section at the top of the list for your most current video and then have it archive to the sections under it as new videos replace it. Reason being, that currently it looks like it is just a list of archived videos and none of them are the most current. You may be able also use that newest video section to feed the splash page when you wish to insert a video there. Adding dates to the list would also help.

Do you want commentary from viewers of your Vblogs? Will there be a comments section for each video or will you have one running comments section for the whole video page? If no comments, what mechanism will your site provide for that? Will you want them via email?

By the way, I just repeated the process of clicking on a cloud tag, navigating to the Essay page and then clicking on the Home tab. No errors. I'm assuming that you were editing your site at the time I was snooping around and that's why it wasn't available.

okay, I updated some of the text on the Home Page, and got rid of the comment box (good idea).

I also put some more information up on the development page that invites participation in the visual aesthetic of the site (for fun): http://www.failuresart.com/development-page/

When new vlogs appear, I will have to figure out the system I want to use. I may put information up on the home page that redirects to the vlography page? I think you're right about dating the content and making sure I designate what video content is new.

werk werk werk

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Changed the names of the tabs. Let me know what you think.

Home - Feature page
The Typewriter - Blog
The Television - Vlog
The Radio - Audio webcast/podcasts
The Chalkboard - Development page
The Mailbox - Contact page

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Looks better. I like the typewriter, television, radio, chalkboard idea for the tabs.

Regarding the background image for the margins of the page... have you considered also using a complimentary solid background color for all the various text boxes?

For example, if you use this plaid in the border margins



and use one of the lighter colors in it as the background color of the text boxes.

I haven't got into tinkering with the sytle.css yet but I think that colors will be easy to integrate into something. The nice thing about the colourlovers website is that everything you create it gives you the colors in hex and RGB.

I eventually want rounded boxes and some sort of graphic for the comments like this:


I also, want to be able to make a "like" button for content perhaps have a "favorites" thing where the highest rated content goes? That seems a ways away...

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i have no suggestions for this topic.

Welcome to A2K. I think you might be new and not aware of this but in all the posts you've made recently, you've been replying to very old threads. This one is 2 yrs old.

You might want to check the time and date stamps. If you do, you'll get far more responses if the threads are current.