[dryfly]

I built my website, for a fly fishing guide service, using Yahoo SiteBuilder aover a year ago, and now want to substantailly add to it. I Used Yahoo because, althopugh i own Front Page, I had absolutly no experience in such matters and didn't know where to begin with FP. A newspaper article had just been bublished about my service and I needed something immediately so people reading the article could find me. Yahoo was quite easy to use and I was up in one day.

Now its time to add weekly fishing reports, photo albums, perhaps video clips, maybe a web forum, and maybe a "Ask the pro" froum.

My question is should I stick with the Yahoo web builder, or should i invest the time learning to use Front Page or Flash. Does Yahoo limit me too much and does it limit the number of hits that I get (which isn't a lot). Also, any feedback on the site is greatly appreciated.



//Denis

Ozark Troutfitters

Edited by dryfly, 29 October 2006 - 01:15 PM.

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In my opinion, you should not stick with the Yahoo site builder, nor start learning FrontPage.

I don't think Yahoo has ever offered the ability to add your own photo gallery or forum, or any of the things you mentioned you wanted to add.

I would suggest to learn xhtml and a little bit of php. I am not an expert at these things (forums, photo albums etc), but I think after you learn these two, you would be abble to install and customize existing programs.

[lil_cat_luver]

In my opinion, you should not stick with the Yahoo site builder, nor start learning FrontPage.

I don't think Yahoo has ever offered the ability to add your own photo gallery or forum, or any of the things you mentioned you wanted to add.

I would suggest to learn xhtml and a little bit of php. I am not an expert at these things (forums, photo albums etc), but I think after you learn these two, you would be abble to install and customize existing programs.

[dryfly]

Thanks for the reply. Any ideas of the best way to teach these to myself? I never learned HTML either. Would I be better off to study that before XHTML? As you can see I'm a real novice at ths sort of thing.

Thanks,
//Denis

[lil_cat_luver]

Xhtml and html are similar. You can think of xhtml as a newer version of html, and actually it is aimed to replace html.

You can learn xhtml from the very basics, or you can learn html and then learn the extra components of xhtml and the differences, it doesn't really matter except if you learn html first you end up with a little bit extra knowledge.

http://www.w3schools.com/ is a good place to get started. They offer tutorials on html, xhtml (based on html knowledge), php, and a lot of other languages.

[-clueless-]

A good base knowledge of xHTML and PHP is always a good idea. Unfortunately you will have a large learning curve to deal with. I have recomended to clients that want to start their own sites, to try out NetObjects Fusion 9.1. This is a good program for the beginner and the expert alike. You can get a web site up real fast with minimal knowledge and when your ready you can progress into the expert arena. Many Professional web site builders actually use NetObjects to build sites for their clients.
As for a photo gallery, there are some good free programs you can download from the web. Just do a Google search for Photo Gallery. Most of the good ones will require the server to have MySql and PHP (ASP) installed. I used Coppermine Photo Gallery for my club website. It's not perfect but it works for my purposes. You can see it here if you want.
Another very good gallery is JAlbum. Check it out here.

I would not use Front Page myself nor would I continue with Yahoo. Although your site looks very nice.

ClueLess

[ScHwErV]

I also use coppermine for my website. Linkage

They have a forum full of helpful people and the script is easily skinned (you can change it to match your existing website). Its a good full-featured script.

[jrm20]

There is better services out there than yahoo all together but dont get me wrong they are pretty good.

If you want forums and such look into a different web hosting company all together.. You can save and backup all of your data and htm / html files..

Forums are not hard to set up, phpbb is really easy to set up. Make shure you have a seperate email for the Administrator email address or you will run into issues with people not being able to activate there accounts if you choose that method of course.

If yahoo allows phpbb and coppermine then you might want to stay with them.

[BlackHalo]

I agree with lil cat luver on learning html, it is undoubtedly the best way to go about it. I myself am fairly new to web-design and have just started learning above-basic html. If you insist on using a program however, i recommend products like Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash and Contribute. Contribute especially is ideal if you want to update your site regularly, it is very easy to use and gets new posts up very easily and quickly. I use Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash most of the time as well. Not only is Dreamweaver very simple to use, it also helps teach you html as you go along. (I used it for a week, doing nothing but use their toolbars, after that i was able to write basic html on my own). Good luck.