[Vanessa13]

Thanks for your willingness to help me - but I decided to use the index coding and redo all the pages (it didn't take me as long as I thought, since I just duplicated it 35 times, then moved the original pages to another folder so I could copy paste the info into the body as I renamed each page. So basically it's all done now, yay!!!! I REALLY appreciate your help - I wouldn't have got the index page working without you, which means none of it would be working now!

I used to part run Cape Town Web Designs (I still do, I suppose), but I had a business partner then who knew SEO and coding very well (she used to be a programmer). I did more admin and design work. We only offered simple html sites, though, for those who want a website but can't afford to pay high fees for a fancy site. Since we've stopped offering that as a service, though, we've found it's quite handy to have a web host 'on call' (and it looks professional to have a web company name on your site), since we both have a few private sites. Now I don't have to find a hosting company for my private site, for example, since I can just use our existing account with the hosting company for each new site (we also get it cheaper this way).

Once I've completed the SEO (because each page has the index meta tags now), I'll upload and can post the link here if you're interested in seeing the final result you helped to achieve?

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PS: Templates look nice, but I find that once you start fiddling with them, they go out of wack and I don't know nearly enough about coding to fight with a template. When I created my site (and most sites I've created), I start off by creating a table on a blank page, then insert my navigation, header image, etc into the table to create the design I want. Usually when you do it this way, the head section is automatically inserted by Dreamweaver (whenever you open a new page), but this time it wasn't for some reason. I suspect it was late at night and I deleted it without thinking (SERIOUS blonde moment!).

[Vanessa13]

PS: Templates look nice, but I find that once you start fiddling with them, they go out of wack and I don't know nearly enough about coding to fight with a template. When I created my site (and most sites I've created), I start off by creating a table on a blank page, then insert my navigation, header image, etc into the table to create the design I want. Usually when you do it this way, the head section is automatically inserted by Dreamweaver (whenever you open a new page), but this time it wasn't for some reason. I suspect it was late at night and I deleted it without thinking (SERIOUS blonde moment!).

[Nahumi]

I'd love to see the final product when it's finished.

I'm glad I could have helped.



Templates have changed a bit over the last few years. The most common way to ensure that every page on the site is styled the same is by using a common CSS file. In addition to this some developers have page specific CSS files to deal with unique classes.

It saves on coding, makes pages load quicker and centralises the whole site.

You can do the same with footers, headers and other common HTML elements by using PHP, which is a well documented server-side scripting language.

Unfortunately web design seems to be converging with web development. It's cheaper to be both a developer and designer because you save time on the to-ing and fro-ing between design concept and a functional prototype.

Saying that though, it might be worth looking at Wordpress or Drupal. They're often used for blogs, but I've heard of a lot of people using them as frameworks for all types of websites. It should take out most of the coding stress and will just let you be creative.


Anyway, let me know when the website is up and I'll have a good look around.


Cheers,
Nahumi

Edited by Nahumi, 31 July 2011 - 09:49 AM.

[Vanessa13]

Is Word Press available for free use? I tried looking at Drupal some time ago, but it gave me a bit of a headache. Maybe it's changed since I looked at it, but it looked fairly complicated to me. Maybe that's just because programming and coding is the last thing my brain is geared for! I wouldn't use a new method/programme to redo this site (too much else on my plate right now), but I might consider it for future sites.

Here's the link: http://www.vanessafinaughtybooks.com/

By the way, my Firefox views an ugly empty table midway to lower down on each page, which IE doesn't seem to see. When I take a screenshot, the line/empty table doesn't appear - can you see it in Firefox?

Thanks again for your help

[Nahumi]

Yes, WordPress is free. You'll need to have a server that runs PHP and MySQL though.

I'm using Google Chrome and I can't see an empty table, so I'm guessing it's unique to Firefox.

It might be because you're missing the </html> tag at the end.

Other than that, it's looking great.

[Vanessa13]

Ooops re the missing tag! I ended up adding an extract to the bottom inside that table, which looks quite nice, so it's gone now either way. Thanks for checking it out, and glad you like it!