Needed: Web Designer

[Crawfordis]

Ciao, Travel with Attitude, a e-zine hosted on FutureQuest (www.travelwithattitude.com) is looking for help in redesigning our site. We want the site to be easy for us to work on using FrontPage. We will also need some coaching in FrontPage and some on-going technical support. Would like to end up with templates or Wizards for our authors to use. Please respond with where to see sites you have already designed and how to reach you. Thank you Kate

[hearts]

what is so important about Front Page? (I have to ask) You do know that FQ does not support Front Page extentions.. right?

------------------
~~~ hearts ~~~

Heartistic Designs www.heartisticdesigns.com (http://www.heartisticdesigns.com)
Hearts www.heartsangels.com/hearts (http://www.heartsangels.com/hearts)
Heartistic Wishes www.heartsweb.com/heartisticwishes (http://www.heartsweb.com/heartisticwishes)

[Justin]

FutureQuest does not support Front Page Extentions, such as web-bot components, but there is no problem creating a site with it.

See:
http://www.futurequest.net/FAQ6.php#FP

Also see the tutorial at:
http://www.aota.net/Tutorials/FrontPage/

This may help you to understand a little. I must also warn (personal opinion here) that you are limited on possibilities when designing a site with Front Page - you can later go back and hand-edit the code, however this will completely ruin the idea of trying to open it up in FP again without losing all of the hand coding (most of it anyway - anything it does not understand will be borked).

Again, these are my personal opinions here http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif This is not official....


------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Tech Support

[hearts]

Hey Katie.......I personally do not use Front Page.. I use word pad and view with a browser as I work. You can use front page to edit anything regardless how it was coded, however Front Page will alter the coding as it is brought into their editor, also, because this is a Microsoft product, it creates more towards MSIE and can prevent your site being viewable for Netcape Broswers. The code will be there, but the site will be missing. It would come up either half blank or totally a white page. Depends on how you are designing your site. If you use tables .. FRONT PAGE doesn't close of the table tags, (this is what causes the blank spots in Netscape)

You can check out my sites if you would like, and let me know in email from there.

------------------
~~~ hearts ~~~

Heartistic Designs www.heartisticdesigns.com (http://www.heartisticdesigns.com)
Hearts www.heartsangels.com/hearts (http://www.heartsangels.com/hearts)
Heartistic Wishes www.heartsweb.com/heartisticwishes (http://www.heartsweb.com/heartisticwishes)

[This message has been edited by hearts (edited 03-12-99).]

[Deb]

A lil info...

It is ok all http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif Travel With Attitude needs a web designer... I think I can help clarify since I'm quite familar with the site (I had done the original design a long long time ago..)

They'll need someone able to work with them in bringing the site back to life -- getting it updated and expanding on it. They'll need someone who can work well with images (e.g. photographs and scanning)

Having a scanner would be a large plus for this site! They do the editing of the text themselves. But need someone to put the articles and pictures to life on the web.

I am betting that frontpage is not a must but it would be a plus if this is the preference for them to be able to edit their own pages later.

The designer will also require a basic knowledge of cgi installation and promotional skills. This site WILL require banner rotations, with stats, and someone with a knowledge of search engines and all around Internet promotions.

My experience with the owners was a VERY GOOD ONE!!! They are great to work with, easy to talk to, (pay on time), and the site has a total chance of success!

Hope this helps
Deb

[Dean B]

Kate,
I concur with Hearts and Justin. I used FPage for a long time on numerous sites. If your host has FP extensions installed (Andrew gave me some very good reasons why FQuest won't implement them) then it does indeed make web site 'publishing' very easy. Your problems, and FPages' limitations as well as it's numerous bugs, really start to rear their ugly heads when you want to become more adventurous with your web site creations. Forget hand coding. You input all your nice code into the html window, hit the dang save button and kaboooooom ! nice Mr Gate$ decides to replace it with all his garbage.
I switched to Dreamweaver 2.0 a couple of months back and it's simply light years ahead of FrontPage.


------------------
Regards, Dean.
**DMCity Web Board**
www.dmcity.com/cgi-bin/ubb/Ultimate.cgi (http://www.dmcity.com/cgi-bin/ubb/Ultimate.cgi)

[Terra]

A bit more clarification... While it is true that FQuest does not support the FrontPage extensions, I'm quite sure that the designer that will take on the 'Travel with Attitude' account will handle it via custom CGI scripts... I also know a lot about this particular client as I was the one that did their CGI to begin with... http://www.aota.net/ubb/wink.gif

With all 'FrontPage Extensions' out of the way, the true purpose for the FrontPage usage is the rapid prototyping and template usage...

Ciao is a great client to work with, and someone with FrontPage background would be most fitting for the job...

--
Terra
--Dream it then Live it--
FutureQuest

[LeafWind]

Hello Kate!

Our company, LeafWind Web Design, is very new, so most of the client sites we are working on are not yet viewable. However, you may want to check out our site at leafwind.com (http://leafwind.com) -- the frames and no-frames areas feature different design paradigms to show you some of what we can do. Other sites we have worked on that are available for viewing are:
The homepage for the Religious Studies Dept of Queen's University at
http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~religion/
and the Susogi.net Free Graphics Library at
http://susogi.net/graphics
(the base site-wide Susogi.net graphics are by Deb, but we have been maintaining it, expanding it, and adding features such as creating the pages of sample background images.)

We are a Canadian company, so our prices are in Canadian currancy -- giving American clients an excellent deal, as you just subtract about 35% to get the amount in American. Our prices are also quite low right now as we are just building our portfolio. For example, we do graphic design and image editing for $20/hr Canadian, which is currently about $12.50/hr American (that's only an approximation -- we go by the bank's Fair Exchange rate at the billing date).

One of our focuses as a business is to do travel and tourism related sites, as we have a very strong background in that field -- I have worked as a Tourism Counsellor (at a visitor information center), and my business partner has worked as Special Events Co-ordinator for a Marinas association, promoting boating vacations.

I'm exploring your site in another window now, and I think it would be a project we would really enjoy working on.

I have some experience in installing and customizing CGI scripts, especially in customizing the output of interactive scripts, and I am working on increasing that experience every day. I have also done a lot of recent research into site promotion and search engine submission, including currently working on a search engine submission script project based at our site.

I confess that we do not work in Front Page, but we would be willing to learn what we can, and we'd also be very willing to help you learn to take more control over the formatting of your pages by helping you to learn HTML yourself.

If you're interested or would like more information, please contact us at webdesign@leafwind.com, or check out our homepage at leafwind.com (http://leafwind.com) for complete contact information.

All the best with your site redesign!

Leah (AKA Bekariso)



------------------
www.LeafWind.com (http://www.LeafWind.com)
Growing web sites that thrive in the winds of change.

[Terra]

Bekariso,

Bravo!!!

--Terra

[Crawfordis]

Thanks everyone for your replies!

Deb has it nearly right. What we want is to redesign our site. Our plan is to make it a much simpler site. There will be no forums to start with, no advertising, actually very few bells and whistles. The idea is to pull back this site to something we can work on ourselves--add our own articles and pictures. We both own scanners--we have brothers in the biz.

So what we want is help designing a site that we can maintain ourselves and then help if we get into trouble and help when we want to expand--like add a forum. So lots of what is in this site is on its way out.

Our idea is to have help redesigning the site in such a way that we can do all the monthly work ourselves.

I realize that FutureQuest does not support FrontPage extensions, but it seems to me that many of those are for the fancy stuff and not for the basics.

We are interested in using FrontPage for its simplicity. We are not techies and have no interest in becoming techies. On the other hand, we do want a site that we can work with--add articles, pictures, and get all the links together. We do not want to learn HTML.

So what's the comnpromise, I'm not sure. I'll be looking into your comments and your sites and be getting back to each of you.
Kate

Thanks so much for your responses.

[hearts]

"Our idea is to have help redesigning the site in such a way that we can do all the monthly work ourselves....."

".... we do want a site that we can work with--add articles, pictures, and get all the links together.We do not want to learn HTML."

There are a couple of ways you could do this, but I do believe you will have to learn some html to be able to edit, especially using html or any WYSIWYG editor. Because most generally, they have a tendancy to throw in some extra unnecessary coding, that you will need to go in and edit out, or it will throw your site off a bit, and you will have to know how to repair it. In most cases, the extra's are not so hard.

I would recommend using SSI. This is not something technical you would have to learn. SSI=Server Side Includes.

This way you could edit your text on an as needed basis and not have to worry about causing error to your entire site (by accident)

You could edit a .txt file and a couple of little html tags that would be easy for you to learn and remember.

for paragraph and (placed to the front of each paragraph)
for adding a line break. (placed at the end of each paragraph)

You did mention that you wanted to be able to work with templates, and with these templates would/should be comment tags that would assist you in the editing. These are not viewable via browser, as they would only be in the source.

If you wanted to use FrontPage to place your images and your text, then your templates could show something like this (YOUR DESIRED TEXT GOES HERE) -- (LOGO GOES HERE) -- (PLACE IMAGE HERE).. and these would be viewable via browser as when you would open thes up in front page you would be able to see that.

Especially with the use of front page, you would really need some sort of understanding of some HTML. This really isn't techie... kinda necessary, and something you would pick up rather quickly. *really*

I am also going to recommend that you consider hiring Leah, her fees are most affordable/generous. (as how you have indicated how you want to take care of your site yourselves, BUT NOT want to learn html, makes me believe you are trying to save money) Her work is far more worth what she is charging.




------------------
~~~ hearts ~~~

Heartistic Designs www.heartisticdesigns.com (http://www.heartisticdesigns.com)
Hearts www.heartsangels.com/hearts (http://www.heartsangels.com/hearts)
Heartistic Wishes www.heartsweb.com/heartisticwishes (http://www.heartsweb.com/heartisticwishes)

[This message has been edited by hearts (edited 03-13-99).]

[LeafWind]

Hearts:

Those are some great ideas on using SSI for safer edits. Templates with lots of comment tags <!-- type paragraph 2 here --> <!-- put image 1 here --> would be easy to construct, as well.

Thanks so much for the recommendation and vote of confidence! It means so much to us as we're just starting and *don't* yet have a full portfolio or list of references -- seems that building that is much harder than the HTML and CGI! (I know, I know, we're only a month old, takes time . . .) http://www.aota.net/ubb/wink.gif Hearts, it's really appreciated.

Terra: thanks for the encouragement, too!

http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

Leah aka Bekariso



------------------
www.LeafWind.com (http://www.LeafWind.com)
Growing web sites that thrive in the winds of change.

[hearts]

Hey Leah,

I could further explain why I would recommend you. *easy*

I will send it to ya via email.. K?

[TheCommando]

Hello, I saw that you are in need of a website designer to help you redesign your site? I may be able to help you.

I am quite experienced in website and graphic design, and I would be more than willing to give you a hand.

Please visit my website to view my current portfolio.
www.skyviewdesign.com (http://www.skyviewdesign.com)

[nbsp][nbsp] Thank you.
------------------
--TheCommando

[JoeRT]

seems that building that is much harder than the HTML and CGI! (I know, I know, we're only a month old, takes time . . . Try a year old... still taking time for me.[nbsp][nbsp]:D

Sounds like you're wanting to do something similar to one of my clients.[nbsp][nbsp]He asked me to do the initial design, and then bought FrontPage to do the regular updates.[nbsp][nbsp]Other than a couple calls for minor cleanup after he tried something fancy, I haven't heard from him in about six months, and I'm still re-selling a site to him.[nbsp][nbsp]I've check in on it regularly and he's doing a good job.[nbsp][nbsp]He was already familiar with other Microsoft products like Access, Word and PowerPoint, so he took to FP right away.

------------------
Joe Torsitano
www.weatherforyou.com (http://www.weatherforyou.com)
www.sacweather.com (http://www.sacweather.com)
www.tiswest.com (http://www.tiswest.com)

[This message has been edited by JoeRT (edited 05-04-00@10:48 pm)]