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General Design: Non-web designer looking for tips/suggestions

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthorjfields
    • CommentTimeOct 24th 2006 edited
     permalink
    I've been given the task of redesigning my employer's website with the objective being aesthetic improvement and e-business functionality. Our company doesn't own ANY website design software; our site is currently hosted by EarthLink. My boss is willing to purchase software if it is 'reasonable' (guessing $500 or less???); we are a VERY small company. My design experience is VERY limited; just a few HTML assignments in college (6 years ago). I am fairly adept at graphic design and have a fairly good idea of what I want the website to look like...I just don't know how to go about doing it.

    Any ideas?????????? Sorry if this is the million dollar question, I'm just not sure where to begin this lofty project. Thanks!
    •  
      CommentAuthorJohnRiv
    • CommentTimeOct 24th 2006
     permalink
    Well, Photoshop is $649, so I'd say go with Fireworks for $299 for your layout and graphics, and use Aptana to code it for free. Then spend the extra $200 on a few good CSS reference books.

    If you've never used Photoshop or Fireworks, you're better off using Fireworks anyway because it's features allow you to design a webpage easier and faster than Photoshop. The cheaper price is an added bonus.
  3.  permalink
    Tell your boss he's crazy?

    There are plenty of open source (see: no cost) tools that you could use for both design and development, but without understanding how to use the software or manipulate the code, I'm afraid you're in for quite a bit of very frustrating work. Perhaps you could point your boss to Craigslist; I'm sure he could find someone to do the job fairly inexpensively and more efficiently than a novice.
  4.  permalink
    hmm... in house sort of designer with no tools to use except opensource/freeware applications...

    http://www.gimp.org - comes to mind right away - image editing
    http://www.inkscape.org - this is a cool program - vector imaging

    as for ?e-business = e-commerce? not very familiar with terms these days:

    paypal has a shopping cart thingamajig ... you can "connect" the company's bank account to the paypal account (which you would have to setup) for selling ... and if i'm not mistaken, your company (via paypal) can receive payments from the major credit cards as well

    here is a link to their merchant services:
    http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_merchant-outside

    i can't think of any wysiwyg html/css editors off hand ... but i do suggest that you get something that has live edit/code edit, that way you can edit simple paragraphs or replace images without much trouble through live view ... and for code view, you can "paste" code from other sources

    hope some of that helps
    • CommentAuthorljromanoff
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2006
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    In your place I would do the following. Download the 30 day trial of Photoshop, use it to design your layout, then use your limited budget to pay one of the better XHTML code-writing services available online.
    • CommentAuthorPettyRider
    • CommentTimeOct 26th 2006
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    I think GoDaddy.com has something like "Website Tonight" ....
  7.  permalink
    I think your boss is nuts and you may be in over your head. ;) I'm not sure what you mean by "e-business funcationlity" so you may want to explain it a little bit about it.

    You may want to re-learn a little bit about HTML first to refresh your memory before understanding CSS concepts.

    Check out Tucows for a list of HTML Editors.
    There are a couple of image editing tools out there. Budget-wise, you may want to check out Corel and Fireworks.

    Good luck -
    • CommentAuthorkloche
    • CommentTimeOct 26th 2006 edited
     permalink
    I suggest you design a very minimalist website, use only two colours black and white, and Don't Forget the Rules, menu appears on top and/or to the left.
    Check out business websites for layout of information and stay away from editing alot of images, you don't have the skills at this point. Also try building your skills with MS Paint which is on all Windows OS computers. Photoshop and Corel, take a while to learn.

    At this point you have to fake it until you make it, but this is an example of why so many talented web designers are out of work or eaking out an existence and crappy websites abound.

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