Need to redesign a website

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wanko80

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Jul 31, 2006
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So I'm needing to redesign my company's website. I have little to no experience in website design. As a background, I do have a BS in CS, so I've done lots of programming before, but not so much since I graduated.

Anywho, I'm unfamiliar with what languages I should use or should not use, or should I just use a design program and all that.

I do have a copy of Dreamweaver, and I've used it some to start a webpage, but my "learn as I go" use of it has so far been cumbersome and seems to be making the design process harder than it should (for example, trying to get things lined up inside layout cells has been a struggle).

I will need to create a products page for us where we will list and have pictures of quite a few products. No online shopping or such. I'm not sure that a database model is needed, but if it's not too hard to learn and is the best method, then I might look into it.

So I suppose the questions I have:

1) Should I just continue to use Dreamweaver but actually buy a book and read up on how to use it?
2) Should I buy a book on a language or two to use those exclusively? If so, which languages?

Obviously I should buy a book on both, but I'm not trying to become a professional at this, just need to create this for our company and maintain it.

I welcome any and all suggestions and advice.

PS - My main programming background was Java.

PPS - As an aside, I would pay someone to create it, but I'm capable of learning and would like the ability to know how to do it and update it on my own.

PPPS - Elpmis, will you marry me?
 
what will your page be for...

Is it intended to simply offer information to stakeholders? Will it need to do more? If you are just doing a basic info page with some small forms I would say just stick with Dreamweaver and use PHP for any form or basic interaction needs. If you need fancier, more robust web applications; J2EE would be the way I would go...possibly ASP.NET if you are more of a VB/M$ person.
 
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We basically want to put some company info on it, and the a products page showing the products we sell. The biggest part (both content and creation time) will be the products page as the rest of the website is fluff.
 
wonko80 said:
We basically want to put some company info on it, and the a products page showing the products we sell. The biggest part (both content and creation time) will be the products page as the rest of the website is fluff.
Click to expand...

If your product list is long and detailed you might want to database it and then build a page that retrieves from the DB using PHP, ADO.NET/ASP.NET or Classic ASP/ADO, or some such method so that way you only have to change product info in the back end and not worry about formatting.

If your product list is small just keep it in Excel and paste it in the page as a table whenever changes are needed. Dreamweaver also has a good feature for working with HTML Tables if you don't like Excel.

It sounds like you should be able to do this website with little trouble. These kind of jobs are actually kind of fun once you get into it, I did a website for a flight school several months back.

Edit: If you are using Dreamweaver look into making a design template first thing. That way you save yourself the trouble of setting backgrounds, fonts, sizes, etc. on every page on the site and you will ensure uniformity across the whole site.
 
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If this website is important to clients, you should really consider hiring someone else to do it.
 
wr3kt said:
If this website is important to clients, you should really consider hiring someone else to do it.
Click to expand...
So you're saying I'm not capable of it?

The reason I want to do it is so that if I want to change what the website looks like in a year or two, I don't have to go pay someone to do it all over again. Chances are I won't want to keep the website static for years as things get stale after awhile.
 
If you were designing something that would be used heavily as an interface between your site and your customers I'd suggest hiring a professional, but since you are not designing any web apps and there will be little interaction beyond users reading/requesting information I say just keep it professional looking and it will be fine.
 
wonko80 said:
So you're saying I'm not capable of it?

The reason I want to do it is so that if I want to change what the website looks like in a year or two, I don't have to go pay someone to do it all over again. Chances are I won't want to keep the website static for years as things get stale after awhile.
Click to expand...

That's all well and good, but you should hire someone this first time and then learn how to make websites. No sense in jeopardizing your company's professional appearance because you wanted to learn web design. Also, if the people you were to hire build the site right, it's not as difficult as you think to modify the appearance.
 
wr3kt said:
That's all well and good, but you should hire someone this first time and then learn how to make websites. No sense in jeopardizing your company's professional appearance because you wanted to learn web design. Also, if the people you were to hire build the site right, it's not as difficult as you think to modify the appearance.
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Hey, would you happen to know where I can get someone to design a site?
 
wr3kt said:
That's all well and good, but you should hire someone this first time and then learn how to make websites. No sense in jeopardizing your company's professional appearance because you wanted to learn web design. Also, if the people you were to hire build the site right, it's not as difficult as you think to modify the appearance.
Click to expand...
We already have a website, and it's already shitty. Nowhere to go but up. Why pay someone a couple of thousand dollars to do it if I'm going to learn anyway?
 
wr3kt said:
That's all well and good, but you should hire someone this first time and then learn how to make websites. No sense in jeopardizing your company's professional appearance because you wanted to learn web design. Also, if the people you were to hire build the site right, it's not as difficult as you think to modify the appearance.
Click to expand...

It's a valid point, if you have the money to do so and your superiors would approve it then it may not be a bad idea. You can always request that they provide documentation and design in technology that you are comfortable with so that you can take over where they left off.
 
ERage said:
It's a valid point, if you have the money to do so and your superiors would approve it then it may not be a bad idea. You can always request that they provide documentation and design in technology that you are comfortable with so that you can take over where they left off.
Click to expand...

All else being equal for a website, to change the look, you just need to change images and the stylesheet.
 
wonko80 said:
We already have a website, and it's already shitty. Nowhere to go but up. Why pay someone a couple of thousand dollars to do it if I'm going to learn anyway?
Click to expand...

Well, if you really insist on doing this yourself...

Use this for your content management system:
www.cmsmadesimple.org

And I'm trying to find an open source product script.
 
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