Design
RapidWeaver
10/06/08 07:00 Filed in: Work
I have never been savvy when it comes
to web design. I like to think I have visual and design sense, but
I’m an idiot when it comes to the nitty gritty of web software and
html and who knows what else! Java? Flash?! ACK! Every website I’ve
ever been involved in (including this one) was designed by my
college roommate Jay. Until now!
My day job requires the tiniest bit of html know-how -- meaning, I can stumble through the trial and error involved in making a link work in a block of text. If you really hold my feet to the fire, I can try to figure our why a paragraph is coming out looking wonky onscreen, but aside from that, I’ve always been helpless when it comes to anything web related. I recently asked Jay to help me find a program that would let me put up a simple, but professional looking website for my publishing company, Cryptic Bindings. The software he settled on was easier than I could have hoped for. Aside from a couple of snags resulting from my own inability to keep track of my administrative webhosting passwords, I was able to get the hang of laying out a simple website in just an hour or so. After a couple of months of playing around, and after testing out a few different updates to the site, I’ve worked out a few simple, round about shortcuts that have let me make the site seem more complicated that it actually is.
So what’s the software? RapidWeaver (Which is currently only available for Mac OS X)
For $59 (less if you look online for some specials) you get the software, and an assortment of around three dozen professionally designed templates, which you can further customize through predesigned options, working in the html, or (as I did it) by designing the pieces of your page in another program (I used Apple’s Pages and Preview programs) and dropping the “pictures” of text and images into the RapidWeaver window. The software has two options “edit” and “preview.” It’s basically drag and drop. You bring all the text and pictures into the program under the edit option. Center it. Format it. Choose what word is a link. Which is ones lead to what pages on the site. Choose you output template. Then select preview and ta-da there it is! If you like what you see, enter your webhosting information in the appropriate boxes, click “publish,” and in a few seconds, your site is up and running. It really is that simple. You may encounter one or two bumps along the way (in my case it was a mixup in passwords) but if I can get it all figured out, I’m sure you can too.
Here’s my site if you want to check it out.
Try it for yourself and send in the links.
My day job requires the tiniest bit of html know-how -- meaning, I can stumble through the trial and error involved in making a link work in a block of text. If you really hold my feet to the fire, I can try to figure our why a paragraph is coming out looking wonky onscreen, but aside from that, I’ve always been helpless when it comes to anything web related. I recently asked Jay to help me find a program that would let me put up a simple, but professional looking website for my publishing company, Cryptic Bindings. The software he settled on was easier than I could have hoped for. Aside from a couple of snags resulting from my own inability to keep track of my administrative webhosting passwords, I was able to get the hang of laying out a simple website in just an hour or so. After a couple of months of playing around, and after testing out a few different updates to the site, I’ve worked out a few simple, round about shortcuts that have let me make the site seem more complicated that it actually is.
So what’s the software? RapidWeaver (Which is currently only available for Mac OS X)
For $59 (less if you look online for some specials) you get the software, and an assortment of around three dozen professionally designed templates, which you can further customize through predesigned options, working in the html, or (as I did it) by designing the pieces of your page in another program (I used Apple’s Pages and Preview programs) and dropping the “pictures” of text and images into the RapidWeaver window. The software has two options “edit” and “preview.” It’s basically drag and drop. You bring all the text and pictures into the program under the edit option. Center it. Format it. Choose what word is a link. Which is ones lead to what pages on the site. Choose you output template. Then select preview and ta-da there it is! If you like what you see, enter your webhosting information in the appropriate boxes, click “publish,” and in a few seconds, your site is up and running. It really is that simple. You may encounter one or two bumps along the way (in my case it was a mixup in passwords) but if I can get it all figured out, I’m sure you can too.
Here’s my site if you want to check it out.
Try it for yourself and send in the links.