Hi! Im here to learn! Trying to start Design Business...

Whats going on everybody! Im sooo glad I found this forum because I have had a difficult time more or less trying to teach myself how to create Web Pages. I've been using Dreamweaver because I am definately more Design Oriented, and that can really hurt somebody who wants to be professional in Web Design, as I have learned.

Anyways here is my site:

http://www.blackreefdesigns.com

and some sites I have built so far

http://www.rimnordic.com

and

http://www.amandacarpenterphotography.com

and

http://www.christasloan.com

as you can see I lack coding skills so thats why I am here! I want to eventually make money building web sites but I really feel that I need to have my coding down and really know what I am doing instead of just visually building web sites in "Design" mode in Dreamweaver. I have also got my feet wet a little bit with Flash, but my powers are very limited, lol, as you can see on the front page of the RimNordic.com site.

Anyways I am excited and look forward to contributing and learning from here!

see ya soon
-Joe

Glad to have you here. Always looking for people to learn so that one day they can teach. Your not off to a bad start like I mentioned in your other post but you do need the coding skills. Once you learn those you'll be making some really nice sites in no time.

Hey there! Welcome and enjoy your stay!
Yes! Everyone here can help you with getting your business started! Hope all is well and good luck to yah!

Welcome to Webforumz! I must say you are one of the first people I know that has come to Webforumz wanting to learn how to hand code. Normally we have to suggest staying away from the design view in Dreamweaver. You are half way there, and we can help you learn the rest! Start by making a post and ask those questions you have also check out our beginner resources in every forum.

Oh and nice flash banner, great job!

Welcome Joe!
Are you testing your sites in Firefox aswell? The RimNordic site doesn't show perfect in FireFox.
Other than that: Nice and bulky designs. I like it

No, lol. I know that FireFox shows it as all messed up, but right now I do not know how to fix it.

Welcome!

Being more of a designer than a coder you need to look into some of the technical apects of web design if you want to improve. For example, your home page looks nice, but the header image is over 320kb and has no alt text. What software do you use to save your images?

Also there is no alt text on the other images, and the website images are all over 50k.

As well as helping people with screen readers/ accesibility issues, alt text will also help your sites overall seo, getting more visitors to see your work. Smaller file sizes will save bendwidth for you and visitors to your site, and make it quicker to load.

I'm sure you'll find out here on the forumz. I've learnt a lot as well!

Thanks for pointing that out. I did not know the Alt Text was important, so I left them blank. As far as the image sizes being too big, its a lesson I learned. Im on Broadband and I assumed most people were too, so it would not be a problem. As I learned more about design, I realize fast-loading web pages are essential and desired. So now I have to find out how to cut image size without losing too much quality.

Thanks again

-Joe

about half of all people have broadband accross the world, which means half dont so it is still important.

Heres what I do to make the files smaller. When saving as a jpeg, on average save at around 65% quality. Really its best to use something like save for web in photoshop becuase you can then see what quality the image will be and what the file size will be. sometimes you will need to increase the quality.

Also you can switch between jpeg and gif, which is better for images that have a limited colour pallete. Another trick is to sometimes split the image into parts. for example you might have a big image that has an area of text on it which would be better as a gif, so you would split it into 2 images.


Cheers

The people at Adobe say that Fireworks actually makes the same images smaller than when you save them in Photoshop..
So: same image, saved in PS 100kb, saved in FW 75kb.

hi, coming to webforumz is probably one of the best moves you've made. Post as you have questions and someone should be able to answer.