Change of software
Instead of giving up, I phoned Rick and explained my failure and he suggested I buy a copy of Namo WebEditor 6 - the software he'd already used to build two web sites. That meant I could talk to him when I had problems - an offer I'm sure he and his family will regret for the rest of their lives or, at least, until they can work out how to get into a witness-protection programme.
I bought WebEditor 6 (now replaced by the XHTLM-compliant WebEditor 2006, to which I'm currently considering upgrading) and started planning my site. I wanted it to be simple, clean and uncluttered - and involve just a couple of clicks to drill down to the lowest level.
I was hoping and expecting to do all this with templates - preset designs and site layouts.
Now I might not know much about web design or any type of design but I do know what I hate and I hated all the supplied templates.
They didn't even come close to what I wanted. I searched the internet for something suitable but couldn't find anything I could live with.
Unfortunately, particularly for Rick, this left me no option but to design my own templates, something I definitely hadn't wanted to get involved in.
Namo WebEditor 6 in edit view (click for larger image)
I spent a few days looking at a variety of sites and this gave me enough ideas to create some rough designs. This turned out to be time well spent because it made creating my own site much easier.
This might sound like a ridiculously obvious thing to do but I know several people who have started building web sites without any idea what they want them to look like before they started.
Working that way not only ends up wasting a lot of time, it's also more likely to result in an unattractive and unnecessarily complex site.
At last, I felt like I was up and running - well, up anyway - but much more work lay ahead, as you'll see...
