|
| |
|
|
tdub
Posts: 9
Joined: 3/22/2007
Status: offline
 |
I gave it a try!! - 3/23/2007 13:23:30
I bought MS Front Page about 3 weeks ago and decided to build my first website for a new insurance agency that I am opening ( Albuquerque - The wild wild west). I have absolutely no experience in this type of thing. I just need clients to be able to make payments on-line and fill out quote sheets (to be e-mailed to the office). everything works great in the root site. I started the subsite (found in the specialty menu option and agency portal dropdown menu) and that is where everything went a little beyond me and my lack of knowledge. I figured out how to secure the site and am building the client data base and hoping to accomplish to accomplish on-line document storage ( I must be crazy). My hosting company is having problems with thier .asp service( 4 weeks ago I didn't know what an asp document was). I am waiting for a call back from them today. Please let me know what you think. Have I gotten in way over my head? I ran into this site 2 days ago trying to figure out why my database results wizard and db interface wizard wasn't working.
Thanks
tdub
www.warnerins.com
|
|
|
|
Tailslide
Posts: 6050
Joined: 5/10/2005
From: Out here on the raggedy edge
Status: offline
|
RE: I gave it a try!! - 3/23/2007 14:05:40
Hi tdub - welcome to OF.
I don't wish to be discouraging but it crashed my browser (Firefox) and I couldn't actually visit any of the other pages in Opera. Seems like IE is the only browser it'll work in.
In IE7:
The map isn't appearing on the contact page.
The text is rather small on some of the pages, but when I make it larger in my browser all the different content areas overlap.
On the Commercial/Business page the whole mouseover/text appearing thing is slightly confusing - it's not clear which photo means what and it's unexpected that the little bar chart thingy disappears and the text appears.
I'd make sure too that the big image of a house is a good quality image as at the moment it looks like it's been enlarged and is therefore a bit blurry.
On the quote page - I'm not able to get at the form bit unless I use a mouse (and some people won't be able to).
I think that in general considering you've been at this for 3 weeks you've done alot - it's not a small site to build from scratch in 3 weeks!!
As far as whether you've gotten in over your head? It depends. Are you expecting the website to act as a major source of new business? If so then unfortunately it pays in the end to get a professional in to do it. I think that this is particularly so in any sort of finance-related business.
I think that if you're determined to do this yourself you need to be aware of FP's limitations. It will allow you to use unclean proprietory M$ code that won't work in other browsers and that takes up a load of space and slows the pages down.
For beginners in your position I'd say the secret is probably to keep things as simple as possible in site and page structure. Make sure that the site will work in at least some non-M$ browsers (Firefox and Opera are free to download). Try not to rely on FrontPage's built in widgets like rollover buttons etc - they don't work particularly well. Never ever paste stuff in from Word and never ever rely on things saved as HTML from Word - it doesn't work properly.
I hope that doesn't sound too harsh or like I'm trying to put your efforts down (because you've done a LOAD more than I'd have even attempted in 3 weeks starting out - did you sleep at all?) as that's really not what I'm trying to do. My basic message is that if you can face it and afford it - a professional site is probably best for businesses that will rely on their website for business generating. Othewise, keep it simple, don't trust FrontPage to build your site properly (it needs a lot of kicking to produce something reasonable) and be prepared to keep learning and tweaking it accordingly.
Good luck with it!
_____________________________
"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
| |
|
|
|
tdub
Posts: 9
Joined: 3/22/2007
Status: offline
|
RE: I gave it a try!! - 3/23/2007 14:06:46
Thanks for the feed back. Is there an easy way to do that since i built the site with pretty much copy and paste. I didn't know what templates and css were untill I was almost done
Thanks
tdub
| |
|
|
|
jesse1
Posts: 21
Joined: 3/29/2007
Status: offline
|
RE: I gave it a try!! - 4/1/2007 9:24:20
definitely not bad for a first try but could use some improvement.
I think it is too wide...I have to scroll right to see it all.
keep at it though
| |
|
 New Messages |
 No New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
 Locked w/ New Messages |
 Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Printable Version 
