PDA

View Full Version : General newbie questions about designing a memorial website.



blcampbell
13 Jun 2011, 12:05 PM
Guru(s),

I have taken it upon myself to design a modern yet simple memorial website for my family and our memorial scholarship fund, etc. My skill level is low in terms of modern web design. I understand the theory behind html, css, js, php, etc. I was a site admin nearly 8 years ago and am a tech guy, just on the hardware/server side as opposed to coding and web dev.

I have put some thought into this with my brother and we have an idea of what we want. I'll answer the questions I found in the newbie post:

1) Your current skill level in any web related field

As I said above, I don't know much that is current. However, I get the general idea and usually just need to tinker a bit to understand what is going on.

2) Do you want to do this yourself or employ someone?

I plan on doing this myself unless it ends up taking too much time or resources!

3) Where relevant can you provide an example of what you are trying to achieve.

I own a .com domain and hosting for 1 year on ipage. I thought their (ipage's) site builders really sucked to be frank.

For the home (title? landing?) page, I want the site to just be a single image stretched across the screen. Then, I would like some unobtrusive "floating" navigation that opens content in some of the negative space that exists in the background image. Content will just textural with possibly a link or two. I plan on including a guestbook and possibly even a photobook for other images.

Mostly, I just want the main page and maybe 2 static informational pages until I get my feet wet.

How deep have I gotten myself and is this too much for someone at my skill level? I'm 34, learn quickly and understand tech fairly well. I have Dreamweaver (CS5) and can get my hands on other tools.

Thanks for taking the time to read and/or comment.

blcampbell
13 Jun 2011, 01:43 PM
Well, I found an add-on through my iPage control panel called concrete5. It seems to be cleaner than some of the other site design tools I've tried. While it limits my capability and will end up changing my vision for the site, I feel its workable. I'll probably use this format until the end of this year. At that point I'll attempt to build the site from scratch. Again, any advice or thoughts are more than welcome. Thanks in advance for any comments.