Andrew Naumann

Thanks! that's a great tip, i will look into that. Using CSS to draw images makes sence that would probably help a lot on load times.

I also heard of joomla, do they offer mostly the same thing? Or is it completely different?

Thanks for the quick replys! It sounds like that really would be the way to go. After work today I will have to brew some tea and start to dig in. Also if anyone gets a chance I would appreciate some feedback on my html, css if I have picked up any bad habits, or am perhaps I am doing something that is out dated.

So, This is what is going on. I am brand new to web design/development and as a first project to undertake my girlfriend has decided she would like a site based around dog/animal advice photos etc. Anyways, I quickly dived right in to Photoshop and hammered out a Rough design that she was happy about. After I finished the layout of a homepage, I worked on cutting up the psd and assigning images to divs in the css. And this is what i ended up with... http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31103491/Angelas%20Site%20-%20Copy/index.html About this time my girlfriend turns to me and says, "how am I supposed to edit this and add new content while your at work..." Seeing how she is the least patient person that I know, I realized that it was a good point. Rather than trying to teach her basic html/css, which when you look at my source code you will see I barely grasp, I decided to take a look at other services such as wordpress. So wordpress.com i find out is basically predesigned templates only. Wordpress.org, from what i could gather has all the nuts and bolts but requires you to be running your own webserver. Futhermore I did not really understand if it would give her the ability to edit the content easily if I went through the trouble of creating a template. So in summary, what i am looking for, is some sort of system that would allow me to create a site from the ground up and then have a nice control console integrated that would allow for user friendly update ability so that my girlfriend can load any content and pics with a minimal learning curve. It is also quite possible that I don't really understand what i'm asking for and such a thing does not exist. Thoughts?

hey no problem, glad i could help

is it just temporary, only so he can see your work? i have ghetto hosted a few sites using dropbox before. I just place my directory that contains index.html and my CSS images etc and create a public link of the index.html. which generates a long URL but whoever i send it to can view it and interact with the site. If this sounds like something you want to do and are confused what i mean, just let me know

hey! my grandma lives in Saginaw!

I'm pretty new to web design, but one thing that i think could use some improvement.... In your gallery section it looks like you have your thumbnails as the full-rez image just re-sized in the HTML. If i am correct in this i'm sure that will slow down your load times quite a bit. This will be even a bigger problem after you have more than 2 pics on the page. Also the dimensions you have your thumbnail set to is not the correct aspect ratio for the image. referring to this code <a href="images/bannerimg.jpg" title="High Hawkhope Cottage" rel="shadowbox[Cottage]"><img src="images/bannerimg.jpg" id="sbimg" width="150" height="60" alt="Cottage"/></a>

Hi! My name is Andrew and I am a new aspiring web developer. It is very exciting to have finally found what looks like a well designed and active forum. I am currently midway through my first project which is creating a dog advice/cute blog for my girlfriend to use with her family and friends. Currently i am using Photoshop to design the page and coding freehand in notepad++. Recently i started using Dreamweaver for a few extra features (i am not entirely sure i like the program all that much though). I look forward to meeting you all in the forums and i hope to be able to contribute to them myself in the near future!