Writing an introduction to a forum is always difficult. How much should you say? What should you say?

 

I guess start at the beginning. I taught myself to design and create web sites back in the good old days when Netscape was the cool browser of choice and also had a great little web page editor. I have created some OK web sites over the years although I am no great technical expert and I try to keep what I do simple.

 

I have always loved to cook and perhaps should have trained as a chef . . . but I didn't! No good having regrets so in the early days (2000) I created a cooking and recipe site both as a hobby and as an example of what I could do. It served me well, getting me head hunted (which is why I now live in Ipswich, Suffolk even though the job did not last) and from 2007 to earlier this year provided me with a good living. They say all good things must come to an end and with the help of Google and the Panda algorithm they did just that. I still have my big web site but once again have had to relegate it to being a hobby which I do on my days off from a job unrelated to the internet or web design.

 

I have joined the forum as it seems I need to start again and hopefully I can gain some useful insights from the posts here and possibly answer some of them too.

 

After using Netscape to learn to create web pages I switched to Front Page as the company I was freelancing for wanted me to use it. As the industry standard became Dreamweaver I switched over and taught myself to use Dreamweaver. Unfortunately when you freelance finding the money to continually buy new software meant I was not able to keep up with the most recent versions of Dreamweaver.

 

I never learnt to do database driven web sites and I avoided Flash like the plague. I used to be pretty good at SEO but over the last year and a half (since Google launched Panda) I seem to have lost the plot.

 

Enough of my ramblings. If you want to know more feel free to ask.

Welcome !

Welcome to the forum!

 

It's a classic case of learning the IDE rather than the language.

If you make yourself comfortable with the language then it won't matter what software you use to create the final site.

 

I use Dreamweaver but there are plenty of other free or cheaper software IDE's out there such as Netbeans or Notepad++ for a start.

SEO: the focus has shifted from quantity to quality - so make your site as good as possible for human visitors and the robots will follow.