Wednesday, July 18, 2007

My First Web Site

I volunteered to maintain the web site for the Chico Friends of the Library.  The very nice man who was doing it before me had run out of steam, I think.  Anyway, it was out of date and needed some love.

(If you read this post a couple of days after it has been published on my blog, and the above link doesn't work, it's because the web site is in transit from the old host to the new.  If you like, try again in a couple of days.)

What a learning curve!  I have never made a web page that was meant to be useful.  I purchased MS Expression Web, which is a Web Development tool that replaces MS Front Page.  If you are a newbie web developer, I recommend taking the tutorial that comes with the product.  It was a big help.  (By the way, I didn't pay full retail.  I bought a new, unopened version on eBay for a reasonable price.)

So, days later, I reformatted the old web site into what it is now, and added current information. 

The hardest part turned out to be transferring ownership of the domain name from the current owner to me.  It's a big deal legal process involving copies of his photo id and mine.  There is no anonymity in Domain Name registration!  And I'm in the process of moving from the old web host to a new one that will give better service - the old web host service people NEVER ANSWERED THE PHONE, and didn't return phone calls in a timely manner.  I finally just started leaving a message every morning at 8am, each time explaining my technical problem and asking them to call me.  Finally, after three days of this, and several emails from me, they called to say they would fix the problem.  That's just not acceptable.  (They did fix the problem, but I'm so mad I'm outta there!)

I've had fun learning a new development toy (Expression Web).  It's just fine for my purposes.  Lots of people swear by Dreamweaver, but it was too expensive for my volunteer budget. 

If you look at the new site, let me know what you think.



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