I need help!
Hello,
my name is Tommy Ryan and I am a singer songwriter from Australia. Recently I decided to get into the net thing to promote my music. So I started out by trying to understand how a website works. I figured out how to make links and place pics and banners and all that, but when I look at my site, it doesn't look to me like somewhere I'd wanna stay for too long. The idea is to eventually get people to buy my CD, but right now I just want people to hear my music even if I have to give it away. Thing is I'm not real sure on the best way to make my site more interseting. And I don't really know if the Free Banner Affiliate thing is working for me either.
I can't even make a animated gif. How sad is that?
Mum would always say if you want anything in life then you have to ask so here goes. I need help. I'm a real novice when it comes to the net and I'm wondering if someone can help me get the message accross or help me design a banner or a java applet or something.
Heres my site: tommyryan.com.au
Even if you have an idea of something. I want to be noticed on the WWW.
Thanks
Regards
Tommy Ryan
The Webmistress posted this at 15:11 — 23rd July 2003.
She has: 5,586 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Welcome to TWF,
First of all let me say that it isn't necessarily a bad thing that you can't create an animated gif - they are very annoying on the net!!
First thing I would say is that the first page looks nice but get rid of the advert banners - your idea of getting yourself noticed is a good reason to have a website but I'm sure you aren't going to make money from those banners so ditch them now.
Second thing about the first page is that as one big image it isn't the best way of doing things - there is no text on the page and therefore nothing for the search engines to crawl, plus one big image isn't the best for people with slower connections.
It is a nice design for a splash page though - although I think it is best to have the index page as the first main page of your site. Splash pages IMO are a waste of time and make things more difficult for the search engines.
For the rest of the site you really need to bring in the colours and feel from the first page, again get rid of the banners and have a consistant layout/design & navigation system.
I think the thing to do is have a look around the net, find sites that you like the look of and view the source code to get an idea of how they have been put together. The decide what you want the entire site layout/design to be and do it in your graphics program, then you need to slice up the main graphics & place it into your html editor to build up the pages.
Another tip is to give the pages relevant names, eg. lyrics.html rather than h96.htm
We all had to start somewhere and I think that looking at the first page you have some graphics talent, so you need to just expand on that and come up with a design for the site.
Good luck and remember we are always here to help
Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....
MajorTommy posted this at 15:54 — 23rd July 2003.
They have: 2 posts
Joined: Jul 2003
Webmistress,
May the brightest star shine for you and grant you every wish that you deserve. I cannot thank you enough for your help.
I will keep at it and am open to all the ideas in the world. Will begin by following yours tomorrow and getting rid of the banners and re-designing the index page.
Thank you once again.
Tommy
The Webmistress posted this at 16:56 — 23rd July 2003.
She has: 5,586 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
As another learning exercise why not go through the website critique section of these forums and have a look at some of the others sites and see what people said about them. It's a great way for getting ideas and also to understand what people (well us lot any way) like & dislike.
Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....
OFS posted this at 17:07 — 27th July 2003.
They have: 16 posts
Joined: Jul 2003
Also try webmonkey for some html tips and get a free gif animator if you want to create animated gifs. Mindworks has a free one that's great. (Some animated gifs are nice.) It's all the other ones that are annoying.
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