Site building

Hi again Frank,

Ok, a few more thoughts, about webmastering in general. You can decide whether any of this is useful to your situation.

In the "real world", off the net, in the world of professional publishing, books are written before they're printed. Authors spend months, years even, writing, rewriting and rewriting again. Editors pore over the work, and make more changes. The job is finished in full, BEFORE the presses roll.

On the Net, the typical pattern is to have a site idea, write a page or two in a hurry, and then rush to get it online.

Thus, many newcomers are struggling with web publishing technology, before they really have anything substantial to publish. The technology becomes a big distraction to the real job at hand, which they've yet to begin really.

If an author is serious about providing value to readers, they may not need either money or tech skills.

As example, if someone came to me and said...

"Here's 84 pages of excellent content. I've done my homework, and I know this is useful information. But, I'm a starving artist writer, and have no technical skills. What should I do?"

If the person was sincere (and not just cheap ) and the content was truly well done, I'd give that person a free account, and tell them they could start paying me when they started making money, within reason.

In spite of the billions of sites online, there is actually a shortage of folks who take their sites seriously enough to, finish the book, a good book, before they print it. Money and tech skills aren't really the obstacle.

Ok, enough ranting for today.

 

Apologies, but here's why. You're trying to do it by yourself. You haven't put yourself in an environment where someone who is more experienced would be available to help.

 

site publishing support

when I first started to ftp sites up to my domains I found it very helpful to use godaddy as my hosting provider as the free phone support they give is amazing. They practically do it for you and definately don't assume you know more than you do and don't talk down to you if you are a newbie. I had tried a few others before them, but find them to be the most helpful by far.
Don't get frustrated because once you get it. You'll have it and a whole new world is going to open up for you.

 

RIFF-RAFF, many people use Nvu are are pleased with it.

There are several other free choices you might want to look at to see if you like any of them better. You will find NVU and several others that are free in this thread http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...-universe/3615-your-favorite-html-editor.html

FileZilla is a favorite of many, but it is possible you might prefer another. You will find FileZilla and other choices covered in this thread http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...sters-universe/3032-favorite-ftp-program.html

 

Hey Frank,

Apologies, I really don't mean to be sticking my nose in to your business. There's always that danger when using a specific person's situation as an example of a very common experience many, many webmasters have had when starting out.

Please read my comments as being about the market in general, ok?

My passion for this thread comes from years of experience trying to be that person.

More to the point, the focus of my job is create an environment where new comers don't need to learn hardly any technology AND they don't need me either.

While you are frustrated trying to learn unfamiliar gadgets, my frustration comes from trying to serve a newcomer market that insists on learning unfamiliar gadgets, even though this process is usually unnecessary, and counter productive.

Most newcomers are building sites to make some money.
That is, they wish to be online sales people.

If selling is one's chosen career, one should focus on selling!

Focusing means, ruthlessly discarding everything that is in the way of one's goal.

In this case that means, learning as little web technology as possible, because every minute spent trying to understand what FTP means, is a minute not spent learning how to sell.

Getting free tools off the net, and then finding a free or cheap host is a common path for new comers. Regrettably, this strategy is more appropriate for experienced users.

Smart newcomer sellers find a way to 1) avoid technology as much as possible, and 2) create professional relationships with more experienced people, and 3) focus on selling.

If I wanted to be a dentist, a carpenter, a nurse, or most anything else worth doing, I wouldn't try to learn it on my own using free tools and books I found laying around somewhere. It's no different on the Net.

But, most newcomers will ignore this advice, in order to save less money than they spend each week at Starbucks. And that's just how it is, and I suppose, always will be.

End of rant!

 

Thanks for understanding Frank, you're a good sport. You can mentor me a bit if you want. Here's a question. It's not a trick question, and there's no right answer, I'm just curious how you would approach this.

Let's say you've used pen and paper to write the 50 articles you want to have on your site.

Imagine you could push a button on your phone, and bingo, all the articles would magically appear on your website.

You get to immediately publish a website with no work at all, but, you don't get to be creative, and have the challenge of learning HTML and graphics and stuff like that.

Would this be good news to you, or bad news? Would you choose this option, or stay with your current plan?

Again, there's no right answer, just your answer for yourself. This is just a mental exercise.

Most newcomers, and veterans too, have two goals.

There's the desire to make money, and the desire to create a piece of art we can show our friends. This exaggerated mental exercise pits one goal against the other, in an attempt to determine what it is that's the most important to us.

If we had to choose one, art or money, which would we take?

Thanks for the conversation Frank!

 

Thanks Frank, you sound like a sensible fellow.

I hear you saying you wish to both make some money, and express yourself creatively with web technology, and if those two goals compete with each other, that's ok with you. Did I get it right?

I'm not arguing for or against either money or creativity. To each their own course.

But I am interested in clarity. If I wish to spend half the day fiddling around with the color of the buttons on my site, I just want to do it with the clear understanding that's this activity is about creativity and fun, not about business.

If I have that clarity, and can afford to enjoy this activity, then by all means, go for it.

If one wishes to focus on web site business, I find that in a world overflowing with distractions and information overload, it's really helpful to focus on the job at hand.

In the case of web publishing, we might start that focus by boiling the job to two things.

Content and links.

This is really one thing, as the quality of the content will probably be a key contributor to the number of links we get.

If one takes this view, that "quality content is king", then perhaps that helps us put web technology in perspective.

For thousands of years, people have created quality content, without the benefit of computers and the Net.

I think I had too much coffee today, don't you?

 

Ha, ha! Don't get it on the keyboard, or your site might go down.

Frank, I was working on a big video project today, and came across some NVU tutorial vids. Would these interest you, or are you all set?

If you're interested, I'll upload them and provide URL. If you don't need them, that's ok too.

 

RIFF-RAFF (Frank), these videos are available from various sources.

I am giving you links to a souce just in case you have an interest in these Nvu Video Tutorials. If you don't they might be helpful to someone else.

All you need to do is scroll down each page a little and click on the "CLICK TO PLAY" button.

Nvu Tutorial 1: Getting started - Video | WebBriefcase

Nvu Tutorial 2: Creating a template - Video | WebBriefcase

Nvu Tutorial 3: Using a Template - Video | WebBriefcase

Nvu Tutorial 4: Working with Images - Videos | WebBriefcase

Nvu Tutorial 5: Publishing your Web Pages - Video | WebBriefcase

 

RIFF-RAFF (Frank), I have edited my post above (#36) to give you links to 5 Nvu tutorials where you will easily be able to view them by not doing anything except clicking to view.