I want to build a web site containing pictures, Flash animations,
Flash games and later on a little store. Can I do all that with html and
Flash or do I need some commercial software such as Dreamweaver?
There are two sorts of software used in website building; "tools" and
"servers" (for very loose definitions). "Tools" are things that
_you_ use on your development machine, and you use them once whilst
building the site. "Servers" are things that you run at the hosting
company's site, many of which they supply for you. You need to operate
these for the life of the site.
Tools you really need start with the basics like a text editor and a
graphic editor. These are all I use - TextPad is a good editor and
dirt cheap, with a free trial first. Photoshop is the dominant image
editor, but PaintshopPro is rather cheaper. I suggest Photoshop,
simply because it's so widespread.
If you want to use Flash, then you also need to either buy some
Flash-creating tools, or even better is to employ the services of a
good Flash coder. More than anything else in website design, Flash
coding is an artistic skill that requires good graphic design skills
more than any web-savvy. After all, these things are basically
animated cartoons - maybe you're the next Tim Burton, but I know I'm
not.
Don't over-use Flash. Don't rely on it, dont make "the web site"
depend on it. Offer Flash games, use it for amusing animations, even
make yourself a cartoon-themed site that's simply pointless without
Flash (look at Weebl and Bob), but Flash is its own reward and not a
way of building "the web".
As a way of avoiding the need to learn HTML, then most beginners start
out with Dreamweaver, FrontPage, or some similar tool. These things
are all widely despised hereabouts, and even more so over in
c.i.w.a.h. HTML is not hard, and good HTML design requires you to
understand HTML code. So what are these drag-and-drool tools really
offering you ? Some of them (mainly FrontPage) are just very, very
bad at their job too.
So learn to code HTML by hand. It's far better, and nearly always
quicker too.
As for the server software, then for pictures, HTML and Flash, then
you don't need anything beyond the basic server package offered by
your hosting company. This will be Linux and Apache. Look very long
and hard at anything that isn't (BSD is maybe acceptable). Don't
even think about Windows hosting unless your boss is threatening to
drown either a) kittens, b) puppies or c) you if you don't.
If you get into "stores", then you still don't need to go near PHP,
MySQL or the rest. It is just not a sensible commercial position to
ask "Should I be using Dreamweaver ?" and "How do I build a store ?"
in the same question.
Stores are _hard_. Stores must be _reliable_. Stores handle people's
_money_, and some of that might one day be _my_ money! So I really
don;t want you even thinking about building your own store --- you
don't have anything like the experience needed to do a good job of
this. Sorry, but you don't. Maybe you're brilliant, but if you're
asking questions at this level, you're just nowhere near the position
you need to be at to build a store from scratch.
So what do you do ? You buy in a store. Talk to local and reliable
ecommerce suppliers - small firms of under half-a-dozen people who
have a good track record of building sites for local firms. It isn't
1999 any more - such people are now around in any city and they have
experience that it's worth paying your own good money for. Find them
by asking local firms who've used them, and by looking at the sites
they've produced. These days it's not even expensive to do this -
their experience means they'll do it far faster than you ever could
for your first site.
Then this firm won't write a store for you either. They'll buy in the
code from outside, install it for you and run that. There are any
number of well established ecomm platforms to suit any size of site
and pocket. At the very lowest end, just host the thing on a package
deal from Yahoo (Tim forbid that you'd actually choose Yahoo, but you
get the idea)
No-one should be writing web stores form scratch. It's 2004, we've
already got loads of the things. Doing it well is _hard_ and it
doesn't get much easier. There's a whole range of wheels out there,
don't go re-inventing them, even if you are skilled enough to do it.
