One of my 2007 New Year’s resolutions has stalled out. I am getting nowhere fast on my objective to launch 10 new content websites by May. 10 sites?! That should be a slam dunk, even if I am focusing on my projects only a couple of hours a day. Well, I wasn’t making headway. So it is best to raise a red flag now, rather than in March or April.
Not being afraid to ask for help, I called my good friend Phylise at Skidmore College’s University Without Walls. She helps build fantastic distance learning courses and websites. She even helped my Mom develop and manage an online course using Dreamweaver.
My basic problem is that I have all of my site plans and a website design, but I don’t know where to start actually developing my site. My Dreamweaver tutorials and training guide help me learn how to bold text and place images. Free templates give me very little to work with. Where do I start?
Phylise asked me two questions:
1. How well do you know HTML?
Answer: Not well. I can hunt and peck the CSS on my WordPress theme enough to change the header image.
2. Will your site be database driven?
Answer: Yes. I want to dynamically display data and build forms to store data.
Her response was simple (and kind). Paraphrasing… “Bob. You need to learn how to build your own style sheets. We’ll worry about learning MySQL and writing PHP scripts later… Much later.â€
She pointed me to CSS Zen Garden and CSS Vault as excellent resources. Also, I am jumping ahead in my Dreamweaver training guide to the style sheet chapter (Lesson #6).
Hmmm. I may have to ramp up my time to 4-5 hours a night to meet my goal.
