Joe Burns Website Design Goodies gives great tips for making your own website
This book, as well as Joe Burns' other Goodies titles, are wonderful, down-to-earth instructions for "common folks" to learn how to create their own website. The only bad part of any of them is that many of the links listed in the books are obsolete and don't work. Time for a new edition, Dr. Burns!!! If you want to make your own website and know nothing about it, these are the books for you.
Another Great Book by Joe
This is yet another great book by Joe. Joe Burn's is a unique technical author that writes as if he is talking to you. I recommend this book to anyone-that includes the non-technical folks--interested in setting up his/her own website. WHY? Because this book IS for beginners. It is written in a simple to follow, easy to read style. I wish more technical authors would follow Joe's simple style for their writing. Highly recommended! Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated
PS this book helped me open my own website!
Key Elements of Web Design
"Not returning an email is the Web's equal to being ignored by a clerk. I don't mean setting up a program that sends a nice form-style thank-you-for-writing letter. Users want an answer from you."
Yes, and I'm a bit behind this week. :> I also hate those form letters. arrgggg
This is a great book for anyone who is starting out and wants to try to figure out who their site is for and why people will want to visit their site. This was the first thing I thought about when creating mine, but often people just have an idea and run with it. With the advice in this book, you can :
Plan your site for your audience
Create meaningful text and navigation
Add images and other visual enhancements
Communicate with your visitors
Find the best ways to promote your site
Joe Burn?s has a HTML Goodies Web site and there you can learn HTML, JavaSCript and other website creation tools. He has been creating websites since the first version of Mosaic was released. Since then, he has taught thousands of people to build great websites. Including me. ;) Well, I do the best I can.
A lot of people think building a website is very difficult because they think you have to know HTML, but the truth is, if you get FrontPage, you don?t have to know very much.
The Contents Include:
Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged
Before Your Write a Word
Begin the Design
Your Site and Your Server
Text and Color
Links, Links, Links
Images and the Visual
Hello? Anybody Here? How Many?
Outside HTML
Promoting Your Site
There are great ideas like looking at who your competitions is, finding out how you want to design your template, choosing a font that can be read and making your site more well-known by word of link.
The author is also "so" correct about his ideas on "critiquing" other sites. That is a great idea because then you learn what you like and don't like. One of my main concerns was navigation.
There is also some great advice on domain names and what you should avoid. I guess using "the" in my one name isn't suggested, but then again, it has worked for me.
While I'm not so concerned about how to read HTML, I do like having a basic understanding. There are some tags and their functions listed on pg. 140.
For the longest time, I had no idea what the difference between a "hit" and a "visitor" was.
I just purchased my own URL for another 9 years. I'm in this for the long haul! People say they sometimes get lost at my site in a good way, so I think this book helped me.
It is strange, but when I first put up my site, I had webmasters arriving from who knows where telling me what I was doing right and wrong. It was the best thing to ever happen to me in regards to my site. If you are willing to take constructive criticism about the construction of your site, you will find people are very willing to give great advice. Of course if they tell you to change the background on every page, run, run, run quickly.
Well, the way I've built my site, I have no idea how that would be done unless I go to every single page. I assume there is some logical secret, maybe just changing the one image would solve the entire conundrum.
Great book for anyone just getting started. This has lots of the basics. You can also visit his site for added information.
~The Rebecca Review
Perfect for beginners but not for novices and experts
Web Site Design Goodies is a pefect book for beginners but not for novices and experts. Some of the pros of this book is that it contains many critiques (not reviews - it offers as much advice for imporvement rather than just ridicule) of websites and lists some of the common mistakes beginners make. I also found his chapters on site identification and promotion quite useful. Some of the cons on the otherhand is that it does not cover advanced topics such as transparent gif tricks, complex tables, etc, and that the author repeats himself on certain subjects far too many times. Bottom line: get it if you are a beginner, don't get it if you are anything more than that.
A must read before designing your next site
Joe Burns has done an incredible job putting together the most useful information on creating your site. The first few chapters are so useful, I cannot believe I did not do all of the recommended things before.
Now I am much more confident the site I am working on will be more appealing, and target the visitor, their needs/wants, and not what I like.
This is a must read, if you do nothing else, read his chapter Two, on, "Before you write a Word". If more people read this book, there would be a lot more GREAT and SUPER web sites, as opposed to the spattering of GREAT one's now. It is worth taking the time to stop doing what you are working on, and read this book.
He is a bit opinionated, however, 95% of his thoughts are right on, and I have already seen it work on my new site.. You will not find chunks of code, or cookie cutter templates here, but you get the design concepts, and how to make your pages stand out and get visitors that want to come back.
(8 reviews)
