HTML and CSS

[cynth76]

I have been doing photography for a year now and is turning it into a business. I have just got a domain name and join to do my own website. I have been learning the html and css, is getting better but not that good yet. I need some help how to insert image in html? *removed : refer to employment rules*

[midnight]

http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp

[ricktas]

ummm. how about looking for a website design/software forum. Looking for this in a photography forum is probably the wrong way round. Welcome to AP, looking forward to seeing some of your photos.

Please also note that you cannot ask for paid help on this site, until you reach 30 days membership and 50 posts. Refer to the employment forum for the rules regarding that.

[cynth76]

Oh...thanks ricktas, obviously I am new and this is the first time I ever use forum. I always read everyone's forum and found some answers I wanted to know. But thanks for letting me know. I will look up in the website design/software forum.

Cheers

[Kym]

I'll be really hard here and give some really useful advice. (I've been in the software game since the 70's and look after AP tech wise.)

DON'T DO YOUR OWN WEBSITE!!! You are not a software person - get professional help or a pre-canned solution like offered by our site sponsor eStyles.

Seriously - do not consider doing your own web site unless you want to put more effort in that than (I presume) your good photography.

Eg. If you can't put an image into HTML how are you going to handle security?

I'm hopefully doing you a big favour by being so direct - I hope you understand

[Kym]

Also... No one should be using HTML any more!! xhtml is the correct standard to be using. The w3schools link above is a free resource.

[Kym]

Things for everyone to consider...

What kind of Web site to deploy is a major business decision and must be considered with great care. Your choices affects both the effectiveness of your Web effort and its cost.

Lets be right up front about this. A Web site is an investment just like a piece of machinery, office equipment or advertising campaign. What you spend on it and what you get from it should be in direct proportion, but, just as with other capital expenditures, it is possible to spend just a little too little and get nothing.

Caution: This industry is entirely unregulated, and there are no standards for pricing or product delivered. It's swarming with people out for a fast buck who promise the world at a very low price. Results will not match expectations, but you've already paid.

• "Business Card" Site: A single screen with logo, address, phone number, hours of business and brief description of products and/or services, and a link to your email box. An experienced Web person can get this done and up in two to four hours depending on what you want on it - figure $50 to $200. At the very least, it fills the empty space you got with your Internet service.
  
  
• "Brochure" Site: A multi-screen site with extended product and/or services information, perhaps a map, e-mail links and other useful information. Costs are similar to creating a nice professional 4-color brochure of similar scale. Don't think you can just put up your brochure though, the mechanics are way different. At best the designer can cut some graphics and copy some text from your brochure.
  
  
• "Mini-Catalog" Site: A larger version of the brochure site, but more product oriented and may have pricing. There will be forms to place orders, request quotes, etc. Production costs are similar to a color catalog of similar scale.
  
  This kind of site can be nearly as good a sales tool as an e-commerce site, since most people still pick up the phone to actually place orders. You can't negotiate by filling out a form, after all, and a sales person may know about conditions, new products or price changes that aren't posted on the Web yet. Many people feel their credit card information is more secure that way, too, and given how easily most e-commerce sites are hacked, they're probably right.
  
  
• "Information Site" - "Mini-portal": Sites of this type are designed to bring people back over and over by offering news, reference material, interesting information and links to related sites where even more information can be found. An information site may also include features of the "brochure" or "mini-catalog" site.
  
  Cost varies in the extreme depending on who is doing the work and how that work is being accounted for. If it can be done as part of normal operations, so much the better. If you can apply volunteer labor, so much the better.
  
  
• "E-Commerce" Site: On-line credit card sales are the hallmark of this type of site. Costs vary in the extreme depending on scale and approach. A site that is a member of an on-line mall can be fairly low cost (though limited). You may be able to get on a mall for $600 or so, but you'll need $15,000 or so to start anything significant.
  
  Our article E-Commerce - Selling on the Web has information about the risks and advantages of this kind of site.
  
  
• "Integrated E-Commerce" Site: Here the Web site is linked to or integrated with the company's back office processes. The on-line catalog is built dynamically from a database. Availability, on-line customer service inquiry and other "real time" features are integrated into the site. A couple million dollars will get your started.
  
  
• "Portal": If you think you can compete with Yahoo, Microsoft, Yahoo, Alta Vista, and the rest of the big guys, this is for you. A few billion bucks will get you into this game, but doesn't guarantee success.
  

The "E-Commerce - Selling" site can be done at a lower cost, but only if you have very good technical skills. Security is the biggest concern - i.e. how do you protect BOTH your customers and yourself?

[Tannin]

Also... No one should be using HTML any more!! xhtml is the correct standard to be using.

Show me some evidence for this outrageous statement, please.

[Kym]

Show me some evidence for this outrageous statement, please.

Yeah, I was being provocative... but the point is if you use the xhtml syntax your life will be better in the long runs esp. in terms of HTML5 (which is in fact now a convergence of HTML and XHTML2)
Gory details at www.w3.org
xhtml forces element closures and case sensitivity etc.

[Tannin]

Yup. But the element closure thing is something good programmers have been doing anyway for years; the same applies to case, so there is no gain unless you are no good. I have considered using XHTML for each of the various sites I run, and run through the various cited advantages of XHTML, looking at the particular site, and ticking off the things that would improve after replacing my validated HTML 4.01 strict with XHTML 1. In the end, the list of advantages, for about 12 different sites, had zero items on it. Yes, you read right: zero. Not one of these dozen-odd quite different websites had anything at all to gain from XHTML, and (of course) there would have been a not insubstantial cost to be measured in time, code complexity, and bandwidth. Now I'm not saying that XHTML is useless. There are clearly instances where it makes perfect sense to use it. But equally there are a very great many instances where it just pointless complexity fort its own sake.

[Tannin]

Oh, and ....

Yeah, I was being provocative.

Is that right? Hmmm ...... er ... what's "being provocative" mean? You understand that I ask for informational purposes only, it's not something I've ever done myself, of course, the very thought never crossed my mind.

[Kym]

Provoking thought!