Web development and design?

I'm looking to create a website to sell professional photos that a family member has taken. I'm going to design and develop it myself, but I don't know what languages would be necessary to design a professional and presentable website. I currently have basic understanding of HTML. I also do have Macromedia Dreamweaver CS3, but I don't really know how to use it or if I will need to use it. Does anyone know any resources or what languages I should learn to create this website?

Web development and design?
Hello Dave,





You will need the following things to develop a website so that you can sell professional photos online;





You will need to learn a programming language in order to make your site dynamic. (ie -be able to actually do business on your site, password protect certain areas of the site, process transactions on the site, etc.) You should familiarize yourself with ASP or Coldfusion programming languages and know how to integrate javascript for menus, etc.





In addition, you will need to register a domain name and buy hosting space that will accomodate large files such as high resolution photography photos. You will also need a crash course lesson in creating basic pages in Dreamweaver. This is key if you plan to manage and develop your own site.





Finally, you will need a merchant account to process online payments or Paypal and depending on how far you want to go, you would need a basic shopping cart to handle your client transactions and information.





Good Luck!
Reply:Use Microsoft Frontpage. It is really easy. Just make sure your web hosting service supports Frontpage extensions. They have lots of photo album templates in Frontpage that would probably work for you. If you want to add some Fash media to your webpage, check out Kool Moves. It lets you create some nice flash presentations without having to know much about Flash programming.
Reply:you definetly need to get more expertise on CSS. Learn a lot of JavaScript even if you decided to use Dreamweaver because it would help a lot in debugging.





There are some tool kits out there that will help you out a lot as you do not have to write everything from scratch. Must have when building such a website are





1) Ability to comment from individual users.


2) Rating


3) Tags


4) Maps with Tags


5) Links to Wikipedia on Tags/Description


6) Popular Images / What other users have been looking at


7) Fast Navigation


8) Clean and simple layout
Reply:You can use a gallery script





http://www.softbizscripts.com/image-gall...





then use a payment gateway to allow access.





You can host your website here:


http://www.custom-computerz.com/order/





Which comes with alot of tools and also support Frontpage extentions. A FREE Support Forum for any assistance needed.
Reply:Check the help files on the macromedia for a great reference source. They have tutorials in there that are great. Also research other similar sites and see what they have done.





There are a million ways to do this, you need to narrow it down with a game plan first. Once you have that then tackle the finer details.
Reply:Obviously html, for data handling you need to learn how to use a database (mysql would be good) and php to control the data.
Reply:Even though you sound like an advanced web designer, the following discussion may be helpful to you.





Begin with setting up your own webpage as your current internet provider will provide free hosting as discussed below.





If you are currently a paid Internet subscriber, you are entitled to a "homepage" which often contains simple navigation and editing tools. And if you use the Netscape browser, the built-in Composer feature is a superior HTML authoring tool which is totally free. You can easily generate a full-blown website as a Homepage.





Nevertheless, the "homepage" URL is likely to be "http://homepage.earthlink.com/subscribe... name" and that URL can easily be overwritten via a redirection service, i.e., "mydomain.com" which allows you to link any registered domain name to "mask" another website. For example, should you type in the "domain name," you will be immediately transported to the homepage and the hompage URL of http://homepage.earthlink.com/subscriber... a homepage URL which will be masked by the domain name. And the charge for the redirection service [even at godaddy.com] is normally FREE.





When you acquire a domain name, connect it using a redirection service [as discussed above] and submit/publish the domain name on major search engines/directories in order for Net surfers to find your website.





Good luck!