I have been checking out the forum regarding frontpage. Started up my website this year using the wizard. Of course, you know the restrictions using that method. I am a beginner and do not know html. I have pro hosting, but lost with pro templates. Is frontpage easier than pro templates? You seem very knowledgeable and I would appreciate you ideas in regarding the above. I live in a rural area and there are no courses available in the area, so I am trying to figure out all these things on my own. Thanks. Jo
Frontpage is a good design application, but a little costly. There are plenty of free tools available for download, to get you started.
There is nothing mysterious about Bravenet Templates. Templates are nothing more than basic web page structures. All you need to do is learn how to work with them. Even though Bravenet offers these templates they do not offer any on-line graphic editing. So working with the graphics on the pages (nav buttons, backgrounds) is impossible on-line. But even Bravenet recommends that you download the template to your local PC and use your own web page design application to design.
If you go to the Resources tab in your Bravenet Account Manager, and follow it to "Bravenet Newsletters --> Tips and Tricks", you will find a good discussion on using Bravenet templates. The use Photoshop on Windows for their discussion on image editing, but they also recommend GIMP and Paintshop Pro. For my own purposes, I use a free graphic editor named IrfanView and MS Paint.
You might also want to try my help pages on Working With Bravenet Templates. The page on Template Editing has links to several good (free) web page design packages. Linked on that page is AlleyCode, which I believe Faeryrose usually recommends. The page on Buttons and Logos has a link for the free graphic editor IrfanView.
If you have a digital camera, you may already have a good graphic editor to use with your web page graphics. For the most part, all you need it for is resizing images, annotation buttons, and cropping. In the end you will find that working with a template is much easier off-line. Off-line editors are far more flexible than any on-line editors. When your ready to put your work on the internet, most web page design applications have built in upload capabilities.
Thanks for answering my post. You have been very informative. I will try pro templates. First I will read up on them as you suggested. I do have photo shop and can resize photos, which is great to work with.
I'll keep in touch as I go along. I think this forum should be very glad that your interested enough to be part of it.
