Building a website & using photoshop

I'm looking to create my own website in the near future and I know nothing about web design.  I've read up on the whole domain side of things and hosting however I'm unsure on what tools I should use to start trialing a website. I've seen reviews of dreamweaver which seem to suggest this is a good tool for beginners to learn.  Is this true?

Also I'm quite creative and would therefore like too learn the photoshop side of image design so that I can build layers of images of my own style.  Can anyone suggest how I can pick this up and learn quickly?  (I've got a trial copy).  Simply cutting out say a car from a background seems difficult on there.

Any help and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Can you explain more what kind of website you want to build. (What should be on there and how often you want to change it and who will be visitors?) I think if you want to build only one website for you then it is to much to learn dremweaver because of that. If you answer those questions then it is easier to suggest something.

I tried learning Photoshop from various sources, but things would always be greyed out for no apparent reason. I found a friend who has Photoshop skills and sat down with him for half an hour. That half an hour was far more useful than anything I found online to get me started. He was able to explain why things were greyed out and how it worked in general. Once you've got the basics, it's much easier to explore by yourself/via the internet.

Regarding the website, it really depends on what you want it to do, as wiltz has said. Are you planning on updating it regularly? Do you want to include a blog? Can you get away with blog software and templates alone or do you need to code the whole thing from scratch? I find Dreamweaver a bit annoying to use and prefer to hand code html, as it's a pretty easy language to get going with. One of the best sites to learn more about HTML, CSS etc. is www.w3schools.com - explains things, and most importantly, gives you an area where you can test their example and alter it to see the results. This, to me, is far more useful than Dreamweaver.

see i differ from the above..

i love dreamweaver and wouldnt use anything else

however… i dont use it for the design part as i write in php which is code only, no visual.. then build the site around that..

its hard to explain…


as with photoshop, yes, you can learn it but it does take a LONG time on your own… iv been using photoshop for about 6 years and i still only know the basics.. if ya want to learn it quick, get a course. if ya want to learn how to get certain things done, pm one of us im sure we can help lol…


what type of site would you be looking to get??

im just about to start my second online shop so all the code will be fresh in my head so if ya get stuck, let me know

Awe wow…. just got on to check this thanks for the input!!

I want to start a small business on the side therefore I want to create a base for people to get a hold of me, showcase my business idea(s) and see how they go.  Not sure what I want to do business wise as I have a few possible ideas.

Sounds like I should have a look around at various coding such as php and html

a little like this:

http://www.pdqcouriersbristol.co.uk/

the last one i built lol… the design is actually really poo… im not good at design

i did an evening course of photo editing using photoshop last year

it was really helpful, and on £35 over 13 weeks, 1 night

might be worth looking for local course, it was a learn direct sort of thing

iv used photoshop a fair bit and once you get the hang on it its so easy. get the basics and can build on it. although saying that my gf can still do anything twice as good in half the time hahaha (uni, graphic design)
iv mocked up a few sites using dreamweaver and always ound it pretty good! iv also used flash, little harder. but as with anything, you get the hang of it a bit. out of all you said, photoshop is the easdier bit imo
but what software you use depends on what sort of site youre afte.r i used flash for a photography site.
remember, theres loads of coding on the web you can borrow. once you have the frame of it you can customize it pretty easy!

Well I thought I'd go on youtube today and lear a bit of photoshop… here's two pics I made… probably not good for people who know photoshop but I'm well chuffed I'm getting somewhere  :mrgreen:





What have you lot done that I can have a go at?

Changed it a tad… without teeth and that dodgey eyebrow…. I'm loving photoshop!!!

you could just use a pre-made template that you can buy for a couple of quid and then use wordpress to customise the site. you can use your photoshop skills to create images for web and use wordpress to implement them into the website.

Although wordpress is a much easier way of starting a website, it is still very difficult. I would not recommend using dreamweaver at all unless your willing to put in some hard time learning all about code.

This is my opinion anyway lol Ive been a graphic designer for many years, just graduated from uni and working freelance at the moment.

hope this helps.

freeman said

you could just use a pre-made template that you can buy for a couple of quid and then use wordpress to customise the site. you can use your photoshop skills to create images for web and use wordpress to implement them into the website.

Although wordpress is a much easier way of starting a website, it is still very difficult. I would not recommend using dreamweaver at all unless your willing to put in some hard time learning all about code.

This is my opinion anyway lol Ive been a graphic designer for many years, just graduated from uni and working freelance at the moment.

hope this helps.

I'll check that out bud thanks!!!!  All exciting stuff to me  :mrgreen:

www.pix-al.co.uk

This is my site.

All basic HTML code with a bit of Flash and Javascript for the nice bits. Google is your friend - Lots of free code out there to do pretty much anything.

I wanted something simple, not flashy, which I think I achieved?

I recommend using 123reg.co.uk for buying your Domain Name - I found it very easy to understand, buy and set up, considering I was a novice.
I currently use 110mb.com for my hosting, which can be completely free, unless you want to enable PHP etc.

You can build the web site here http://www.xnynz.com/  and also get the hosting,domain name register, domain appraisal, online file folder, ssl certificate etc…

hey dude! if you need a crash course of photoshop i can pop up to yours at some point and give you a quick demo on some stuff, i pretty much use it every day and i know some pretty good short cuts,

let me know if youre interested, dont know squat about websites tho

brucieboy said

hey dude! if you need a crash course of photoshop i can pop up to yours at some point and give you a quick demo on some stuff, i pretty much use it every day and i know some pretty good short cuts,

let me know if youre interested, dont know squat about websites tho

You rock Bruce cheers mate.  I'm massively pushed for time at the min but I may well take you up on that… there will be tea and butties in it for ya…. looks awesome!!

pleasure mate, let me know and we'll see what we can do! me likey butties!