website, photo gallery, Jeff Hutchison
Setting up your own website
03/01/09 21:39 Filed in: Education
EVER THOUGHT ABOUT A WEBSITE FOR YOURSELF?
by our new Pres...Jeff Hutchison
For those who are interested here is my experience of trying to set up a web site when you don’t know a razoo about anything web related.
I have all these pics that just sit on my puter, some I even print out, sell the very occasional one, hang on the wall or give away, some sit in a drawer never to see the light of day again.
OK I put them in the club comps and I put them in the odd comp here and there and exhibition if I think they are good enough but I still have them all, what to do with them was the eternal question.
I know, I’ll put them on a web site somewhere.
Don’t trust any I see that are for free!!!!. I’ll get my own.
What’s the cost? what’s involved? Where do you start? I don’t know anything about HTML aaaaagh!.
So it sits in the back of my mind for a loooong time.
Well, after a couple of bourbons one night it comes back into my head, so, Google, everyone’s best friend on the web, is put to use to find a web site for me to utilise, but where to start, how does it all work? Which is the easiest program to use? How much does it cost? Am I being ripped off? Aaaaarg!
FIRST, A URL (like I know what that means...)
After a couple of weeks studying this site and that site I discover that first you have to have a URL, this is a web site name. Is this easy? Well you will find that a lot of what you want is not available cos everybody in the universe has used up all the names that you would really like to use.
Where to look? Try www.GoDaddy.com at least for a place to start. I settled for an Ozi site www.Ezypages.com.au but what do I know.
Well I decide to sign up and off I go. The web builder at the other end wants to know what colour do I want the pages, what colour do I want the fonts (not all are available by the way, you take a chance if you stray off the norm) and how do I want to set up the pages.
So off to the World Wide Web again to check out other photographic sites (there are quite a few) and I finally come up with some sort of idea. All this information is related to the faceless person at the other end of wherever I am sending my e-mails; does anyone ever really know? And somehow a draft is agreed upon, e-mails are sent back and forth, some pics are sent to set up the pages and then I am now told I am “on the web”.
It looks like *%#$ and I am left to try to figure out how I am to add pics to the pages I have been allocated.
E-mail after e-mail trying to come to grips with the program is sent, information is related back to me and I am none the wiser, I feel like an idiot not understanding what (I suppose) is pretty simple to one who knows and thinking of asking my nine year old grand-daughter, kids know these things.
It took me two weeks.
It also took me to the point of desperation, when on a Friday night, after yet another night of frustration, I sent an e-mail stating that I had made a mistake, would go and do a uni degree in computer science and come back in a couple of years.
I was resigned to this fact and was at last feeling comfortable with myself once again and not having nightmares, when on the Sunday, again after a few bourbons, (I love the stuff) I decide to have “one more look”.
Have you ever had the experience of a haze just coming into view? Something clicking in your head, or a feeling of great relief, Well I have, it just hit me and I was off and running at least getting the site to a stage where I am not ashamed of it.
Have you ever noticed time stands still on the computer?
It was one o’clock in the morning when I decided I had done enough and should maybe go to bed; 5.00am came really quickly that day.
Do I know everything? Not a chance, but am I having fun? You bet.
Is it worth it? Well it was/is for me, it may not be perfect at this time, but it is a work in progress and now it gives me something extra to do with my images and gets me “out there”
Check it out and give me your opinion, good, bad or indifferent.
www.ajhfoto.com.au
Cheers
Jeff Hutchison
(President)
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