make my own website

I’m still working on this goal. It is taking me so long. I tend to work on it a lot for a while, then I get stuck, frustrated and upset and leave it again for a few months. This happened a couple of weeks ago. I was doing well with it, actually getting somewhere, then I got stuck and upset at myself that I couldn’t do it, and so stopped again. F said it would be best if I just got someone else to do it, to save me all this frustration and anger at myself, and I agreed. But then, a few days later I decided to give it ONE last go. And I’m glad I did. I now have the main website pages created in Flash and have managed to get the buttons working that link to each page! Now I have to put the content on each page. It does feel like I’m taking one step forward and then 3 backwards, but if I just remember that whenever I get stuck or frustrated, rather than letting it get to me, I just need to take a break from it for a while – whether that means just a few hours, or a few days, until I figure out how to fix the problem.

As soon as I put this goal up as a personal challenge I realised it was physically impossible for me to actually achieve it! So unfortunately this is going to be a failed attempt. On the plus side though, having it up as a personal challenge has done it’s job in the fact that I am actively working on my website most evenings and am starting to get there!! I’m currently laying out each page how I want it to look. Then what I have to do is:
• Decide the exact content of each page, ie which drawings, paintings etc I want to show – this includes rephotographing any existing work
• Write up all the body copy for each page and each piece of artwork
• Transfer pages to Flash and make all the buttons, links etc actually work!
• Make my website live – looking forward to this part!

I’ve created a site plan so I know how many pages the website will be and what needs to go on each page. Next I have to decide on how I want it to look. That’s the hard part. I’m thinking I should perhaps do something easy and simple and just concentrate on getting the site live, then go back and improve it later. But because I’m such a perfectionist, I don’t want to put something up that is just mediocre! I’m going to have to come up with a compromise.

...and done the tutorials. There are still a few things that didn’t work when I put the final Flash movie together so I need to go back and try to work those things out. I’ve also discovered that my current service provider for my website does not accept Flash swf files. Typical! So once I get my website done it looks like I’ll have to change my account. Oh well.

... from ‘learn web design’ to ‘make my own website’ as that’s all I really want to do. Web design as such doesn’t interest me, but I would like to at least be able to create my own website to showcase my graphic design, illustration and other creative work.

I bought a book on Amazon that a friend recommended me on learning Flash. The book arrived last week. Now I just have to make the time to work through it!

I got my results back a few weeks ago and I passed, so that’s good news. I also now have the software I need to tackle making my own website, so I just have to prioritise my time to learn how to use the software properly!

I have finished my 10 week design and the web course! Now I just have to wait a couple of months to get my results! I’m not marking this goal off as done just yet though. I feel like I still need to learn a lot more before I can do that, but at least I have made some progress on this goal.

I have given up on doing a course through work now and have decided to just do it myself. During my last review I was told that it would be my work colleague who got full training first as she has had some training already through them and then ‘maybe later’ it would be my turn. So, knowing how badly run the company is, I took this to mean it will never happen and I have signed up to do an online web course through the Open University. Its a 10 week course called Design and the Web. It’s pretty basic stuff and focuses on the design rather than the programming of web pages but I think it will be a good introductory course for me to get back into it. I did some basic web design stuff a few years ago as part of my graphic design degree but haven’t used those skills since I have been working in the industry.

I want to create my own website and show all my artwork and graphic design stuff on it. I can learn basic stuff through work and when we are quiet, we are allowed to go on courses to learn web stuff. This is good news! In the meantime, I can at least start designing what I want this website to look like.