design my own website

It’s the kind of information that only bibliophiles, booksellers and Titanic/Roycroft aficionados will care about, but it’s interesting to me and I want to share the knowledge. Just downloaded the 30-day demo of Dreamweaver from Adobe and have been getting used to working that way, as opposed to hand-coding.

I have a 2 websites now, but the last time I updated either of them was in 2006! It’s time to overhaul it, add some new content and edit some of the old crap that has been up for a while. There are two other sites that I have wanted to do for some time – hmmmmm. Time to start mapping those out on paper. And then there’s the web site for our company that I have been ‘updating’ for 3 years.

I have been handcoding changes into my website. rocketshipbooks.com

There are a lot of things I want to add, but the next step is to complete the book catalog and have a buddy of mine do the shopping cart tie-in to Paypal. The next step is a secret and I need to get my butt in gear and do it, inbetween all the other crap I need/want to do in the next 6 months. Oy!

Yes, I move at a snail’s pace, but it’s coming along. I have hand-written 5 pages and created the graphics in Photoshop (yes, I own it). But I need to buy Dreamweaver so I can actually learn how to use a web dev program, because hand-coding it takes FOREVER!

Okay, it’s a lame start, but it’s a start. I have also been working on getting back into handcoding, as in writing code by hand rather than using any of the overly complex counterintuitive, arcane web dev applications out there. I have yet to find one which really makes sense. And the code they generate is just so full of unnecessary crap. Bit by bit and row by row – that’s the way that tables grow.