Do you work on your own website?

[Fresh Baked Printing]

http://www.freshbakedprinting.com

The rollover toast is kinda fun... Those .png's really load slow tho..... My tshirtillustrator.com  site is all png.... uhg but they look so much better then a transparent gif, Huh.

Slow until they hit the cache. I did have a way of doing it so it was one image and it just "shifted" the image over to present the rollover effect. It was instantaneous and it did away with having to load another image, but, not being the web expert, I wasn't able to get it to work on all browsers via the CSS file.
I agree, the png's are slow. I've surfed my website on other computers in different locations and it loads faster than it does on my rig, even though we're all on Comcast in my town.  Not sure if it's the bandwidth, computer or both or ?

[royster13]

How come so few websites take the time to explain how a job is done?.....Number of colours, process printing, spot highlights, etc....

[Dottonedan]

How come so few websites take the time to explain how a job is done?.....Number of colours, process printing, spot highlights, etc....

That is a very good point. In fact, that is a great idea. You know, with the idea being open source content, it seems you could create some type of stock (web images) that are industry related such as this. Something to drop in a page with a link on your main page.

Video's and animations are great for this as well.

[Fresh Baked Printing]

How come so few websites take the time to explain how a job is done?.....Number of colours, process printing, spot highlights, etc....

I have a couple of YouTube vids. I'll link to one of my YouTube vids via my Facebook page occasionally

[Denis Kolar]

Some of the stuff me and my partner did:

of course     http://www.dkgrafix.com/    Drupal  (I think it is more powerful than Joomla)
http://www.imperianbrandy.com/    All flash
http://www.wisehunters.com/    Html/Flash with shopping cart  (scheduled to be re-done in October)
http://www.dshparma.com/  html/flash
http://www.24yes.com/   Only one we did in Joomla
http://www.seethechic.com/    Wordpress

There is a lot of the stuff that can be used, most of it is started for you and it is free (Joomla and Drupal modules). You have to find someone to start it up for you and then to explain you how to add more pages, articles, pictures, galleries......

[GraphicDisorder]

We do our own site.

www.graphicdisorder.com

[Sbrem]

So, from those who do build and maintain your own sites, what would you recommend to someone who would like to learn? As in reading material (for dummies in my own case) or tutorials or whatever?

Steve

[Nation03]

How come so few websites take the time to explain how a job is done?.....Number of colours, process printing, spot highlights, etc....

I'm working on my own site and have a page for this. I'm hoping at least SOME people will see how annoying it is when they come back a week later and say "I just need 2 more shirts!" I also have a "Why you should print with us" page.. Which will obviously entail information on why we are the better choice. I'm thinking about adding a "Budget Quote" page, where people can enter the amount they want to spend, and then we contact them with what they can get for that amount of money... seems like it would make things easier then people saying I want a 4 color print front and back.. and then I have to explain why it's going to be so much money for 24 shirts.

[tpitman]

So, from those who do build and maintain your own sites, what would you recommend to someone who would like to learn? As in reading material (for dummies in my own case) or tutorials or whatever?

Steve

For Dreamweaver I've used the tutorial book from Lynda.com. She now has all her tutorials for a variety of software online for $25 a month, month to month.
Adobe's CS5 Design suite comes with a program called Flash Catalyst that lets you design your site elements in Illustrator, and edit them in Illustrator. Doesn't have the full-blown capability of Flash, but lets you develop a site with much of the features without having to learn Flash, which is a different beast altogether, what with the timelines and all. Oddly, as I understood it, the original intent of Flash was to permit the bandwidth "thrift" and resolution independence of vector imagery on the web. It seems like Flash Catalyst fulfills that intent with a little more fidelity. Using Flash seems more like using GarageBand, except with imagery, at least for me.

[Command-Z]

I thought I was going to be a "web guy" years ago. Got some books, thought about taking classes, but it never jelled. I got busy with doing what I do and didn't have the time. I'm not sad about that at all...

I had a free portfolio on Coroflot.com for years. There's other freebies out there too... Behance, Deviantart, etc...

But what I did was end up setting up a Wordpress blog.

Set up the blog now and worry about an actual website later. It's worked out well... except that I don't update it very often, which is counter to what a blog is all about. But what's cool is I can tell stories, post projects, step-by-steps, etc. with in-depth content and if you update it often, like I don't, it will keep people interested and coming back again and again.

I think it would be a great format for you if you decide to do tutorials. Even if you do have an actual, real website, a blog is a good tool to have.

It's easy and you don't have to be a web guy.

[Evo]

Wordpress.


I tried Joomla and a bunch of other CMS and blog platforms, Wordpress ended up being the easiest and fastest to set up - and more importantly it's easy to maintain (when I get time to)

http://evoscreenprinting.com

[jsheridan]

I built my first website sometime back in the late 90's then again for my video site using Dreamweaver and CSS all by hand, Haven't touched that in yrs now.

Made a wordpress site for the new business.

www.blacktopgraphics.com

I like wordpress in that you can change themes as much as you want and your text content usually stays the same.
You can have a basic site format or redonkulous options. The big thing to look for in press sites is pre-built SEO options. Theirs some press themes out there with nothing for SEO and others focused on SEO.

[GraphicDisorder]

So, from those who do build and maintain your own sites, what would you recommend to someone who would like to learn? As in reading material (for dummies in my own case) or tutorials or whatever?

Steve

Learn dreamweaver and basic HTML. 

Its not that hard, its time consuming though.

[inkbrigade]

I buit ours on drupal and host it on my own VPS. If you guys want something easy to build a site you can't beat wordpress. It's awesome!

[Fresh Baked Printing]

For me, a whole new world opened up when I discovered CSS.