Website questions
Mar. 21st, 2007 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morslaI know there are lots of web-savvy people out there, so I thought I'd pose this as a general question.
I need to set up a business website. I know what I want it to look like, from a page-layout point of view, and in terms of site structure. I know what functions I need, and what I'd like to add in future. I'm just not sure what the best way would be to actually build it. I use a ridiculous number of sites, but you're free to assume that I know nothing at all about how they were made...
Can I just write the page contents in basic HTML (headings, paragraphs) and then find/modify a stylesheet to handle the appearance? (Column widths, text styles, positioning things on the page). I can handle notepad-level HTML, but I've never used CSS.
The shopping list:
Basic stuff
* Front page with News updates (new products, auctions, etc).
* Simple pages (bio, commission pricing, links)
* Gallery/portfolio. I'd prefer a simple HTML page here - I've played around with Gallery 2 for my personal photo collection, but I don't know enough about the guts of the Gallery database to feel completely comfortable with it.
More complex but still needed
* Shopping cart - currently favouring Zen Cart. I'll be selling small stock items in addition to one-off painted pieces. I'd like an e-commerce package that supports things like discount coupons and gift certificates. Free products with a good support community are also a plus.
* Payment gateway (possibly credit card, possibly PayPal - PayPal charges commission fees, but the others tend to have monthly or annual charges)
Things I'd like to do
* RSS feed for the News items on the front page. The front page will be updated weekly at a minimum, to encourage people to come back regularly. Not essential, but it's on the 'add if it's not too hard' list.
* Automated secure download links for PDF products. Linklok seems to be used for this by a few RPG publishers. Not an urgent need, but I want it to integrate with the shopping cart by the end of 2007.
Oddly enough, installing things like Zen Cart won't be particularly complicated - my web hosting package has a nifty installer that can auto-load many different scripts. Trying to get some sort of consistent appearance between the shopping cart and the rest of the site is currently beyond me, though.
I need to set up a business website. I know what I want it to look like, from a page-layout point of view, and in terms of site structure. I know what functions I need, and what I'd like to add in future. I'm just not sure what the best way would be to actually build it. I use a ridiculous number of sites, but you're free to assume that I know nothing at all about how they were made...
Can I just write the page contents in basic HTML (headings, paragraphs) and then find/modify a stylesheet to handle the appearance? (Column widths, text styles, positioning things on the page). I can handle notepad-level HTML, but I've never used CSS.
The shopping list:
Basic stuff
* Front page with News updates (new products, auctions, etc).
* Simple pages (bio, commission pricing, links)
* Gallery/portfolio. I'd prefer a simple HTML page here - I've played around with Gallery 2 for my personal photo collection, but I don't know enough about the guts of the Gallery database to feel completely comfortable with it.
More complex but still needed
* Shopping cart - currently favouring Zen Cart. I'll be selling small stock items in addition to one-off painted pieces. I'd like an e-commerce package that supports things like discount coupons and gift certificates. Free products with a good support community are also a plus.
* Payment gateway (possibly credit card, possibly PayPal - PayPal charges commission fees, but the others tend to have monthly or annual charges)
Things I'd like to do
* RSS feed for the News items on the front page. The front page will be updated weekly at a minimum, to encourage people to come back regularly. Not essential, but it's on the 'add if it's not too hard' list.
* Automated secure download links for PDF products. Linklok seems to be used for this by a few RPG publishers. Not an urgent need, but I want it to integrate with the shopping cart by the end of 2007.
Oddly enough, installing things like Zen Cart won't be particularly complicated - my web hosting package has a nifty installer that can auto-load many different scripts. Trying to get some sort of consistent appearance between the shopping cart and the rest of the site is currently beyond me, though.
