What does everyone do all day?

[Caleigh]

I'm the manager of a restaurant/bar in Brooklyn.
Nothing fancy, just good food in a cozy friendly
atmosphere.

[MacShreach]

i conduct enhanced interrogations.

I think maybe, Trish....You're going to have to tell us more.

[MacShreach]

And in view of that question, s'pose I better fess up-- I'm a writer, photographer and media consultant and I do some design work, mainly print-media. I also own and run a small publishing house.

As for what I do all day, right now I'm developing some presentational stuff for a client, which is driving me nuts, frankly. Ho-hum. But the deadline approaches....

[Ecstatic]

Cool Ecsatatic... You seem pretty worthy in the field. I started on MS Frontpage LOL, now I am using Dreamweaver and am starting to experiement with and integrate some coding, via the built-in editor. It seems that WYSIWYG is much a much quicker method though. What do you think some of the pros and cons might be with a WYSIWYG, Vs. your preferred method?

It depends. For quick edits, the "Design" mode in Dreamweaver can be nice, and lots of designers prefer to layout a page roughly in Design mode and then refine the layout in Code mode. I've been working with html since 1994, so I can visualize the way the code is going to look pretty easily, and if you're working with a staging server or even "without a net" on a production server (lots of my clients don't have a separate staging server), then it's quick to preview in a browser, which is what you need.

Overall, I'd say that WYSIWYG is faster for quick edits and rough layouts (but this depends on your coding skill level), and code view is better for precision and "codesweeping" to keep the page clean. Too many websites are overloaded with unnecessary "sphagetti" code thanks to WYSIWYG-only editing, so even if you prefer the Design mode, I recommend codesweeping in Code mode afterwards.

BTW, when I started, the so-called Netscape Extensions had just been introduced, IE was a gleam in Bill Gates' eye, and HoTMetaL was the cutting-edge program.

[Ecstatic]

I just draw everything out in photoshop, slice it, and then code it in Dreamweaver, if you can call that coding. BUt I do know enough coding to make everything work, install scripts, shit like that. I couldnt imagine coding 100% without dreamweaver. It jsut makes everything quicker. Im just trying to learn to php so I can make bigger sites without having to create whole new pages every time I want to do an update

There are two career paths to web design/development: the designer path and the programmer path. Designers tend to work as you do, laying everything out in Photoshop and slicing and dicing. Programmers tend to work in code only (I know one guy who claims to only use vi to create and edit web pages...yuck). Designers tend to make very attractive sites but often lack functionality, while programmers tend to make very vanilla sites with awesome functionality. The ideal of course is to mix the two. I have one foot in design and one in development, and try to integrate the two.

You'll love php once you get accustomed to it. It's extremely flexible and powerful, and much friendlier than ASP or ASP.NET. You can get deep into application development with php (which I've only done to a point), but you can use a lot of great features with very little learning curve: include files, time and date stamps, conditional content, powerful form functions. Great stuff, and a lot of it is easy to pick up.[/code]

[LBCDO]

Yea, I doubt that my designs are top of the line in functionality. Thats because Im limited. Im trying to figure out how to just design my site, set it up, then if I want to update I just add to a tableor something like that, because I kjnow a lot of big sites arent designing new pages for every update.

[BeardedOne]

Thailandladyboy.com is another site I've done, and a hot new site is coming soon (I'll be posting more on that shortly, but a hint is it features one of the top ladyboys in Thailand).

Ah, that answers a lot of questions.

Someones gotta do it.

Jeez, DJ, no one else wants to lay with your dogs?

Uh - I used to be a fairly well known newspaper photographer (over 5,000 published images). I'll out myself eventually... probably not till my book comes out.

Hmm...A puzzle. Interesting.

PS - What is it with firemen and T-girls? I'll bet I've dated 10 firemen - including the chief of a department which shall remain private...

Maybe it's about manly men that like to play with the hose?

PS - I drove an ambulance for awhile when I was in college - we were always busy, except for this one station, where we got like one call a week.

I owned an ambulance for a while. A '69 Caddy Superior 'hiboy'. Damn fun car!

I own and run a comic book shop...

Been there, did that. I feel your pain. Bonus points: I found a guy that was willing to work for comics! That's not cheap pay either, he collected damned near everything so I handed over about $20k a year in wholesale merchandise to him under our agreement (But he worked all hours with no complaint and knew the biz inside and out).

[Ecstatic]

Yea, I doubt that my designs are top of the line in functionality. Thats because Im limited. Im trying to figure out how to just design my site, set it up, then if I want to update I just add to a tableor something like that, because I kjnow a lot of big sites arent designing new pages for every update.

What you want is a templated site. Templates run the gambit from very simple templates using a few "include" files for common elements (e.g., a top nav, a side nav, and a footer component which are used on all pages, so there's only a single file to edit rather than hardcoding all the pages and having to edit them all when you make a change) to very complext templates which conditionally combine any of dozens or even 100s of elements based on the logic of the site and script, and which can be code snippets, database components, or a combination (such as this forum, though such sites can be far more complex than phpBB, the forum software).

For most small to moderate sized sites, a basic template is all you need. In your site topology, include an "include" directory where all the common (shared) files are stored. Then, in your code, you can "include" these files:

If you have access to your php.ini file, you can edit the include path to find this directory, or you can include a code snippet at the top of each page to do the same:

Then you don't need to worry about absolute vs. relative pathing for your includes; regardless of where in your site a page appears, the includes will be found because php reads the include path first (the code snippet above sets this specific path ahead of all others, which can be useful if you're serving multiple sites on the same server). If you don't edit the include path, you will need to maintain relative linking to the include files, which can be tricky, as for example:

Anyway, your template could include a file for the top of the page (logo, nav bar, etc.); a side nav column; and a footer. I also find it very useful to set an initial file which sets up the basics of all pages:

Since PHP is top-down processing, this file is included either first on the page, or directly under the ini_set if present. Thus all pages will share these elements, and you only have to edit one page to make changes. Note that the head tag opens in this file, but does not close; instead, I would close the head tag on each page separately, following that page's unique title tag and any other unique head content (such as JavaScript or CSS settings).

Once you've set up your template, you can easily and quickly create new pages by adding unique content to the template and saving it as a new file, and you can make site-wide changes by simply editing the include files and CSS stylesheet.

Just a few basic tools which you might find interesting.

[LBCDO]

Thanks for the info. See, I guess to easily explain it is that Im making my own template. But you definately helped!

[tonkatoy]

I owna small excavating company, I do mostly pipeline (water and force main, not oil and gas) amd utility work, and I build retaining walls as well, plus any general excavation work, site work and so forth. I like what I do, if my parents had bought me more tonka toys when I was a kid I would not have to have the real ones now.