2 totally unrelated things:

[swingchickie]

1. can anyone recommend good, easy to use (and preferably cheap) web publishing software? the free stuff doteasy provides is horrible, and i want to improve the look of tailspinhoops.com now that i'm starting to advertise.

2. jack and i are going to a goth baby shower on saturday. not only are the couple goth, they aren't registered anywhere. needless to say, i have been stressing about a gift. ended up getting her (the baby) a t-shirt with a skull on it, and little teeny pink and black checkered infant-sized Vans. hopefully that'll suffice, considering i know nothing about baby showers to begin with...

Comments

[opadit.livejournal.com]

Goth parents are funny. They dress their babies in black -- until baby spits up a few times, because spit-up is white! (It's not just for sentimental tradition that people dress babies in pastels.)

[swankyfunk.livejournal.com]

Cute baby gifts! I'd also recommend adding a gift certificate/card to somewhere where they can buy diapers or formula. Every new parent appreciates that. Diapers are diapers, whether you're goth or not!

perfect gifts!

[katehaney.livejournal.com]

If you need a source in the future, try littleruler.com.

:) Kate

[notshakespeare.livejournal.com]

I'm old school, I just use ftp.

Speaking of your site - please replace this image: http://tailspinhoops.com/pb/images/img2959346d06f1d1290f.JPG with something a little smaller.

[swingchickie.livejournal.com]

there are a few images i'm replacing due to size. i'm going to do all the changes in one chunk this week. :)

[mrlich.livejournal.com]

Well, the easiest sollution to the html editing is something that you likely already have. If you're using MS Office for work, Word will edit HTML pages.

I will warn you though that it tends to load a lot of crap into the page that you don't need, but if you're looking for a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) solution that you might already have...

[boutell.livejournal.com]

If you want to use something like Word for this, use OpenOffice Writer (http://www.openoffice.org/) instead. Pretty much like Word, but it produces real HTML, and not HTML bloated with weird Microsoft-specific junk.

Unlike a certain other Microsoft product, Word is not COMPLETELY unacceptable. Unlike Microsoft Publisher, which gives you NOTHING BUT Microsoft specific-junk and should NEVER EVER be used, Microsoft Word does provide "fallback" stuff for non-Microsoft browsers. But it's still a bad choice, when OpenOffice gives you a familiar Word-like experience, proper HTML output (when you "save as" HTML) and no nonsense. For free!

Another free option is Kompozer (http://www.kompozer.net/). Kompozer is descended from the friendly HTML editor that used to be part of Netscape. It's easy enough to use, but some of the stuff bolted on to it later baffles me a bit - I can't figure out how to edit style sheets with it.

But whatever you do...

Don't don't don't get started with MS Publisher. It's friendly enough, and then you have "web pages" that aren't web pages and work only in one company's browser. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

[naughtyboy.livejournal.com]

Whatever you do don't use ms word it will lead you down a dark path to hell.

I realize this might be too much to think of but keep in mind that design of your site and development are two different things. Also, content management is a third and separate issue from the previous two. Also, when you think development you might also want to think about Search Engine Optimization so your site will be nicely index and people can find you.

You might want to try and trade for the work, post an add on craigs list, or ask a friend for help in those areas. Once your site is developed (by a person who knows what they are doing) you should be able to update it pretty easily.

Let me know if you need a hand or any guidance (that is what I do).

[mrlich.livejournal.com]

As a matter of policy, I couldn't agree more about Word as an editor, but I didn't know how much effort she was looking to put into this on the front end.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

This is why I recommend OpenOffice... you get the Word-friendliness but the resulting HTML is not so junky.

[dhpdesign.livejournal.com]

From one Mac user to another... RapidWeaver, from Realmac Software. Download for free, get a fully supported version for $49. Apparently our former IT guy redid our company's site with it, and it looks smoooooth.