My BlogI write mostly about the Bible and related topics. Web DesignThe "day job". Hoping someday to get real busy with this. Wanna help? Aaaaiiieee!That's the proper way to pronounce IE, aka Internet Explorer. The world would be a better place without it! (I like Firefox and Safari)

Your Fine Fethered Friends

Hi there! This is the page I keep here at RoadRunner because, well, it's there. I use it to link to my main website, Fether.net (aka "my family"). RoadRunner got me started in the web design business just by making the space available as part of their standard internet service package. I had a new toy and started to go all over the web looking for site design tutorials. The one that led to this particular design was found in April 2006 at this excellent site.

Never Stop Learning

I started out with FrontPage. It's a good idea to begin with a program that does a lot for you while you don't know many details. But I soon learned that doing anything beyond basics was at least as difficult to do with FrontPage as it was to write the html by hand, so I went looking for alternatives. I found Dreamweaver on Ebay for cheap and used it for about a year, learning ever more and finally reaching the point where even Dreamweaver started getting in my way.

I discovered that there are some good (free!) html editors out there. The advantage of an html editor over a simple word processor is that the various types of tags are color-coded. This makes writing your own html much easier. Some editors also will check your syntax and let you do quick previews. It took quite a while, but eventually I got to the point where a wysiwyg editor just wasn't enough.

Now I know html, php/mySQL, CSS, and some javascript. Never got much into flash, mostly because of the cost. My current project is to get better at CSS and to design artwork that appeals to a wider audience. Photoshop is the only tool for me when it comes to graphics.

And all that education has been free! (Well, I did get a php book, but that's all.) You just have to get good at searches to find helpful information. Beware of code hacks (modifications) that don't comply with industry standards. W3C Schools is a good place to learn.

More!

Check out the links for my other websites. If you'd like me to do any design or programming work, just drop me an email (see the Web Design link). I can also try to point you to good tutorial sites.

Paula Fether
October 2007