Like a lot of p.c users, my laptop is seriously crammed full of stuff, with just about [...]]]> This week was supposed to be really productive and I was intent on getting my massive backlog of web work out the way so I could get out and start doing some proper busking.

Like a lot of p.c users, my laptop is seriously crammed full of stuff, with just about every program you could possibly imagine having been installed at some point over the last two years.

I try and keep it as clean as possible and run it through the usual maintenance routines every couple of weeks, and although it’s also got it’s fair share of dodgy programs hacked from all corners of the internet, I have never once had a serious problem and as yet haven’t been plagued with any nasty viruses or trojans that wipe out years worth of work in seconds.

I spend a fair bit of time fixing mates’ computers aswell and most of the time, although my cheap, bog standard 2 gig Acer is practically bursting at the seems, struggling to cope with hordes of massive programs I cram into its tiny hard drives, apart from the odd ‘Blue Screen of Death’, the over heating and the death rattle of the over stressed fan constantly ‘whirring’, it’s pretty damn reliable and has never failed me.

Until last Wednesday.

It's f*&%$d !

Like most musician/computer/blogger type ecommerce heads, I have some seriously heavy duty apps on my laptop and sometimes I’ve got so much going on a once, I’m surprised the thing hasn’t melted. But what was the cause of Wednesday’s melt down ?… a 20 gig installation of Adobe’s Master Collection ?.. a Cubase and Reason multitrack rewire recording with simultaneous webcam application ?..no, just a simple Canon camera disk.

…

I bought this thing on EBay and I swear it’s jinxed. First I got it with the factory fitted memory card missing so I couldn’t even use it, then when my SD card came through, all my rechargeable batteries were so knackered none of them would power the thing, so I had to buy some more and wait for them to charge.. then after I installed the camera’s software and everything looked o.k, all of a sudden my P.C critically fails to a black screen without warning, not even so much as a nice blue screen of death. That was it, my computer was totally f~@*$d.

Nothing would get it running again, I spent all day trying to fix it, I couldn’t get into safe mode, couldn’t restore anything, couldn’t use the repair modules, nothing… it would even take hours getting into the dos.

I’m reasonably good with computers but not an expert and after trying every possible thing I could think of and scanning the net on my Mrs’ spare for more solutions, I realised the only thing I could do was boot my recovery disk from the hard drive and start again.

At this point I thanked God for me bothering to create a recovery disk when I first got the laptop, and even more for buying another external hard drive a few months ago after my previous one failed. I’m not one for religiously backing my files up all the time but I knew that I’d done a quick system back up a week or so ago, so whatever I’d lost and however much of a pain it was, it could have been much, much worse.

Recovery

After booting up my recovery disks I got the laptop running again and was greeted by a nice clean install of Vista. I dragged my external hard drive out and restored the rest of my files.

The problem was although all of my files were restored, the hundreds of essential programs I need to run my life were no longer present and although my program files were there, the installs were not, so the next day and a half was spent trawling through old, badly labelled disks and downloading applications needed to get it back up to scratch.

…

Through the computer related carnage that ensued, trying to get things back to normal as fast as possible, about 4 am Friday night the whole thing went tits up again. This time it was my fault as I was trying to do too many things at once and not taking proper care. Programs were conflicting with each other and basic applications were working but pulling up errors, this led to another fatal crash that I couldn’t recover properly from and eventually I just thought ’sod it’ and started again from scratch using the recovery discs.

What annoyed me was that I was intent on saving everything I possibly needed to get back on track on a few emergency disks when I’d returned my P.C to normal, but after screwing the task up on Friday night, I lost them all again before I had a chance to save them.

Even the first task of downloading and installing the Vista service pack takes about three hours on my broadband connection, so having to do everything again for the second time was another lesson learned.

This time I took it easy and instead of recovering everything at once, I restored them slowly, saving all new executable apps on external drives as soon as I’d downloaded them and labelling all my old disks properly. I made sure everything worked correctly before moving onto the next mission.

After a massive clean up as well as trawling through loads of badly recorded videos containing old chord progressions and riffs that one day I might actually get round to turning into real songs, I’ve finally been left with a well organised laptop, void from the clutter that’s been draining my soul for months. I was pretty hacked off about it all, but now I feel pretty good.

I’ve lost 3 or 4 work days doing the job and am still missing about a weeks worth of notes and emails, but luckily most of the work I had done up until the crash was web based and so the damage was kept to a minimum.

The thing is, I was just about to overhaul my entire accounts which was going to take days, and if I had done that before the crash had happened I would have been in a real mess and wasted loads of important files.

It was only pure chance I had backed my files up a week before and sometimes I’d leave it weeks or even months before doing so. I know it’s bad practice but I risk it purely because I couldn’t be bothered to rig up my external drive and push a few buttons. How lazy is that.

Hard Drive Saved My Life

Listen Carefully !

The moral of this story is that I have put my system through some real hell over the years and what ever I’ve thrown at it, I’ve never had a major problem that couldn’t be corrected without needing a new install. I thought it would only happen if I was careless and contracted a virus or pushed it to critical limits, but the one thing that finally knackered my laptop was a simple camera install.

My life, business, music and career are on my computer, and if I hadn’t backed it up on a hard drive I’d have lost everything. It would have taken years to replace and I’d probably top myself.

The fact is, you never know when it’s going to happen, and it could happen to you in 5 minutes time…so for your own sake, go and back your files up right now. It is easily done in one click through the ‘Back Up & Restore Center’ in your control Panel. All you need is an external hard drive.

I only wasted a weeks work, but even that was sloppy. From now on I’m backing my stuff up every two days.

Years ago, external hard drives were expensive, now you can get a 500 gig hard drive for about £50 so there’s no excuse.

Take my advice and do it now – before it’s too late.

I forgot to mention there are also some great tools you can get that copy the entire contents of your P.C, including all your drives, operating systems, installed applications, settings and everything else, so you can restore everything in one fell swoop without having to screw about for days on end.

These apps will save you one massive headache.

Check out some of the comments below for some good suggestions.

I’m now using Acronis True Image Home – Cheers John.

Just about every site you come across nowadays will have some sort of feed and [...]]]> Really Simple Syndicate or Rich Site Summary

There are millions of web users out there who’ve been surfing the net for years and still have no idea what Rss feeds are or how to use them.

Just about every site you come across nowadays will have some sort of feed and probably be asking you to sign up to it one way or another.

You will also be used to seeing this logo just about everywhere you go and wonder what it means.

To clear things up, an Rss feed is simply an easy way of getting the latest updates or new content from a site to those who are interested, i.e those who sign up to the feed.

This new content which can consist of blog updates, audio, video, headlines, news bulletins and just about anything else is automatically delivered to the user via a simple email or to the users feed reader or news aggregator.

The benefit of receiving an Rss feed is so users can go out and sign up to as many Rss feeds from their favourite sites as they like, and receive and read any new content from these numerous web sites without having to trawl the net and visit each one individually to read them. It also saves the reader from having to keep visiting these sites to check whether they’ve posted any new content or not.

Most feeds offer either the main headlines and a short summary of the new content with a link to read the full article, or offer the complete article in full to the user. There is great argument amongst web masters as to which is better to offer the reader. My feed happens to contain this sites new content in its entirety for the benefit of the readers.

The two main feed formats are Rss and Atom. It makes no difference to the user which is offered. Obviously if you sign up to get a sites feed delivered to you by email, then you will receive an email containing the same information in what ever mail account you specify when you sign up.

Feed Readers and News Aggregators

These are simple applications that allow you to collect, display and read these feeds automatically. There are many different feed readers out there to choose from depending on what platform and web browser you use.

There are also loads of free web based readers that you can sign up to online such as Google Reader, Feedreader, Bloglines and Yahoo etc..

Many applications such as Microsoft Outlook can also be set up to use as a feed reader. You simply add the feed address of the site you want updates from into the Rss feed settings in the application and they will be delivered straight to your Microsoft Outlook account.

Whether you use a web based feed reader from your browser, an application such as Outlook, or you get your feeds delivered to you by e mail the process is extremely simple and will only take a couple of clicks to set up.

Generally you find the Rss icon somewhere on the web sites main index page and click on it (or the surrounding explanatory text) and follow the instructions.

Alternatively, if you use Internet Explorer, when you visit a site with an active Rss feed, you will see the Rss icon near the top of the page on your I.E Toolbar about 3/4 of the way across the screen.

Click on the icon to enter the feed page, then find the link to subscribe to that feed and click it.

If there is no active feed on the page you will find the orange Rss icon greyed out and you will be unable to select it.

If you use Firefox as your main web browser, you should see the orange Rss icon somewhere on the right hand side of your main www. address bar. Click the icon and then in the pull down menu that appears, select ‘Subscribe to this feed’.

That’s it. When ever that site provides new content, it will immediately be posted to your reader.

Feeds are also great for writers or webmasters sourcing fresh content for web sites and blogs as you can set up your feed reader to collect all feeds and information accross the web tagged with certain keywords such as ‘guitar’ or ‘fishing’ etc. So every time you check the contents of your reader, it should be full of loads of useful stuff to read.

While you are here, why not get started and sign up to my feed by clicking one of the links below. If you haven’t got a reader yet, I highly recommend you go and get yourself a free Google Reader account first.

Click here to subscribe to Street Musician’s feed.
..or here to get Street Musician by Email

If you are still not sure what I’m on about, here’s a quick video on how to use Rss.

Posted 13.05.09

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The program installs without a hiccup and everything seems normal until the application is started.

As the start up splash screen appears, the program loads as [...]]]> Since posting my guide to installing Adobe CS4 products on Vista, I recently tried to install Adobe Premier Pro CS4 on my laptop and encountered a major problem.

The program installs without a hiccup and everything seems normal until the application is started.

As the start up splash screen appears, the program loads as normal and about twenty seconds into the start up, the application quits with an error message.

‘Adobe has detected that the application Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 has unexpectedly quit‘.

I tried many methods to solve the problem including installing the program in numerous different ways, running clean up scripts, uninstalling other Adobe applications etc. to no avail. I even tried re-installing my Premier Pro CS3 and now encountered the same error on start up as with PPCS4. This was never a problem previously, so it must have been something recent that was causing the issue.

The application seemed to load well until it got to the file..

rapture 32le.dll

The splash screen spends a few seconds loading this file and then quits with the error message.

As this file seemed to cause the problem, I ran a search for the file in the start search box on the start menu and found the file resided in…

C:\program files\Cakewalk\Vst plugins\Rapture LE\

The file belongs to the Sonar 7 application I previously had on my PC. I had recently un-installed it to save space on my lap top to ensure I had enough memory spare so as not to cause installation problems with other Adobe CS4 products. These files were left behind by Sonar 7 and were now causing problems with both CS3 and CS4 versions of Premier Pro.

As I no longer use Sonar 7, I erased the problem file and ran the Adobe application again.

Deleting the file solved that particular problem, but when I restarted the application again, another file caused Premier Pro to quit as before giving the same error message.

Another search showed this new problem file also resided in the C:\program files\Cakewalk\ folder. As I no longer use any Cakewalk applications, I erased the whole contents of the file C:\program files\Cakewalk\

Deleting the contents of this folder completely solved the issue and Adobe Premier Pro CS4 now starts without fault.

After checking on line I could see others seem to be having similar problems with different Adobe CS4 products quitting on start up for unknown reasons, and I would suggest identifying and tackling the problem files the applications seem to quit on should help you resolve the issue.

Posted 10.05.09

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Adobe CS4 Installation Problems
Explorer Has Stopped Working Error
Street Musician
Top 100 Guitar Blogs

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Using an acer laptop and running vista home.

For a few weeks now I have been plagued with an intermittent error where for no reason, when I open certain folders on my PC, I get the message ‘Explorer has stopped working’, followed [...]]]> Also associated with

Saving Files Shuts Down Photoshop Issue

Using an acer laptop and running vista home.

For a few weeks now I have been plagued with an intermittent error where for no reason, when I open certain folders on my PC, I get the message ‘Explorer has stopped working’, followed by the message ‘Explorer is restarting’.

It has been a minor irritation and not really affected my work until I installed Dreamweaver and Photoshop CS4. I noticed that when I tried to save Photoshop files in certain locations, Photoshop actually shut down for no apparent reason. I didn’t even have to navigate to folders containing flv files for this to happen.

I thought I’d better get on and fix the issue before it got to much and guessed it may have something to do with the original Explorer problem, so fixing would hopefully resolve the Adobe problem as well.

The original file viewing issue only seemed to occur in folders that contained flv files that I had previously created myself using premier pro CS3.

The strange thing about it was that in trying to find the culprit file, I noticed that although some folders always seemed to shut down Explorer when I tried to open them, others were only temporarily affected and worked fine after restarts etc. The problem seemed to jump around a bit and some weeks everything was fine, other’s the problem would rear up again.

When copying folders to other directories, sometimes the copies could be opened without a problem and other copies would shut down Explorer.

After much investigation, numerous virus checks, chk disk runs, re-starts, cache clears and running various registry cleaners, the problem still seemed to keep occurring, and as I mentioned before, it had something to do with the flv files, and as such, no particular one.

Here’s how the issue was resolved.

Go to your control panel and in Classic view click Problem Reports and Solutions.

Click the ‘View problem history’ link and navigate down till you see the ‘windows explorer icon’. Double click on the icon and you will see the problem report.

As you can see by the highlighted text, the fault module name is flvff.dll file.

A quick Google of that file reveals it is a Real Player file. So what ever the problem is, relates to the Real Player application trying to interact with the flv files stored in the folders.

Fix 1

The way to stop this happening is to simply re-associate these files with another application like Quick Time player or Vlc player etc. instead.

To do this in Vista

Go to Start > Control Panel > Default Programs >

Click – Associate a file type or protocol with a program >

Find the flv check box, click change and select another player such as Quick Time or something else. If you have other players but they are not listed as alternatives, you can often easily re-configure them to play flv files by doing a quick search for a guide on ‘Google’ or you can down load a compatible player for free from the net.

Fix 2

Another easy way of fixing the problem is to understand what is causing the issue. As you know it is not the playing of the files that causes the problem, it is the viewing of them in the folders. This means it has something to do with the generation of the thumbnail images.

Changing the viewing of the thumbnails can be done in 1 click by clicking on the view button in the top left hand corner of the Explorer window. Do this immediately after opening the folder containing the problem files, before the screen shuts down. If the window shuts down before you have the chance to do this then you can use the easy Fix 1 above to allow you to view the files and then change the thumbnail view at that point.

If you change your viewing of the files in the problem folders to list view, the PC has no need to generate thumbnails for the Real Player files and you can browse the folders with no problem, whilst still keeping the files associated with Real Player. You can keep all your other folders across your PC in any view or thumbnail size you like, just alter the view of the files that show the flv’s.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that once you have disassociated the flv files with real player, you can even change back and choose Rp as the default player again and you will then be allowed to view the thumbs in any size you like with no problem, I’m not sure how long this would last though, so for a permanent fix just use one of the two methods above.

Other fixes mentioned included installing the newest Xvid codec packs, however, that didn’t work for me, and reinstalling Real Player, which is also a good option but the flv.dll file will probably begin to cause issues again in the future until they release an update so stick to the easy fixes above.

Posted 02.04.09

Other Posts of Interest

Adobe CS4 Installation Problems
Adobe CS4 Applications Unexpectedly Quit On Start Up
Street Musician
Top 100 Guitar Blogs

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Comments From Past Script

Most web editors, whether free or commercial give you the ability to [...]]]> For those of you thinking of designing your own website, apart from using web editing and blogging platforms such as Dreamweaver and Wordpress etc.. there are a few other helpful tools and utilities that can help you along the way.

Most web editors, whether free or commercial give you the ability to place images, flash movies, sound and other media on your website but do not give you the ability to create, edit and manipulate them in order to prepare them for publication.

On a basic level, you may want to insert an image or video into your web site or blog that you have taken yourself or perhaps found on the web. Often these image sources come in different sizes and formats that are not ideal and you’ll need the relevant software to edit them.

To give you and idea of what is available out there, here’s a few things you might want to look into.

Image and Video Capture Software

Capture software allows you to capture just about any image or video you see on your screen. Very handy for sourcing media from files and the internet to place on your website or share with others. There is lots of free capture software available on the net such as Snagit, iQuick Screen Capture and Screen Hunter for example, and many pc’s and laptops come with built in features that allow you to do this on a basic level such as Vista’s snipping tool, which is located in the Accessories folder on your Start >Programs menu.

Most free screen capture programs allow you to snip and edit images for free and on a very limited basis but can be upgraded for a fee enabling you to capture more complex media such as videos, scrolling screens, flash videos as well as recording on screen actions and various other elements in different shapes and sizes. In the past I have used Snagit and found it to be a great utility packed with lots of features.

Image Creation and Editing Software

Creating images to suit the needs of your website, as well as editing those you have sourced externally is something all web masters need to be able to do on a regular basis. Adobe Photoshop has lead the way for many years in desktop image creation and manipulation and is widely regarded as the industry standard for graphics professionals. Used extensively in the commercial publishing industry for editing magazine, advertising and sales images, modern desktop publishing applications such as Photoshop CS4 allow graphic designers to use techniques such as airbrushing, layering, colour manipulation and masking to touch up, airbrush and alter images in unbelievable ways in order to obtain perfect images for the viewing public.

Professional desk top publishing applications can be very expensive, and in some instances almost too powerful for the average user who usually only requires an application capable of basic image editing to do the job required. The current versions available for most Adobe products is now CS4, but previous versions such as CS3 and lower can be purchased at reduced prices and are still remarkably powerful pieces of editing software. Students can also obtain versions of this software at special knockdown rates.

There are also many cheaper design utilities and other free web applications you can use for image editing such as Picnic or Splashup for example, that also do a reasonably good job. Here’s a few to give you an idea of what is available.

If you want to stick with Photoshop but haven’t got a big budget, Adobe have created Photoshop Elements, which is a lower priced consumer version packed with the most useful features of the professional application, but without the frills. Still a great piece of software.

Video Editing Software

If you are intent on making your own videos, you’ll need some decent video editing software to create, edit and publish your video creations. If you’re after a full blown professional video editing application that can accomplish complex editing procedures such as chroma key (blue/green screen), graphics, fx, titles, picture in picture (PIP), transitions and much more as standard, you might consider trying out Adobe Premier Pro CS3 or 4. It is an expensive but incredibly versatile piece of software, capable of producing videos of professional standard even on a home PC.

Adobe also have a lower end budget version of this software called Premier Pro Elements.

Again, there are many other free or inexpensive video editing programs out there which will do an adequate job, allowing even the most inexperienced user on a low budget the capability to achieve good results.

Windows Movie Maker is one of the most popular free editors around and comes equipped with numerous titles, transitions and fx that you can use to spice up your videos. If you want the capability to add more complex fx such as chroma key, PIP and advanced transitions to your WMM videos, then by purchasing and downloading various add ons such as Shader TFX (Vista), PIP Plus and other dedicated plugins, you can add many excellent fx to the basic free Movie Maker application for comparatively very little outlay. Check out Rehan’s Movie Maker Corner for more information.

Full Production Suites

If you have the means, full professional production suites designed to give the user total control from start to finish of the whole creative process involved in illustration, flash animation, video editing, sound production, web design and just about every other aspect of desktop publishing, are available for a significant outlay. Adobe Creative suites and Master Collections comprise of complete professional design packages and can cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds depending on which you buy.

Although they are expensive, the complexity and power of these applications is pretty much unequaled by most other design products on the market today. If you are not professionally trained to use them, expect to spend many hours learning the ropes before you start to unleash even the slightest the potential of these monster applications. Once you do, you will have the ability to create almost anything you can imagine.

If you are not sure about any of the products I have mentioned in this post, check out their websites, especially Adobe’s and download a few trial versions of their products. You’ll have a month or so to test them out and see if they are right for you.

Other Posts of Interest

Web Design – The Essentials
Domain Name Purchasing
Web Hosting
Comment Scripts
Helpful Resources

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]]> http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/webdesignwhatelse/feed/ 0 http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/webdesigndomainnamepurchasing/ http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/webdesigndomainnamepurchasing/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:59:16 +0000 Kier http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/streetmusician3/?p=764 A domain registrar is generally a body or company that sells and registers domain names to people.

When you visit an on line registrar with the intent of purchasing a domain name for your web site, you must first perform a simple search to see if the domain is available. [...]]]> Domain Registrars

A domain registrar is generally a body or company that sells and registers domain names to people.

When you visit an on line registrar with the intent of purchasing a domain name for your web site, you must first perform a simple search to see if the domain is available. If you are in luck and no one has beaten you to it, you pay the registrar a small fee for the privilege of owning that name and the domain is then registered to you for a designated period of time. The fee is usually a just few pounds a year but can vary greatly depending on the registrar.

Once you own that name, it is up to you what you decide to do with it. You don’t necessarily have to own a web site or have a hosting account to purchase a domain. You can instruct your registrar to park the domain while it is not in use and also lock it to ensure no one else can obtain access to it without your consent.

Often when you purchase a domain name, the registrar will give you a small amount of hosting space to enable you to create a few simple web pages if you desire. These will literally only amount to one or two pages to get you started but as soon as you decide to build a proper site, you will have to purchase some form of hosting package either from another hosting provider or the same company from which you bought the domain name.

Usually if you shop around, you can find some great deals on line but be aware that the company you purchase your domain name from, and the company that host your site do not have to be the same.

When you buy a domain name, if you choose to host your site with a different company, you simply have to ‘point’ your domain at the address of your hosting provider in order for those who visit your web site to be able to read the files and web pages you have created and stored in your hosting account.

This can be easily done from your user account control panel located at your registrars web site, and involves changing what is known as the the domain name server (DNS) settings. These are a set of numbers that correspond to the address of the servers on which your files are stored at your chosen hosts location.

Which Registrar ?

Registrars vary greatly in the prices they charge to register domain names, so it is wise to check out as many as you can before choosing one.

Regarding the actual name of the domain, as long as you use an accredited registrar that offers good service and a user control panel, it doesn’t make much of a difference as to whom you buy it from.

You can buy almost any domain name from any registrar. For example, you could buy www.streetmusician.org from GoDaddy.com or from 123-Reg.co.uk and the outcome would be the same. However, once you have registered your domain name with a particular registrar, control of that domain will now rest with that registrar. So if you need to alter any of your domain settings, you do it from your user control panel located at your domains registrar.

Domain Transfers

If you do have a different hosting company and registrar, and at some point you decide to change the registrar to another company or maybe to the same company that hosts your site, you will have to complete a domain transfer. This involves informing both companies of your intentions and usually the payment of a small transfer fee. People often do this as hosting with the same registrar can make life a little easier when dealing with many sites and domains at once.

Domain Prefix

Registrars also differ in the domain name prefixes they are allowed to sell you. For instance, an American registrar will probably be able to sell you a .com, .us, .info, .biz etc domain name, but may not be allowed to sell you a .co.uk domain. Some will be able to sell you all types of domain prefix and others only certain types. It just depends on the rules and regulations by which they are governed.

Cost

There are thousands of domain registrars out there, all offering different packages and prices, but don’t pay anything more than £2 – 10 per year for a domain name.

After much searching, I originally paid £7 or $14 for my first .com name. I thought it was a reasonable price until I found out that Go Daddy sell .com domains for £5 per year and this can be cut even further by using voucher codes that can be found on various money saving web sites on the net.

If you search the net for a voucher code for Go Daddy, you will easily find many available that give 20% off domain purchases along with various other deals. Adding a voucher code to your checkout bill will easily get you a .com domain for about £3.70 or $7 a year.

Dot com’s tend to be more expensive than .co.uk’s. You can pick a .co.uk for a couple of pounds but if you are really strapped for cash, you can buy a domain name with a .info prefix from Go Daddy for literally a few cents.

Domain Sitters

If you are looking for a particular name and you find somebody has registered the domain but is not using it for any purpose, you have probably encountered a domain sitter. These people buy up all the best domain names for a few measly dollars that they believe will be worth big bucks at some point in the future. They then hold on to them until someone desperately needs that particular domain and then charge hundreds or even thousands of times the original value to the unfortunate soul who just so happens to need that name for their site or business.

It is a lucrative trade and domain sitters can make a lot of money if they get it right.

In 2008, Chris Clark the owner of a software company raked in almost 3 million dollars from the sale of the domain name Pizza.com. He bought the domain for a mere $20 dollars 14 years previously and put the domain up for auction after hearing of the 3 million dollar sale of vodka.com a couple of years earlier. By the time the auction closed, the final figure had reached $2.6 million.

As I stated previously, most registrars also offer hosting services and will often offer some form of hosting package deal or free services once you have bought your domain name to entice you to host your web site with them. Many offer a free web page or free templates to suck you in to a further purchase, but make sure look around before you sign up for a twelve month deal. These companies vary greatly in the services they provide, what you get for your money and how reliable they are.

Take a look at my hosting guide to get an idea of what to expect when choosing a hosting package for your site.

Posted 20.07.08

Other Posts of Interest

Web Design – The Essentials
Web Design – What Else ?
Web Hosting
Comment Scripts
Helpful Resources

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Millions of web sites are created every year and there is always somebody, somewhere who has encountered the same problems as you and [...]]]> Troubleshooting

There are many sites out there dedicated to web site creation, design and troubleshooting, so you should have no trouble finding some form of help to solve your problem.

Millions of web sites are created every year and there is always somebody, somewhere who has encountered the same problems as you and had it solved online by finding help on the forums or help sites. Most of the time you’ll find numerous solutions written up for you to try out. Working through them and finding the right one may take some time, but if you are persistent, you will get there in the end and your knowledge of the subject will increase.

Check out the forums and free help centres all over the net and if you can’t find a solution to your issue, then ask someone on a forum. There are thousands of web design experts and amateurs alike that will be only to happy to help. It may take a day or two to get your answer, or you could get a response in minutes depending on the number of people visiting that particular forum at the time. Don’t give up, and DON’T PAY COMPANIES FOR ADVICE. There is no need. People are good and will help you for free.

Donate

In some instances you may need extensive help from a particular site or forum member to get you out of trouble. In these instances, if you really appreciate the help you get and can afford it, then there may be a way you can donate to that particular person or the site through a donation button or some other means.

Take a look at our useful links page for some useful sites and forums to check out.

Useful Links

Other Posts of Interest

Web Design – The Essentials
Web Design – What Else ?
Domain Name Purchasing
Web Hosting
Comment Scripts

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Posted 20.07.08

Choose a decent web design program and buy an instructional video or set of videos that will teach you how to make the [...]]]> Without a doubt, if you haven’t got a real web tutor, the best way of learning how to design a web site from scratch is to use video tutorials.

Choose a decent web design program and buy an instructional video or set of videos that will teach you how to make the most of it

These video’s provide effective one on one style tutorials designed to teach ordinary people with little or no experience in web creation to build a site from the ground up. These extensive tutorials also cater to more experienced coders and web designers covering just about everything you’ll ever need to know about creating a site, from basic structures to full blown dynamic designs.

The beauty of these videos is that what ever tutorials you listen to, no matter how simple or complicated they may be, if you don’t understand the theories or principals the instructor is explaining, you can just rewind the lesson, chapter or sentence and replay it. Over and over again until you understand.

The best thing is that you can load a video onto your laptop or pc and play it while you simultaneously construct your own website, following everything you are being taught in real time. This is absolutely priceless as often, if somebody is trying to explain something new and you are not really paying attention, you can end up staring into space while everything passes over your head and the money you spent on expensive tutoring floats off into space.

With a video tutorial loaded onto your pc, you can simply play a few seconds of the tutorial, pause the vid, swap to your design window, implement what they were saying on the vid, swap back to the tutorial window, press play and continue on with the lesson.

Using video tutorials alongside unfamiliar programs on your pc allows you navigate through the most complex operations with ease. Every time you need to work on your site, if you have forgotten how to achieve something, simply load up your tutorial video, search for the chapter that relates to your needs and refresh your skills. No problem.

Although this method makes learning simple, it still warrants a run through of the instructional vid before you attempt to create your first site. This will give you an idea of how things work in your particular application and put you at ease with your new commitment.

These videos can be very extensive and have many chapters with lots of videos in each chapter. It may mean spending a couple of days simply watching videos before you even start to create your site.

Just remember, a couple of days watching videos now could save you thousands of pounds or dollars in the long term future. It will give you the creative freedom you need to get your own message across to the people you are trying to reach, instead of only getting the message you can afford to pay someone else to get across.

So Which Web Design Programs Should I Use ?

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Posted 20.07.08