With GoLive-5 You can do it,
Do It Yourself Web Sites.

by Paul W. Faust

Most of us have visited many web sites, but few know how websites are created. Even those who would like to have one of their own shy away from wanting to try creating it. Who wants to learn a whole programming language?

However, increasing numbers of photographers are using the computer for everything from digital imaging to running their business. If you don’t do the same, you’ll soon be donating the business you used to have to them. All areas of photography--especially publishers--are doing more of their work digitally--from enhancing the images they use to finding the images in the first place. Just check the end of many magazine articles, and you’ll find a short informational piece on the writer--including his/her web site address. I don’t know of many well-known photographers who don’t have web sites they use to promote and sell their work and services. Whether or not you also need your own web site depends on how much you have to offer and how badly you want to sell it.

What’s so special about GoLive?

The need to spend hours learning a programming language is a requirement of the past since the introduction some years ago of a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) program called Adobe PageMill. The present version of this top-of-the-line web-authoring program is called GoLive. It’s advanced enough to use to develop top quality professional web sites, no matter how large they are--all without your having to learn a single line of HTML language code. Why? Because GoLive converts the pages you create into HTML code as you make them. You can create pages as simple or as detailed as you wish. You can use your photos as backgrounds, place text wherever you want to present information, provide a biography page about yourself and what you have to offer, create price lists and order forms, and even showcase your own photo gallery. It’s now possible to present your entire photo catalog for the world to see and use to order.

Figure 1
Partial Home Page

Partial view of my home page, with eye catching title, and the side panel in which my links will go for the photo gallery section.

What’s involved in creating web pages?

As with all Adobe products, creating a web page with GoLive is as simple as dragging-and-dropping items onto a layout page. I used Adobe software to create my own web site to promote my stock images to publishers, and it worked like this:

First, I used Adobe Photoshop-6, along with my Nikon CoolScan, to digitize the images I wanted to use. Any image correction that was needed was done right then. For large amounts of text I’d need--such as for my bio page, I used Microsoft Word. I wrote everything I needed and then I copied and pasted each part onto a page where I wanted it. For pages of specialized forms, I used Adobe PageMaker, and again, I just copied and pasted. (Note: This is where GoLive is so great. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have those other programs, because--except for the scanning part--GoLive can do it all for you.)

The first page you create is the “home” page, because that’s where the visitor will begin to reach your other pages. This page will require the most design thought. You need an eye-catching header and at least one of your best images (see “partial” home page, fig. #1). Along with those necessities, you’ll also need to create links to the other pages you’ll make available. Your links can be styled as images, text, or even something as simple as a button. Most web pages use simple lines of text that name the page the visitor will use to go through that link, such as “site map.” You aren’t limited to one way to move from place to place, however. Down the side of my home page, I have a column of small “thumbnail” images that, when my gallery is complete, will take the visitor to each photo category in which I have images. Site maps are also a good idea, and I created one of them, as well. Each location box on the map has another link to that particular page (see “partial” map, fig. #2).

Figure 2
Site Map

A partial section of my site map. This layout was first done to organize the design pages, and then used as this map to show viewers exactly what is on my site, and to give them an additional way to get there.

Where do you go after the home page?

Before I began, I laid out my whole web site on paper, using a separate sheet for each page. Next, I laid out those sheets in the form of a site map that showed me what would go where. (In the movie industry, this technique is called creating a “story board.”) I wrote on each sheet exactly what would appear on that page (photos and text). After I had all the sheets the way I wanted them, I started to create them in GoLive. Designing each page on paper first allowed me to shuffle them around as much as I wished, a luxury that would be a nightmare to try to do on a monitor screen. The “map page” not only allowed me to better organize what I wanted to go where, but it will help my viewers see what’s on my site and how to get to it.

Since mine was a photography site, I wanted my images to dominate each page. However, this is where a photographer can run into trouble, since images take up quantities of memory. How you create your image files makes a BIG difference. The smaller the file, the better. Viewers aren’t going to stick around if they have to wait forever to see a page. Since monitors can’t show an image at more than 72-DPI (dots-per-inch), it makes no sense to scan them any larger than that. Using small images on a page also cuts down on file size. Besides, any really small image can have a link inside of it to go to a larger view of that image, if that’s needed. The rule of thumb here is to scan all images at 72-dpi. Another benefit of small image files is that a less-than-honest browser can’t copy your work to use without your permission. (It does happen.) An additional benefit of using GoLive is that, you can fix an image so that a viewer can’t copy it at all. If someone tries, all he’ll capture is a blank overlay.

After I had all the scans I wanted to use plus all the text in a word file, then I could start placing those items into their appropriate pages. I used just one word file for all text. Each separate item was a separate paragraph, with several spaces in-between. From there, it was a simple matter of highlighting the part I wanted to copy and paste where it was needed.

Putting items on a web page is like pasting a paragraph in-between two other paragraphs in a word processing program. You just click the RETURN key to go down to the next line, and then paste the text, or image, into the open space you created. Your location on a web page is marked the same way that you move the cursor in a word program. You click the cursor where you want the next letter to go. Putting items onto a page is as simple as adding a word into a line of text.

GoLive-5

The GoLive-5 software program will allow you to do all of the above and then some. You could, in fact, create a whole small web site and be up and running in a single day. It’s that simple and easy to use. GoLive has so many tools, it would take this whole issue to cover them all, but a few of them include help with creating your web site by using site templates; the ability to edit LiveMotion, Photoshop, and Illustrator files from within GoLive; and layout grids, pixel-precise positioning, floating boxes, format protection, menu commands, radio buttons and check boxes, roll-over links, feedback forms, JavaScript actions, and animation files from LiveMotion and QuickTime. Those features aren’t even half of what you get, but they may give you an idea of just how powerful this program is to use.

If you have any reservations about learning the program, there are many tutorial books and CD’s available--including one called, Teach Yourself GoLive-5 In 24 Hours by Pratt, Grillo, and Smith. This book (461 pages) takes you step-by-step through everything you need to know to create your own web site, and it does it in a way that’s simple to understand. Each chapter builds on the previous one, allowing you to learn GoLive from the ground up. Teach Yourself GoLive-5 In 24 Hours is published by SAMS Publishers at 201 W. 103rd Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46290 (www.samspublishing.com). The U.S. list price is $24.99. For more information on GoLive-5, contact Adobe at 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California 95110-2704, or visit their web site at www.adobe.com.

With GoLive-5 You can do it, Do It Yourself Web Sites.

GoLive-5

With GoLive-5 You can do it,
Do It Yourself Web Sites.