Web design issue,splease help me out!

[ATilaptops]

Ok, so I am ina situation where I need to learn web design, fast. WIthin a month I need to be able to create good quality smoth working eCommerce websites in a small amount of time. Right now I have been told to look at Dreamweaver...can anyone tlel me the learning curve and anything about that? or if there are any better programs out there? Also, what languages should I learn. I don't want super flashy sites, nothing in flash, I already know basic HTML, should I learn Java?

Anything you guys think may help me, please let me know! also, please point me in the direction of any and all good tutorials, FAQ's or guides for dreamweaver or any languages I should learn! thank you for your time=)

 

[replicator]

Dreamweaver is a good HTML editor for getting page layouts together, and thats about it (in my opinion). You won't be able to create 'good quality' eCommerce websites unless you have lots of programming experience. Designing a proper ecommerce website is really lots of work since the web interface is the easy part. The large part of the work will be creating a viable database schema, designing business logic and security components.

If you have to choose a server-side language, I'd go with ASP .NET rather than Java, since Visual Studio includes everything you need and there are many web hosts that support it.

Java technology while flexible, is a bit disparate for web applications (Struts, JSP, Servlets, ...), and you'll have less choice when it comes to hosting.

Both work, just a matter of preference.

 

[screw3d]

Are you working for a company that asked you to do this? E-commerce is not something you want to learn and implement in a month..

 

[ATilaptops]

Yeah the scenario is basically that I need to be able to create and maitain decent websites. Normally frontpage quality is good enough, but we are wanting to go up a little bit higher and make it seem more professional. We may have to look for a web guy for temporary until I can learn it all though...

 

[wkinney]

I would advise, if you need a quick turn-around, is to use a PHP shopping/e-commerce package from e.g. freshmeat.net, and implement it with your own design. While implementing it you wouldnt need to know how to fully program since it would be configuring settings. And while your implementing it w/ your design, you could learn it's programming structure little by little.

 

[igowerf]

You guys should definitely hire a professional to set something up. You might be able to pick up web design in a month using Dreamweaver, but web development is something entirely different. It's not something you can just pick up and learn in a month.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You will want to learn html, css, and php (or ASP, but use php/apache/mysql server since it's way better).

But this is hard to do in a month from now, especially if you have to setup the server yourself... You don't *need* php/mysql, but it will make you're life easier in terms of updating, ex: if it's a site that sells products, it can be dynamicly generated.

But what I would suggest, if you only have a month, concentrate on html first, and leave php/mysql behind for now, once you master html/css then learn php/mysql and slowly make the site database driven. You'll want to have a local testing environment for that though.

 

[notfred]

This really is pretty hopeless. Even if you manage to get something functional, it will be insecure and easily hacked, which you DEFINITELY don't want in an e-commerce site.

A month just isn't enough time.

 

[brandonbull]

I would recommend to your company that they hire a experienced person until you improve your skill set.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

A month isn't even enough time to get to know ONE of these technologies very well, let alone 2 or 3 or more of them.

 

[Diz2K2]

Originally posted by: wkinney
I would advise, if you need a quick turn-around, is to use a PHP shopping/e-commerce package from e.g. freshmeat.net, and implement it with your own design. While implementing it you wouldnt need to know how to fully program since it would be configuring settings. And while your implementing it w/ your design, you could learn it's programming structure little by little.

I agree. There are some very good open source options available. There are also shopping carts you can purchase which require you to pay a monthly fee to use. That may be a more viable option for you.

 

[ATilaptops]

maybe I put some incorrect information...first of all we already have a very expensive system which provides us with a secure and fullyloaded shopping cart system. Second off, we will be using host, I have no need to run a server myself or any such thing. What I need to be able to do if whip out basic templates for the looks of eCommerce websites...is that a ittle bit easier perhaps?

 

[wkinney]

Well if you have never done web design before, and you want a professional looking e-commerce site, Dreamweaver and some html/css books won't really do it alone. I think the biggest factor in e-commerce is selling the professionalism of the site, which also carries with it the trust the user has in the company and transaction.
For your time frame I would suggest buying a design template and going from there (google dreamweaver templates), which you could tweak to include the shopping cart system you bought...

Otherwise if your gun-ho about doing it all by yourself, I believe the best practice is to just grab design ideas from websites you like, see how they incorporated those designs via the source, and just implement them yourself until your happy with it