For my first blog post I want to describe how I got into web design and show you the first proper website I created www.margaretbalfour.co.uk. I still look after the site and continue to update it, but it’s safe to say it looks very different now to when I first dabbled in web design and uploaded version one back in 2001. Nevertheless by looking at the various incarnations of the site over the last few years you can see how my web-design skills have developed over time.
Back then during the long school holidays I needed something new to keep me occupied and interrupt my endless teenage days spent flicking through the music channels on TV, playing Goldeneye on the N64 and generally being unproductive.
I’ve always been “good with computers”, not to the extent that I ever became a serious programmer (or hacker – well nothing worth writing about!), but to the extent that I was comfortable troubleshooting PC problems for friends, family etc and I generally find it easy to just dive into new software and find out how things work on my own. I guess this is because I have quite a logical mind and approach to problem solving, and also simply because I was exposed to computers quite early on, often years before my friends, thanks to my Dad’s love of gadgets and new technology.
Therefore one day I decided to venture into the world of web design, by starting up Microsoft Frontpage (I’m now ashamed to say) and experimenting by creating a website of some description. Having no idea what to create a site about, I picked up a flyer/price list from my friend’s mum’s beauty salon (Margaret Balfour Beauty Centre) that was lying around and proceeded to make a website using all the information it contained.
My first effort made extensive use of html frames, typical of the time and strongly frowned upon these days. Here’s what it looked like…
I think it wasn’t a bad first effort (with limited knowledge and tools available!) but this alpha version never went live on the internet because it also made use of Frontpage Extensions, which I had naively assumed were widely compatible. I believe they’ve now been retired but at the time you typically needed to pay a web-host extra to support them – a prime example of Microsoft doing their own thing and ignoring accepted standards.
Anyway, I also started diving into the HTML code a bit more and became mystified by all the junk code and hidden folders that Frontpage seemed to create which served no purpose whatsoever. To this day I believe Microsoft still do not understand web design and web design standards as their software always writes such messy code. Unfortunately recent experiences with SharePoint (essentially their enterprise intranet offering) would suggest they still haven’t sussed it after all this time, which in my opinion is simply unacceptable (let’s save my thoughts on Internet Explorer for another time).
Bemused and frustrated with Frontpage I promptly turned to Dreamweaver (then made by Macromedia now by Adobe), which I continue to use this day. Using Dreamweaver’s templates (and Fireworks to design some simple but smart logos) I put together a site which was far smarter.
Then having sorted a domain name and hosting, on January 24th 2001, my first website went live and the Margaret Balfour Beauty Centre became the talk of the town as one of the first businesses in Sherborne to get on “t’interweb”. Here’s what the site looked like then…
The site stayed like this for a while but then I discovered that Dreamweaver could make some simple but effective javascript navigation menus. This, I thought, necessitated a redesign, and having got hold of some nice new photos I launched a new design for the site in 2003.
I should reiterate here that I’m completely self-taught in web design. I’ve always found that there are loads of support forums and sites out there that can answer your questions and guide you through things. Also it’s great the way you can visit any page on the internet and look at the source code to see how it is put together. Once you understand the logic of html code and what you are looking for, you can quite easily replicate something on your own site simply by copying what they’ve done on theirs (within reason of course).
Although constantly updating the site I didn’t perform any other major redesigns for several years. Then having finished university and with a bit of time on my hands again I thought it was time for another refresh.
I’d finally got my head around CSS (cascading style sheets) which for so long confused me and also discovered the importance of SEO (search engine optimization), so wanted to create a more Google-friendly site. It’s also worth mentioning Margaret had now changed her corporate colours to a dark red. Here’s what I then put together…
And now to the present day in 2010… The current site is designed in HTML and CSS using Dreamweaver and has some excellent Google rankings (I’ll do a post in the future with my Search-engine Optimization tips). I’ve also added a useful mailing list functionality to the site using Dadamail (again perhaps a topic for another post) and have more recently added WordPress blog functionality. I think it looks pretty smart but let me know what you think! I’m also now getting more and more familiar with PHP and will soon redesign the site making much more use of PHP and its features.
Encryption tool: 
Sync tool: 
CD burning: 
Video conversion: 
Video playback: 
FTP client: 
Virtualization: 
