Draft Website

We are coming close to the end of the spring semester, and I have been working on my final project in CINS-102 at a fever pace.

As I noted in a previous post, I am rebuilding my web site via this class.  I lost the files from my original web site.  My old website was just a free template I had found and changed up a bit.  I must say it’s very fulfilling to say you created it yourself.

I have found through my studies thus far that I am really enjoying web design and programming.  They almost go hand in hand, as the skills I’ve learned in programming have transferred somewhat to web design.  Where that might take me I’m unsure of at this point.

The draft website is currently hosted at http://bob.ivytech.edu/~llawmaster/index.html please visit it!  Any suggestions you have, especially in the areas of CSS, would be greatly appreciated.  FYI, the “buy it now” buttons are only pictures – the site’s document type declaration is XHTML Strict, which doesn’t allow the syntax of the buttons to be used.

There are probably going to be some slight changes to it before the semester ends, but nothing dramatic.  I am having my co-worker Kasey utilize her skills with CSS to help transform this basic site into something professional and dramatic.  For her help, I’m going to give her credit for the styling of the website.  The version with her assistance will not appear on the Ivy Tech domain, as that is for academic purposes – and having someone else do the work would be wrong.

Hopefully by the end of the year, the final version of this website will be on it’s real domain again, and fully functional.  It’s exciting!

Educating My Business

While I’m currently taking classes to earn an Associates of Applied Science in Programming at Ivy Tech Community College, I try to use my business as a resource from time to time.

This semester, I get to use it for something I’ve needed to do and spent countless hours doing.  Rebuilding my website.  While I was happy with what I had, I knew I could have a better designed one that might draw in some clients and some revenue.  Without some basic skills, what I had was the best that I could muster.  This semester I am taking CINS-102.  It is essentially a class that teaches you XHTML and CSS.

We haven’t done much in this class as of yet, but I can see the momentum starting to build.  We’ve mainly had tremendous amounts of reading each week with smaller projects in class.  Our project due this week is to find 5 url’s that we like and select one we want to use for a basis of a new website.  What a perfect opportunity for my website to be re-born!

My financial plan this year is to save any money I make.  I plan on saving as much as possible.  I did the math last night and found out I have personally spent over $3000 on expenses for my business.  I hope to eventually repay that debt.

If things are good this year, I may put my new and improved website back up.