WE NEED A WEB PAGE

[RPCrowe]

The web page we "NEED" is for our Maltese Dog Rescue Program. My wife is the West Coast Rescue Coordinator for the American Maltese Association. As such, we rescue on the average of one to two Maltese dogs per month and find good homes for them.

These dogs come from shelters where they were in imminent danger of being euthanized or come from homes that can no longer or do not desire to keep them. They are sometimes in very good shape and other times their condition breaks our hearts.

It is a rewarding avocation, especially when we see one of our rescues that has been living in a loving home for a while and see how happy the dog and its new family have become. It is doubly rewarding when we compare the "before" pictures of the dog that we shoot when it comes to us; to the "after" pictures when the dog has been living for a while surrounded by love, fed well and groomed decently.

We advertise our rescue dogs on a wonderful free site:

http://www.petfinder.com//index.html (http://www.petfinder.com/index.html)

We recommend this site for anyone interested in adopting a rescued animal of any type or breed. Just select the type of animal you are looking for (dog, cat, etc.), The breed you are interested in (Maltese, Boxer, etc.) and some parameters regarding your choice (age, gender, etc.). Finally, enter your ZIP code and the site will show you the rescue animals that fit your parameters in your area.

Although this site is wonderful, we need a permanent web Page so that we can direct persons to that web page for more information regarding our rescue program. We can link from Petfinder.com to our web page.

What we need on our web page is the following:

1. A brief summary about our program

2. A brief summary of the Maltese breed

3. A brief summery of the pros and cons of rescuing (with some past pictures)

4. A brief summary about rescuing a special needs dog with images and links to sites that provide information regarding special needs dogs

5. Downloadable rescue application and information

6. Gallery of available Maltese

7. Stories and pictures of successful rescues

8. Link to our email

9. If possible (and this is not a strict requirement) we would like to be able to place a short video of any special needs dog to show that it is adaptable.

We would like the site to be professional looking but, do not want a site that takes an eternity to load because we don't want persons with slower Internet access to give up before the site is opened.

Luckily, Maltese are very much in demand and, unless the dog has special problems; we
don’t have great problems finding them "forever" homes. Special needs dogs may be a little harder, but we know: "There is a good home out there for every Maltese"

Once we have the site for West Coast Rescue up and running; we will offer it to the other divisions of American Maltese Rescue.

We don't even know how to get started in making a website and sincerely need help in this area! If someone could step in and start us in the right direction - that would be very much appreciated. Unfortunately we cannot pay for such services since our rescue funding goes to care of and medical expenses for rescued dogs.

If there is anyone who could help us, or even point us in the right direction; both we and our rescue dogs would be very grateful.

Actually, what would be wonderful is if someone could develop the website for us. Although we are somewhat computer literate, web page development is beyond our capabilities.

Richard and Judy Crowe
American Maltese Rescue
West Coast Coordinator

[Scorpio]

Unfortunately we cannot pay for such services since our rescue funding goes to care of and medical expenses for rescued dogs.

Right. Good luck with that!! =D

On a more serious note, if you are somewhat computer literate, web page development isn't necessarily beyond your capabilities. It's not that difficult. Really!

Just pick up a good book (http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfhtml/index.php). If you want it easier, pick up some software (http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/) that'll basically do it all for you.

I don't really have the time to develop a site as described, especially pro bono, but I'll be glad to offer pointers if you have any questions.

[cdifoto]

Buy a template and fill in the blanks.

[rammy]

Lets presume you have a windows platform. Do you have Microsoft office (Microsoft Word)?

If so then you can quite easily create a page in that and save it as an HTML page (web page). By using tables in Word you can position the layout as you like.

If you want web specific software then you want WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software. This means that as you layout your page, and formatting, it shows you the effects (along with writing the code in the background for you). Dreamweaver does this but you can get FREE software too (see below).

Take a look at some web template samples or some other sites that you like the design of and copy the style or get ideas from them.

To make this happen, you will need:

1. Register a doman name
2. Buy some web space to host the site and link it to the domain name
3. Make sure the hosting site gives you some POP3 accounts (email basically) and enough bandwidth each month
4. Get an FTP program (Filezilla) to allow you to upload to your site
5. Use MS Word or get a free Web Development software and have a go at laying out a page yourself.

It helps if you both sit down with a pen and loads of A4 paper and start sketching out what you want, where you want to put and what type of fonts and graphics you want to use. The less the number of graphics, and the smaller their file size, the quicker the site will load.

You probably want two, maybe three pages. The main page, the gallery page and the contact/links page.

I don't know of any hosting sites and domain regsitries in the US. Do a google for "domain names".

Some links for you:

Website templates
http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com/

Free web design software
http://www.asp.net/downloads/essential/

Tutorials on HTML (the programming language of web)
http://www.w3schools.com

FTP utility
http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla

Best of luck and PM me if you need more advice.

[pete_cf]

i'd recommend Drupal, a very dependable and slick CMS. it's basically a script where you can edit paramaters and customize the site to your liking. i've used every cms out there, and i'll tell you, drupal is the best. check it out.

if you need someone to install drupal and get you started i'd be happy to help you out since i'm crazy for animals too :)

[Mum2J&M]

If I were you, I'd find someone local who'd be willing to do this for free. Although some of us are web saavy, we have families and work obligations like everyone else. I'm not sure this is the right place to find the person to do this. There are web services online that will allow you to design your own page, etc. for a relatively small fee. I pay around $40 per year for my family site with unlimited space. Good luck.