Trying to make a site.. Frustrated! Need advice!

Im starting to get serious with my photography hobby and my friend and I would like to start our own site to see what happens...

Currently we are using Site Builder to create our site and its just frustrating!

For example:
- Spacing is never right (off center, banner wont fit EVER)
- Tables are garbage to try and get pics side-by-side

I could go on and on, but you get the point..

Whats the easiest web page design program right now? Preferably free...

How did many of you start your site, and what really helped your site take off? Any advice is greatly appreciated!


I'll post my address to my site... (its really not worth looking at right now..)

www.mmfotography.com

I used Microsoft Front Page to create mine. Then I use the free FTP Commander program to upload it. Front Page should have come with Microsoft Office, otherwise you can probably download a trial.

Get a book. Web design is like everything else it takes time to develope skill. I have about 60-70 hours of time spent developing web pages and studying to be only an amature web developer.

notepad.exe

Your site is TOO WIDE!

I highly recommend being able to fit your site in a 1024x768 browser window. Right now you wouldn't even be able to fit it in with a 1280x1024 window. We may use larger resolutions and have bigger monitors - the vast majority of consumers do not.

Currently 56% of people are using 1024x768 or lower, 38% a higher resolution. (According to the W3C) So you want to make sure it looks good in a 1024x768 maximized window - and after you account for the extra space that the windows taskbar takes up, the browser buttons and scroll bar at the side - you really have less to work with than a 1024x768 footprint. Scrolling up and down is fine for some sites, not for others. You should never have to scroll left or right unless you are running 800x600 or lower.

Also, you need to check your site in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Roughly 50% use IE6 or IE7 and the other 50% use Firefox. Yes there are some others scattered here and there, but for the most part, that's how it is. Firefox is actually at like 48% or something but close enough.

I use iWeb on my Mac. Greatest website builder ever! (IMHO)

Also, your photos take forever to load. I'm on a broadband 10mbit downstream and it was taking a while, +45 seconds. (complex flash sites only take 10-15 seconds for me to download) I believe the standard for websites is 72-100dpi for images. i'm not sure what you are using, but I would bet it's more.

I have used free templates and just edit them in one of the free editors. You can find thousands of free templates all over the web. And just do a search for "html editor" and you will find several.

I use SmugMug as the blueprint where I sell my pictures and for presentation on the front page I use OpenOffice (free from Openoffice.org) to make updates. I simply design with the "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) writer, click a button to show the HTML code, then copy/paste onto the blank in SmugMug. Presto!

free templates are good if you know dreamweaver or can tweek them somehow to perfection...they have less expensive professional templates that you can easily modify how you want, it saves a lot of time and possible headaches also-...check out www.hypertemplates.com or template monster.com

Why not start with a blog? You can get up and running quickly and it will look good.

I combined three into one with simple html links. The home page is www.FrankCizek.COM & the PrintRoom site is www.FrankCizek.NET
The PrintRoom home page isn't intrusive, & this way I can use either URL on a card depending on who I'm targeting.

The gallery is a skin from free JAlbum.net - It will build excellent galleries & now has free hosting, too. A lot of the skins are made by users & I'll bet they have a password protect feature in some of them. Ask in their forum.

Late to the party.

Check out the open-source Kompozer and look for open source designs such as those available at http://www.free-css-templates.com/.

SmugMug is also a solid choice if you have the $$$.

Aside from web site designers, if you have Photoshop, have you tried using the 'create web gallery' option to put a page of your photos together?

I'm building a site right now and it looks like I'm going to use a javascript/css framework called blueprint css. http://code.google.com​/p/blueprintcss/

This will help with the layout of the site, sizing, centering, spacing, cross-platform support, etc. You'll need to have some development experience though

Just wondering of your name will hurt you when people search. Not too many might search for "fotography".