Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine Vol 02 Issue 16

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Clearing Up the Confusion E Zi

 · 4 years ago

  

	------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine ------- 
Vol 2, Issue 16 

Our daughter, Kaylie, continues to grow like a little weed, 
albeit a cute one.  With our families spread, literally, all over 
the world, Lisa and I decided it would be a good idea to set up a 
website for her so that others could follow her daily activities 
and see pictures of her as she grows.  It took me a couple of 
days to get everything up and running.  The only reason it was 
that fast was because I used a number of different web- and 
desktop-based tools.  This issue I'll cover those tools, just in 
case someone else might have a similar project in mind. 

 
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In This Issue... 
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1. Article: Applying the Tools 
2. Shameless Self-Promotion 
3. The Fine Print 

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1. Article: Applying the Tools 
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My wife, Lisa, and I have been wanting to set up a website for 
our daughter Kaylie.  While my immediate family is scattered throughout 
Michigan and Ohio, Lisa's is all the way down in Texas.  If we 
start looking at extended family and friends, we're talking more 
of a global situation.  While we would love to visit every single 
person so they can get to know our lovely daughter, that's not 
entirely practical.  The next best thing is a website with lots 
of pictures and stories.  In order to get things up and running 
on a relatively quick basis, we made use of a number of tools and 
Web services.  If you have a Web project in the future, maybe 
some of these will be useful for you. 

1. Open Source Web Design (http://www.oswd.org/) -- When it comes 
   to beautiful layout and design for a website, I'm a pretty 
   good engineer.  So that I didn't have to stretch my creative 
   impulses beyond their limits, we decided to make use of a web 
   page template.  There are a variety of sites out there which 
   offer this service.  The one I've had the best luck with is 
   OSWD.  As of this writing, they have over 2000 different 
   website looks.  OSWD has a fairly nice interface to browse the 
   catalog.  When you find the one you want, just follow the 
   instructions to download it and then use your favorite HTML 
   editor to create new pages and develop the site. 

   Fair warning, though, on using templates.  They will *not* 
   look as nice as having a professional web designer develop 
   something.  I wouldn't recommend, for example, using a web 
   template for your business (at least not long-term).  For a 
   personal site like this -- especially one where you'd just as 
   soon not spend much (or any) money -- a template is more than 
   appropriate. 

2. Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/) -- Of course, what would a 
   website about a baby be without pictures?  In order to manage 
   and do simple image editing of the vast library of Kaylie 
   photos, I use the free Picasa application.  I've written about 
   this program before.  Just download and install and you are 
   ready to go.  Picasa will actually scan your computer for any 
   images and present them as a series of collections.  This 
   makes it pretty easy to scan through the images for particular 
   dates and create an album.  Picasa also has a direct 
   connection to ... 

3. Picasa Web Albums (http://picasaweb.google.com/) -- Once I'd 
   created an album using the Picasa desktop application, it 
   wasn't much more than a button click to send it to its own web 
   album.  The process also scales down the pictures so that the 
   images don't take up as much space online nor take as long to 
   upload.  Now one of the neat things about these online albums 
   is that you can actually embed them as slide shows on a web 
   page.  You just specify how you want it to look and how big 
   you want it to be and the Web Album site will provide you with 
   a little snippet of code that you can copy into your web 
   pages. 

If you'd like to check out Kaylie's site, you can at: 

http://kaylie.cyberdatasolutionsllc.com/ 

Next time we'll talk about incorporating a blog, video, and using 
RSS feeds.  In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the story of 
Kaylie's first 8 1/2 months. 

 
Copyright 2008, Greg Peters 

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2. Shameless Self-Promotion 
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The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg 
Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data 
Solutions.  CDS has been helping website designers develop better 
web presence for their clients for more than a decade.  Visit us 
on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your 
webmaster. 

 
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3. The Fine Print 
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