Flash templates for new website

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Michelle McMichael

Michelle McMichael

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Jan 4, 2007
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Prineville
www.theposieshoppe.com
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With all the wonderful cheerleading and support around here, I have decided that I want to develop a website for the wedding/event side of our business. I already bought the domain and have been trying to decide how to leap in from there.

Being a do-it-yourselfer type, I don't really want to hand the whole thing over to someone else (we already do that with our TF site and it drives me a little crazy). But I am not very web savvy - most of what I have learned comes from here!

I found several websites offering dynamic flash templates that just have to be edited with text editors and photoshop. Has anyone tried this route? The cost is approx $250 vs $2000 (ish) to have something like this developed custom. I am almost ready to try it and muddle my way through, but I thought I'd see if anyone has had any experience with these.

Any advice or direction would be vastly appreciated!
 
YEs! I have done sites for a couple friends (non floral - contractors) and advised them to do exactly that - then I helped them with the tweaking of it, etc.

They save you a LOT of time figuring out page layout tables and stuff like that and are WELL worth the money they cost. But $250 sounds high - I have seen plenty that only cost from about $30-60.

If you need advice on hosting plans (or anything else) call me and I will steer you in great direction very reliable and inexpensive.
 
I gave up on Dreamweaver - again. I spent well over a month using it to build a new site - and have now forgotten it all again about 9 months later.

Microsoft Expression Web for me - they've managed to copy all the good dreamweaver features I think. And Front Page is way easier to learn IMO. Way.

And I'm just used to Microsoft products - DW was asking me to think differently it felt like. I got 2 great videos from Total Training both for Expression Web and Dreamweaver - really helped a lot - well worth the $100 it cost. She's a very good teacher.

PS - there's a bunch of template download sites out there - Monster not being one I have perused much.
 
bloomz said:
PS - there's a bunch of template download sites out there - Monster not being one I have perused much.
Click to expand...
Me either...

Aplustemplates.com has some good stuff on the cheap.....

Glad to see ya back JB....will try the telephone today....
 
Templates are not a bad approach to building a site, as long as you understand that other companies will have the same look.

Also, be careful with Flash. It looks beautiful, but unless it's implemented properly you can wind up with a beautiful site that no search engines will rank highly.

Ryan
 
Infinite said:
Templates are not a bad approach to building a site, as long as you understand that other companies will have the same look.

Also, be careful with Flash. It looks beautiful, but unless it's implemented properly you can wind up with a beautiful site that no search engines will rank highly.

Ryan
Click to expand...

This is actually one of the problems I was concerned with. Is this something I can tell from the template and how it's already set up or does it show up after I have customized it?
 
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

I did see some $30 to 60 ones. The $200 ish ones are "dynamic flash galleries" that allow editing and customizing without working in flash itself, along with something concerning the downloading of the pictures ....

You know, we bought the Scion because of you (& Twila :blowkiss:), I bought the domains because of you, now it looks like you'll drag me into the world of custom websites. Can I ever thank you enough?

Maybe I'll wait and see if this drives me insane first...

bloomz said:
YEs! I have done sites for a couple friends (non floral - contractors) and advised them to do exactly that - then I helped them with the tweaking of it, etc.

They save you a LOT of time figuring out page layout tables and stuff like that and are WELL worth the money they cost. But $250 sounds high - I have seen plenty that only cost from about $30-60.

If you need advice on hosting plans (or anything else) call me and I will steer you in great direction very reliable and inexpensive.
Click to expand...
 
You'll have to test the output of the design. This should be within your control.

Firstly, Google is learning how to spider Flash content - but it's not something you should rely on. The best option is to have an HTML site that contains well tagged Flash elements. You can use flash objects in place of static images.

As with any site, the links to your site are essential for good rankings as they provide context for your site.

You can use a tool like this one:
http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go
(enter your site URL then click on Diagnostic View and scroll down to see how your site looks to search engine)

Also, you can get away with using a variety of tags to include text in place of your flash objects.
 
Most of the templates I've seen have flash headers, but content is in regular text. As long as your text content isn't in the flash, you'll probably be OK.

PixelMill.com is also a good source for templates, but I've also found some good things at oswd.org, which is a site of free templates.
 
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