I've been in the same line of work for 40 years and have gained a significant amount of knowledge in my field of study. Yesterday I thought, why not build a web site and share that knowledge with the world. Trouble is, I have no idea how to do that.

I'm only in the "idea" stage of this project, so I guess that I'm only looking into what having and running a web site is all about. I'm by no means a computer expert, but what limited information that I've gathered from this site, It looks as though I might be able to muddle my way through their easy to understand tutorials and build a site. Well, I think that's the case anyway. I'm hoping that some of you that have this software can tell me if this is indeed what I could use to make and run a professional looking and functioning site.

So my first of probably many questions would be, where do I start? I'm not like most of you who can put together a site using this software in just a few minutes or hours. It's going to take a lot of research on my part to even figure out how this whole thing works.

So please will you point me in the right direction? Where would a dummy start such a journey as this? Thanks, Bill

Hi, and Welcome to the forum.

The best thing to start with is exactly what you are doing. Ask questions, try some things out and see what works for you.
CoffeeCup has free trial periods for all of their software.
I would suggest to start with the "Visual Site Designer" as a software choice.
You will of course need a web host and space for your site on the Internet.

The Visual Site Designer is truly one of the easiest web building tools to learn and use that I have seen in my carreer as a web designer. Once you start playing with it you will see that pages can be created to look professional in very little time. It has a built in "ftp" (the program that uploads pages to the Internet") so uploading your site is a simple click of the mouse.

Your web hosting provider will send you all of the details you need to enter the information into the program for uploading your site.

I hope that gives you a starting point, and best of luck on your new venture.

I first started 'toying' with the idea of websites in late 2005. I still love Visual Site Designer and it keeps getting better and better. Since you are an expert in your field, you have a 1 up in that you can provide good original content to your site. That's worth it's weight in gold to most designers. Some more tips are:

1- If you have a problem, go to a forum that's appropriate and ask questions.

2- Learn html as you go. With Visual Site Designer(VSD), no html is necessary, but you may want to add your snippets.

3- Learn SEO/promotion. There is information and ebooks offered by Coffeecup and others on how to build great websites. Keywords for content and how the site will be indexed by google and others is EXTREMELY important.

4- Usability of the site. The overall user experience are important to building a really great site. If you offer a way of interacting with visitors like a newsletter(to gather email addresses use flash form builder), that keeps clients coming back.

Ok, next question. I see that Visual Site Designer comes with Templates. Do I have to use those Templates or does the software allow me to create my web site from scratch? And how difficult would that be?

You can create from scratch, no problem. It would be no more difficult than using a template, if you have an idea of how you want the page(s) to look. I downloaded the 36 free templates CC provides for VSD, and instead of using them outright I've been borrowing images or little pieces from them for my own ideas. You can use or discard as much of them as you wish.

I suggest you download the trial version and see for yourself, for free.

I plan on downloading the trial version of VSD, but for now I'm gathering as much info as I can because the trial only lasts for 21 days. For computer savy folks, that might sound like a long time, but for one such as me, who knows little about how to put this all together, it seems like a short time. I'd like to be prepared for when I jump into it.

I appreciate the help I've gotten thus far and hope a few of you will continue to follow this thread to help me along with my venture.

Question #3- Forums are going to be an essential part af my website. Can VSD incorporate Forums into my site?

.

No, CoffeeCup does not currently offer any forum software.

I hope the fact that CC does not have a forum does not deters you from using CC software. CC software is good stuff

Although CC does not have forum sotfware you can attach an external free forum to your website by just creating a button called Forum and pointing it to the forum. There are lots of free forums out there.

I have attached a forum link to a website I created for the smart car club (Hampshire, UK). http://www.hhogssmartclub.co.uk/index.html

Please note that the website was not all built with CC software. The Join us form and contact form are built with CC Form builder. The flash work is my own as I also do my own Flash work and the picture galley is also not CC. I am only posting this to give you an example how you can point to an external forum in your website.

http://www.smartcarofamerica.com/

I'm not sure I understand. I'm using a forum right now on a companies web site that designs web sites. Who's forum software does CC use? How did THEY incorporate this forum into their web site?