Dreamweaving

Writing and publishing nowadays isn't just about writing and publishing. It's also about websites.

Some very smart people make their blogs their websites. But I decided to make a separate website in my name because I also plan to have a website dedicated to my fantasy series later, so I naively asked myself why not?

And that's how my summer-long struggle with Dreamweaver began.

I started off working with Adobe Muse, which is a pretty good WYSIWYG program. Then my hosting company decided uploading by FTP wasn't safe any more. And they decreed they would only allow upload by the more secure FTPS, which Adobe Muse can't do, but Dreamweaver can. The change won't affect my host's free programs, but the free programs are very limited.

Dreamweaver is a great product that does a lot. Unfortunately, it also expects you to know more about coding. So my summer has been about figuring out what divs, ID tags, CSS Rules, and classes are about. I still don't much about them, but I'm starting to get the hang of things. Now all I need to learn is "responsive design."

Nowadays you don't only need to design websites for desktops. You need to design with tablets and smart phones in mind as well. To do that Dreamweaver has this thing called "fluid grids." They don't look too bad. I just need to figure out if I need media queries as well.

(sigh) It looks like my Fall may be kind of tied up too.

I hope you're all enjoying the change of season!