sam and the city

Enter the webmaster

Good day faithful reader. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I am part owner of the business that is Osborne House European Cottages (see Links for website), with the other members of my family holding the remainder of the shares. In order to make this a successful business each of us has various jobs assigned to them. As the most technically competent person in my family, which isn't saying a great deal, one of the jobs that been assigned to me is to learn how develop websites so that we can alter the company's website without having to rush off to a developer every five seconds.

With this in mind I went out and bought myself a book for beginners to website development. I've only read a few chapters thus far but I've already come a long way. For instance, I now know that HTML (the common language that is used to write websites) is in the process of being replaced by XHTML, which is almost idenitical. I also know that when you search for a website on Google or Yahoo! that how often your website comes up is largely dependant upon what keywords (words that people are likely to search for) you have in your meta tags. This second one is particularly important, because after a quick look it seems that the Osborne House website does not have any at all, meaning that it will only come up if someone types in something that actually appears in the text of the page! Must have a word to the developer about that!

Of course you can only be so creative with your websites when you are restricted to changing everything via code, which is why it is helpful to have web development tools. After a quick scan through a website magazine in a newsagent I discovered that the two most popular tools are Dreamweaver (used to actually build the site) and Paint Shop Pro (used to make all your cool graphics). Later that day I managed to "acquire" myself a copy of both pieces of software. I've had a bit of a play with both programs, but I'm planning on finishing reading my book so that I can get a good background on what I'm doing before I start delving too deeply.

Anyways, I may have to put HTML learning on hold for the remainder of this month so that I can focus on my French learning before I actually go over there. I think that I've progress remarkably since I was last in the country, however last time I was in the country I wasn't meeting a French mademoiselle, and I would be absolutely mortified if we spent the entire time speaking in English because my French sucked so badly. She's read my French writing numerous times, so she knows that I'm no Balzac, but I don't think that there is any need to go out of my way to further lower her impression of me!

posted by sam @ 10:52 am