Derek Talbot is a hobbyist website creator and
publisher (but not a graphic designer). This site provides information about the
sites he has created including Derek's reviews of the companies providing his
website hosting, plus ratings of the HTML, graphics and FTP software, books and
even other websites that he used to complete his web projects.
Derek uses a familiar 5 star rating system to
visually enhance his reviews of the web services and resources he
utilizes. Any company, web design tool,
software or book that is reviewed and rated below with at least 3 stars should
be considered as being "Recommended" by the author.
Site Type
Info Site
Hosting Info Site Creation Info
Derek's Site Services Reviews &
Ratings (1-5
Stars)
www.askaboutmypeanutallergy.com Peanut allergy blog of a child participating in
a promising peanut allergy research treatment study at Arkansas
Children’s Hospital.
Blog site with HTML pages
hosted and powered by TypePad (Pro Plan)
The TypePad Pro Plan
is easy to use for our peanut allergy blog
site. This plan allows me the flexibility to do quite a bit of HTML
editing to the blog templates and designs without losing the point
& click/plug & play ease of the TypePad site management
tools, design themes and widget add on functions.
TypePad's site hosting has been
reliable and my blog updates publish instantly.
derektalbot.com Personal website listing the sites created by
Derek Talbot, as well as, books, websites and other things he
recommends. Why? Because it's his site!
Basic HTML site created in
FrontPage® 2000 with domain services provided by Go
Daddy
I
like Go Daddy's extensive domain services, management tools, online
help guides and low prices. The only catch is you have to deal with
a lot of up sell options and messages. Overall, Go Daddy domain
services help me to effectively manage more than 15 domains that I
own.
www.peanutsafefood.com Examples of peanut free
foods that people with a peanut allergy can buy to eat. Plus peanut
allergy blogs, websites and books.
Go Daddy's
WebSite TONIGHT product comes with an impressive list of standard
features and the support documentation and staff are helpful.
This
is a template website product but it does allow you to edit the HTML
code directly. A nice feature if you have intermediate
HTML/site creation skills.
www.woodlandspoa.com Established in 1995, The Woodlands is a private
gated, family-oriented 373 home subdivision located on the north
shore in St. Tammany parish Louisiana.
This
specialized template website service makes it easy to get a
home-owners association web site up and running quickly. It becomes
even more powerful if you know some basic HTML. I can definitely
recommend the services of http://home-owners-assoc.com to
home-owner associations needing a website solution. I have submitted
several suggestions for site admin tool interface improvements and
functionality enhancements, that if implemented, will earn them an
additional 1/2 star higher rating.
Their staff has been very complimentary
of the content and design I created for my neighborhood's site using their
templates.
I find the software below invaluable for my
web projects. This list of recommended software includes website creation
(HTML editor), graphic design software and FTP (File Transfer
Protocol).
FrontPage
(I still use version 2000) is a good WYSIWYG type web creation
tool that was used to create thousands of successful websites.
All of the FrontPage versions are considered suitable for both
beginner web authors, because of it's WYSIWYG interface, as
well as, those with intermediate HTML skills because you can
easily access and edit the actual HTML code FrontPage is
creating for you.
*Note that Microsoft has
replaced FrontPage with a new product called Expression Web
Professional Design Tool.
I find
Elements (the "lite" version of Adobe Photoshop) perfect for
users like me that are not graphic designers but who need the
capability to creatively edit photos well beyond simple
cropping and create simple graphics.
Adobe Photoshop Elements is the
perfect compromise for me between getting the graphics editing
and creation features I need (plus many more I am not talented
enough to take advantage of) without over-complicating the
usability or requiring the $600 investment for Adobe
Photoshop!
A fast
and easy tool for Web developers or anyone that moves files on
the Internet.
This award winning FTP Client for
Windows users does what it says it will do, making it easy to
upload your site files to your web server. I like the
intuitive drag-and-drop Windows Explorer like interface which
makes it easy to update my website with a single click,
transfer files directly between FTP servers, delete files on
your server and even resume downloads that were
interrupted.
Other feature of this recommended
FTP client include Port range limiting, power transfers,
on-the-fly compression, bandwidth limiting and more.
These are the books I find invaluable
for my website projects. These recommended books cover topics
ranging from using the Internet to generate enough cash flow to
escape corporate life, to the the less exciting subject of HTML code
writing and editing.
Which of
the statements below best describes your goals? If you say the
"B"s, then this life changing book is a must for you!
The Internet plays a large role in this book's strategy for
escaping/avoiding the corporate trap of working 20-40 years
for the privilege of retiring in the least healthy years of
your life!
A: To work for
yourself B:To have others work for
you
A: To buy all the things
you want to have B:To do all the things
you want to do, and be all the things you want to be. If this
includes some tools and gadgets, so be it, but they are means
to an end or bonuses, not the focus.
Elizabeth
Castro has written several easy-to-use HTML books. I often
refer to my 1998 version of her HTML book during my web site
projects. This is the updated version and it has a 4 star avg.
rating on Amazon.
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