------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine ------- Vol 2, Issue 16 Our daughter, Kaylie, continues to grow like a little weed, albeit a cute one. With our families spread, literally, all over the world, Lisa and I decided it would be a good idea to set up a website for her so that others could follow her daily activities and see pictures of her as she grows. It took me a couple of days to get everything up and running. The only reason it was that fast was because I used a number of different web- and desktop-based tools. This issue I'll cover those tools, just in case someone else might have a similar project in mind. ---------------------------------------------------------------- In This Issue... ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: Applying the Tools 2. Shameless Self-Promotion 3. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: Applying the Tools ---------------------------------------------------------------- My wife, Lisa, and I have been wanting to set up a website for our daughter Kaylie. While my immediate family is scattered throughout Michigan and Ohio, Lisa's is all the way down in Texas. If we start looking at extended family and friends, we're talking more of a global situation. While we would love to visit every single person so they can get to know our lovely daughter, that's not entirely practical. The next best thing is a website with lots of pictures and stories. In order to get things up and running on a relatively quick basis, we made use of a number of tools and Web services. If you have a Web project in the future, maybe some of these will be useful for you. 1. Open Source Web Design (http://www.oswd.org/) -- When it comes to beautiful layout and design for a website, I'm a pretty good engineer. So that I didn't have to stretch my creative impulses beyond their limits, we decided to make use of a web page template. There are a variety of sites out there which offer this service. The one I've had the best luck with is OSWD. As of this writing, they have over 2000 different website looks. OSWD has a fairly nice interface to browse the catalog. When you find the one you want, just follow the instructions to download it and then use your favorite HTML editor to create new pages and develop the site. Fair warning, though, on using templates. They will *not* look as nice as having a professional web designer develop something. I wouldn't recommend, for example, using a web template for your business (at least not long-term). For a personal site like this -- especially one where you'd just as soon not spend much (or any) money -- a template is more than appropriate. 2. Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/) -- Of course, what would a website about a baby be without pictures? In order to manage and do simple image editing of the vast library of Kaylie photos, I use the free Picasa application. I've written about this program before. Just download and install and you are ready to go. Picasa will actually scan your computer for any images and present them as a series of collections. This makes it pretty easy to scan through the images for particular dates and create an album. Picasa also has a direct connection to ... 3. Picasa Web Albums (http://picasaweb.google.com/) -- Once I'd created an album using the Picasa desktop application, it wasn't much more than a button click to send it to its own web album. The process also scales down the pictures so that the images don't take up as much space online nor take as long to upload. Now one of the neat things about these online albums is that you can actually embed them as slide shows on a web page. You just specify how you want it to look and how big you want it to be and the Web Album site will provide you with a little snippet of code that you can copy into your web pages. If you'd like to check out Kaylie's site, you can at: http://kaylie.cyberdatasolutionsllc.com/ Next time we'll talk about incorporating a blog, video, and using RSS feeds. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the story of Kaylie's first 8 1/2 months. Copyright 2008, Greg Peters ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Shameless Self-Promotion ---------------------------------------------------------------- The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your webmaster. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 3. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: You can subscribe to the "Clearing Up The Confusion" E-zine at: http://www.cyberdatasolns.com/ezine Questions: If you have any questions, concerns or comments regarding the Clearing Up the Confusion E-zine, please email Greg Peters at: gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com This content may be forwarded in full, with copyright and contact information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Greg Peters is required, with notification to the original author. We never send the "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-zine uninvited, and we NEVER share, sell or rent our mailing list to anyone. Your privacy is safe with us.