Web Design - Part One

I decided to include some comments about F.H.C. Ministries Website and design, I have to give major thanks to many people but let me tell the story and the thanks will follow.

Ok, F.H.C. Ministries was born out of a calling God placed on my heart, and just as important, the drive initiated (you could call a good swift kick in the backside) by my wife. After long conversations with friends and family, lots of prayer I decided that combining the internet with old fashion door knocking would be the best approach to F.H.C. Ministries. F.H.C. Ministries Birthday is March 2006.

Well, let's start with the internet, first you need a computer, I don't own one (and as of the writing of this article I still don't, hint, hint), the computer I have been using is borrowed, and I have borrowed several peoples computers. How? Well it turns out you can buy an external USB Hard Drive and keep all your own files, all you really need then is a computer. Second I understand you are supposed to know HTML and CSS, if you are going to create a webpage everyone can enjoy, read and see.

Well I need advice and I turned to my wife who used to build web pages professionally. I expected to be able to create the website myself and was confident I could with her advice here and there. She is the one that explained to me some "simple" rules: You need to know HTML (sure), CSS Style Sheets (whatever) (she is by the why sitting here and telling me I have already made more mistakes on this page, she said; honey, "CSS Style Sheets is a redundant statement"), the web page should be "viewable" by every browser (yes dear) and lastly that it should be validated as accessible (no problem). Just a few rules and that seemed easy enough to me.

When I say I don't have a computer, I personally don't own one, my wife does, remember she used to design web pages her self and she loves to spend time on her computer; it was after all her computer before we met, which means she has had this computer longer than she has had me. You can develop bonds with appliances over time, and she still working on developing her bond with me. I get shifts on the computer (when she takes a nap). She is fussing in my ear again, "oh, please, oh, please, give me a break", I guess I get more than shifts.

Step one was to pick a color theme: I love the color black, she said it would not be a good color choice for F.H.C. Ministries, we talked about colors and purple is (as you can tell) another color I am really fond of.

Thanks to Mr. Chipman of Slayer Office I got the opportunity to pick all colors purple that match. The colors of www.fhcmininistries.org go like this: Background is #260026, Text Color is #eae6ea, Link Color #c9bfc9, Visited #938093, Active #594059, Matrix Even #5d405d, and Matrix Odd #938093.

At first when I was building this site (round one of several hundred to follow) I decided that I would use a tool like Front Page, which by the way was not a good choice according to my advisor, but, I am stubborn and I tried it anyway. Nothing went well, and I mean nothing, so I made another choice, I decided to download a free web page template and use that as a guide. I downloaded Template # 44 from Steve's Free Templates. If you look at that template I did not use much of it, I tried, I tried real hard to make it work for me. In the end I used his basic top banner graphic, I made it shorter, I reduced it's size (more on that later), you can see all the pictures I made for this website by clicking on the graphics link on this blog.

I love all the pictures, ok I will call them what they really are, all the images I made them with PSP 7, and yes it's old, but I owned the program and could install it on my portable computer (the hard drive I took to everyone's home when I wanted to use their computer). There are several computers out there with shortcuts on the desktop to the F Drive (sometimes the G Drive) that don't function 'cause I have the drive :).

PS. I still don't like the buttons much, I would love to make some really cool, yet simple flash buttons or even a flash menu, but that will have to wait.

Now I am dealing with the "rules" my "advisor" gave me. Accessible to everyone, accessible in any browser, and easy to navigate, (she also said as a suggestion that the page should be pleasant to the eye of the viewer). That's what all of those icons at the bottom of my pages are. Not all my pages have the same icon, not all have passed all the validation tests. I am working hard at getting them all to pass. That is not easy, Google, Yahoo, and Many of the big websites can't come as close as I have to passing in their wildest dreams. What I thought was the craziest though, I would win the little icon, copy and paste the code from the validation site, and then I would have to fix their code so it would pass again. Hats off to the people involved in the viewable in any browser campaign, I am still trying to figure out how they did that, but that is what the coffee cup icon means, the only thing you really need to view F.H.C. Ministries website is hot cup of coffee.

You should know I am being corrected again, :) my wife is reminding me that you do need more than a cup of coffee to view F.H.C. Ministries Website. You need a working computer, (with keyboard, mouse and monitor) an internet connection of some sort, and a browser of some sort.