WordPress - Web Pages
WordPress is a content management and blogging software utility that has become extremely popular, because it allows individuals who don’t know much about Web design to maintain a Web site. WordPress is freely available and extremely easy to use. It’s flexible and it has great support among Web hosts and the developer community. There are many users and many free add-ins available. Beginners can use it to create and maintain a complete Web site, as well as to maintain a blog very quickly and easily.
Web design professionals are often called upon to setup and to customize WordPress sites for clients. It’s important for both professionals and users to know how to setup and optimize WordPress sites so that their sites can have the features and design that they desire..........More
CSS - Best Practices for Web Design:
I am very excited to be teaching this class designed to meet the needs of today's Web designers. We will devote ourselves to learning how to create Web pages that comply with the new Web standards. First we'll discuss the changes in HTML/XHTML mark up that are needed. Then, we'll learn to style the pages with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in place of the older deprecated HTML tags. We'll also learn to use CSS for layout, so that you can do away with layout tables and transparent .gif's. Your code will be leaner, cleaner and infinitely easier to maintain. It will also be more accessible for those with disabilities, easier to repurpose for other uses, and the pages will download faster. And, as an added bonus, you'll be able to use familiar terms such as "font family," "margins," "padding," and "line height," to write your CSS rules. Anyone who is serious about Web design needs to take this class.
For some wonderful inspiration of what you can accomplish with CSS, please go to: http://csszengarden.com/. There you will see many examples of what just changing a CSS style sheet can do for a Web page that has been structured properly. Absolutely no changes have been made in the HTML/XHTML code for each of pages. All of the many designs have been created by applying different CSS style sheets to the same page of code.........More
Shopping Cart - Online Store Design - Online Class:
In this class, we will explore the wide variety of shopping cart options available for selling online and the factors that will help you determine which solution to choose. We'll have hands-on practice in setting up a few sample stores and examine ways to drive customers to your online store. Some of the topics discussed will be cart design, site usability, shopping cart location, payment options, shipping options, managing the store, and marketing the site.. .......More
Dreamweaver 1 - Page Layout for the Internet Online Class:
In GCMW 102 you will learn the basics of Web design: how to create your pages, how to optimize your graphics for use on your pages and how to upload them to a server so that they will be available for everyone to see. We will use the state-of-art Web Design tool used most often by Professionals, Adobe Dreamweaver. For our graphics we will use Adobe Fireworks, a program that is part of the same Adobe suite and that was created just for the needs of Web designers. In addition we will cover such topics as how to create interactive Web forms, how to find a host, how to register a domain name, and how to get your site listed in the search engines. There is no prerequisite for this class.......More
Dreamweaver 2- Page Layout for the Internet 2 - Online Class:
GCMW 202 is a followup to GCMW 102. We will continue learning to use Dreamweaver, a wonderful tool for Web Developers/Designers, to create Web sites. The Web is changing, standards for coding your Web pages are changing and new technologies are evolving. Dreamweaver has been keeping up with those changes with increased support for Cascading Style Sheets and Spry technologies. Although it is now imparative that Web Designers understand how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to create the design of their pages, it is difficult for new students to master in their first semester of Web Design classes. There is not time to adequately cover CSS and all of the rest of the information that new Web Designers need to know. Therefore, this class will concentrate heavily on using CSS, and Dreamweaver's tools for CSS, effectively. We will also learn how to use Dreamweaver's Spry tools and how to use Dreamweaver to include RSS feeds on Web pages.
Dreamweaver - Web Database Design Online Class:
More and more, cutting edge Web sites are using databases to accept input from their visitors or to supply the content for their pages. When Web pages can draw their content from databases, it simplifies and speeds up both their creation and their maintenance. It can also greatly improve the usefulness of the site and reduce the number of pages to maintain, since the same page can be used to display any of the records in the database. Common uses for databases are to supply product catalogues and shopping carts, accept customer input or conference registrations, provide the content for press releases or articles, and supply lists of events, people, resources or more. Databases are also used to provide password protection for pages that are not open to the public.
Until Dreamweaver added it's database capabilities, it was necessary to learn to program in ASP, PHP or some other server-side language that could communicate between the Web page and the database. Now however, you can use Dreamweaver to write the server side code for you in a variety of server-side languages. In GC 216, you will learn to use Dreamweaver to make your Web page communicate with a database. You'll also learn some database basics and how to set up administrative pages that allow site owners to update their own content by filling in simple Web forms. These are necessary skills for today's Web designers. This class may be taken 4 times. Students often repeat the class, taking it first using ASP, again using PHP, and then again to work on more advanced projects of their own choosing. You will be provided with a free student site that is ASP enabled. The only background needed for this class is GC 202 with Dreamweaver OR the equivalent knowledge/experience in using Dreamweaver to build Web pages.