That is what I thought. When you have an idea and you want to jump on it quickly then you do it. Do not piddle around with some packages or you will get lost and frustrated.
Well, I received an email from someone (I will not say who but they are well connected in this biz) but anyway they were pointing to a new product that they thought was the greatest thing since slice bread and they mentioned that they wished they had thought of it. Well, being the naive "Internet Guru" wannabe; I signed up and paid for it.
The name "Design Dashboard".
Let me preface this by saying. IF you are REALLY a newbie and do not know how to design your own graphics OR know how to setup a website OR how to get quality headers/sales letters and you are not in a rush; then this product is for you!
However, IF you are like me and you know graphics, you know HTML, and you know how to setup a web page then guess what? Oh, one more thing. You know how to setup a domain AND you know how to FTP which also stands to reason you probably have your own hosting provider (or two) then this application is NOT for you.
You read that right! Save your money this package will not help you at all. This package is for the newbie with zero experience and not on a time frame.
Weeks 1 and 2
Unfortunately, the very first lesson points to a 30-day software evaluation called Adobe Photoshop Elements. Evaluation? Give me a break. I thought I was buying into a package that works. Well, NIX this. What am I suppose to do after the evaluation period?
So I am trying to put a positive spin on this and BAM! I get hit again. How you ask? Well, I downloaded the software and tried to install it. Here is the BAM. Element runs on Windows XP. XP? Please. I am using Windows 2000.
So now it looks like weeks 1 and 2 are a complete shutdown for me. So I start week 3. BAM. The first lesson in week three, I am still in graphics mode and it seems to be talking about preparing the graphic file for saving. SAVING! If the user is not saving their graphical work in the first week and waiting for instruction to do it in week three then you probably should not be in this biz.
Week Three
SO. I jump to the second lesson in week three. Now we are into HTML. Ahhhhh. I am happy now. Let us see. DreamWeaver (No - too hard; expensive too), MS FrontPage (Easy to learn; too expensive and will not be supported in the future as they are switching gears in this arena). Okay, they mention FirstPage and NVU. Both good products. I also suggest Note Tab Light because there are some great built in features.
Now the authors did have a good suggestion. They had a lesson for Inserting a Table. Where are the rest of the good lessons? They had a lesson for Adding a Header. Special FX and creating a Favicon. WHAT?
Okay, I am getting cranked up here. About the Table lesson; is that it? Where is the rest of the discussion about the other facets of HTML? Horizontal Lines, sections, Paragraphs, Bullets (unordered and ordered), Fonts, Colors. How to create Navigation columns or even adding scripts? Oh, what about Meta tags. The fact is, there are other areas of HTML that are just plain left out.
Their lesson of adding a Header is just adding a graphic to the top of the HTML page.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Here is my favorite tip (NOT). Special FX is adding another graphic file. Hahahahahah. In fact, it is an image that is scanned in. Hahahahahaha. PLEASE FX? Hahahahaha.
Creating a Favicon. Looks professional? Yeah maybe. Necessary? NO. There are TONS of already professional websites that do not use them. One thing they don't tell you is that there are some hosting servers that do not support them. So you could go to all the trouble and it does not work. In fact, you might even blow enough time before you figure it out. Remember, getting your site up should be your priority.
On to Week Four
Creating a Sales Letter. Okay. This week they did pretty well. A thumbs up. But there are other products that do this far better than this.
On to Week Five
This week was titled "Enable Ecommerce Systems". PLEASE!!!! Only one lesson in this week dealt with what I call eCommerce and guess what? You are just outsourcing to another company. Big deal. In this week they mention getting the domain name, adding auto-responders, creating and adding a fly-in and adding in Scripts. But only one lesson for REALLY enabling eCommerce.
On to Week Six
Now there is at least one small item I have a problem with and that is the Host. Should you have a Host before you buy a Domain Name or after. Did the chicken come before the Egg? I suggest having a Host first. Let me qualify this. A reliable Host; not some flyby night group at the cheapest price. A reliable Host will offer their members coupons or specials and discounts for multiple Domain Names. Be smart.
All in all. Was the information worth it to me? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
IF you consider yourself to be Internet savvy and you can setup a website from scratch then save your money. There are other tools you can invest in that will help in other areas.
So do you want to learn more about how I do it? Well, I am working on something that will harness the power of some of my best used applications and guess what? You will have to check me out to find out more information why? Because I think this article is already WAY TOO LONG!
So if you want more truth stop by my site sometime and I will give you the low down on not wasting your money.
