Monday 15 January 2007

How this site is made

I have had a few mails over the last couple of months asking about the site and what software I used to create it.

Generally people are after an "out of the box" solution that will generate the site for them quick and easily. I'm sorry to say that I can't help with turnkey solutions as the site is pretty much hand crafted. If you are looking for a turnkey solution the Photium or clickpik are the people you need.

To create the site, first the menu layout and design were sketched out on paper, as I tried to work out what I did and didn't want on the site.

Then it was on to the front page, this was first laid out in Photoshop, doing this allowed me to play with fonts, sizes, colour and layout very quickly and easily. The front page is designed to act as a taster for the whole site.

Once I was happy with the design of the front page, I use Imageready (part of Photoshop) to generate the page as XHTML and CSS. Then it was into Dreamweaver to tweak the CSS so that it worked in most browsers (well lets hope so anyway).


Editing the site in Dreamweaver

A new page layout was then designed in Dreamweaver, based on the home page and this was saved as a template. The other pages were then based on this template to give the final effect I was after. Templates allow me to apply global changes to the site very easily and quickly...which is a good thing.

The galleries are generated using iView Media Pro to select the files, then the pages are generated using a set of templates I created.

This Blog is provided by blogger.com which is automatically copies any changes over to my own site, yet still allows me to edit it anywhere in the world...nice. The RSS feed from this is pushed through Feedburner to provide statistics and analysis.

I would be happy to explain more to those who have questions, if that's you then please email me on chris AT shepherdpics.com.

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