Mebsite Mockup: Could it be done and how?

[J.J. Maxx]

Okay, so I'm working on updating my magic carrot website to something slicker. So I made up this beta version putting it together mostly in PSP. So there's no actual HTML behind it. I would like inout from all you computer saavy people as to how you would go about creating functionally for a website.

I'm old school. Unfortunately, most of the newest web design concepts are way past me. I do straight HTML, a little SHTML and thats about it. So I would probably put the entire site on a fixed width table. Then I would fill the insides with different split up tables and SHTML.

Anyways I just got this done last night and haven't even started giving it much thought yet. Just wanted to get some opinions from you guys.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/JJMaxx/sitemock.png

[Rainman]

You could easily format it by cutting it up and using HTML tables. If you want some flashy stuff you could use a little simple Javascript. It'd be awkward though to update the site as you'll have to open the index page and do some formatting then add the text. It would be advantageous to add some serverside scripting to allow for automatic updating. I wish I could help you there. :(

[Eckels]

I usually do a mockup of a site in photoshop before even thinking about html. If the mockup is good enough i'll use it as the layout, and use photoshop to cut it into slices.

Photoshop isn't the best at writing the code for the tables, so after i have the images sliced up, i end up rewriting all the html from scratch anyway, but it makes the layout process easier to see it all in photoshop first.

I dont know if PSP has a similar feature, but if you can get your hands on photoshop i can walk you through it that way.

also- as far as generating content goes, you can find so many basic php, perl, javascripts, etc, that it's almost not worth it to learn how to make one yourself. Unless you want to do a whole lot more than post news, i'm sure you'll do just fine by finding something on, say www.hotscripts.com (for example).

[Ganonator]

I did the index.html updating by hand when the old dP shack was up, and that was a royal pain in the ass. I think you should sit down, learn some PHP and mySQL, and you'll have a great site in no time. Besides - if you know PHP, you're set for life, right?