Creating Your Website With TenDollarLogo
About Me And My Website
Welcome to TenDollarLogo! My name is Jim. I am a parttime webdesign student from Calgary, Canada. I'm not a particularly talented design student, but I'm working hard at building a small network based on my personal interests, none-the-less. This website, as well as my mirror website, WebsiteAdvice.org, are being developed for 3 main reasons:
- I would like to help people take charge of their website's development.
- I want to develop my XHTML, CSS and PHP skills.
- I am experimenting with Affiliate Programs, trying to make a few extra dollars to pay my way through school.
Having been someone who has paid webdesigners, I have made a lot of mistakes because I didn't know what I was doing. I'm hoping I can share some practical knowledge with you, so you can save money or even develop a website for yourself. If you benefit from anything I tell you, and would like to support this project, you can either buy something from one of many affiliate links posted around the site or there will also be a donation link on my Contact Me page. If you see some funny applications or content, please bare with me, as I am constantly updating the site and experimenting with different scripts I find in my textbooks. Hope you like the website!
Why TenDollarLogo?
TenDollarLogo - What Can I say? Where have you gone my talented, reliable, weblogo service? This short lived Brazilian Logo Design company provided me with all of the logos for this site as well as several others before padding their pockets with ten dollar bills and closing shop. Shortly thereafter, I purchased the domain name tendollarlogo.net to initiate a logo business with the same concept. My girlfriend, at the time, was an artist and had won some local logo design contests. I tried to persuade her into taking up Adobe Illustrator and building a small business venture for herself. It didn't (or hasn't) quite worked out that way. One can always hope. Anyways, TenDollarLogo.com contacted me to tell me they had relocated and changed their prices. 
(Nobody can live on $10 a logo!) They can now be found at LogoSamurai.com and they are still turning out beautiful work. This website, on the other hand, will develop as is, and if, in the future, I do decide to create a design company, look for me at www.daydreams.ca.
Following Along with TenDollarLogo
The development of this website will greatly depend on which textbook I am learning from at the time. Currently, I have just started studying PHP and MySQL independently, as well as toughing out the the last few graphic courses I have left in my webdesign certificate. I am also brushing up on my XHTML and CSS from a wonderfully thorough book written by Elizabeth Castro called HTML, XHTML and CSS, Sixth Edition. If you would like to follow along, you can buy this book off of Amazon.com. It is an excellent overview of simple website development for beginners, and a great resource for those of us who are already familiar with it. If you are looking to start creating your own website or hiring someone to build one for you, I would highly recommend reading through the webadvice page of this site, before doing so. If you have anything you would like to contribute to this page or others, please contact me. If you'd like to check out the rest of my network, it is listed on the Our Projects page of this site. I'd love to get your feedback!
Registrar, Hosting and Technologies
This website is hosted by HostPapa.com and the domain name purchased through Netfirms.com. I have dealt with both of these service providers for sometime now and have never had any serious problem with either one of them. This website is built in XHTML transitional, CSS and PHP. There are also a few Javascripts here and there, like the slideshow to the right. Most of the images on this website were created in Adobe Illustrator. I will explain these things in greater detail elsewhere on the site.
This Website's Development
I am graduating from my website development program at the end of April, 2009. I, quite honestly, got a good start from the Adult Ed night classes at SAIT, but thought the courses were not very thorough. There is still much to learn. Because of a need to save money, I've decided not to further my education with school for the next few years. This site's development will be largely based on textbooks I am reading through instead. This is what my website will cover.
- Getting Started - buying a domain name, hosting, hiring a programmer and/or graphic designer.
- Logo Design - a great, much under-appreciated art form. Finding a good designer and showcasing their artwork.
- XHTML and CSS - the basics for a static website. I hope to create a pretty website with very little use of images.
- PHP and MySQL - I'm not going to learn how to program from scratch. Instead, I'm going to focus on implementing free and paid-for scripts.
- Open Source Software - I'm mostly going to focus on Joomla and Drupal.
- My Site Tools - Netfirms.com, my current host, has a great array of site tools that I will be exploring.
- Reviews - from webhosting to textbooks to logo designers to software, and more. Find out what's hot and what's not.
If you would like to be involved in the development of this website, please contact me. I would love your help.
