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Build Your Own Web Site Review by Aj Viljoen
Best book for beginners
A few months ago I realised my two businesses need websites. I got from the professionals and promptly decided to do it myself. I reasoned that I could buy MS Frontpage, plus all the books I needed and do everything for less than 10% of what the quotes came to. I was right. And wrong.
I never realised how scared I was of Frontpage, so I compensated by buying way too many books. The good thing is that I am now in a very good position to tell you which books are worth your while and which are rubbish.
I was right in that one can publish your own website for a lot less than I expected. I was wrong in that of all the books I'd bought, I only needed one. You guessed it.
"Build your own web site" makes publishing a web site ridiculously easy. I am serious. The other books all have these clinical, corporation-type covers, so I looked at them first, and started building my site. For some reason, I was put off this book somehow. As if I thought, if the others have these professional looking covers, they must be the better books. How wrong I was.
This book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with how to prepare - how to decide what goes onto your site, how to plan, how to put everything together et cetera. How to design your site. I followed it to the letter and it worked.
Part 2 is subdivided into subsections, each dedicated to a different type of web development programme (such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage etc). I only read the Frontpage bit and that is how far I got. Because by that time I knew everything I needed to build great websites!
The money I spent on the other books is wasted money. This book helped me tremendously, and in record time. I might put a link to my site in my "About You" area, so you can see for yourself. But the point is that I was able to create a functional website, with some nice features, within the span of a day or two, on Frontpage, with absolutely no prior experience. NO other book available could do this. David Karlins is a genius.
This is without a doubt the best (beginner's) book on web designing of all the ones I've seen. In fact, nothing else comes close. The funny thing is that this book was the cheapest of the bunch!