racheldorman.co.uk

Almost all previous attempts to start my own website have been a complete disaster. I find myself thinking things like "This is too much hard work", "I want more design contol", and "I don't know why I'm even bothering, nobody's going to look at it anyway", followed by lots of sulking because I can't get my own way.

This time hasn't been any different.

Still, I'm determined to make a go of it this time, particularly as Iestyn has kindly paid for my domain name and web hosting.

His advice was to start with a blog and build from there. Not really what I wanted to hear; even though I haven't really decided on a specific purpose for this website, it certainly wasn't ever intended to be a blog. But already I'm warming to the idea and seeing the benefits of doing things this way. He works in the web industry and I don't; no doubt I'll get more done if I pay attention to the people who know what they're talking about instead of letting myself getting carried away with creative ideas.

This is the first time I've used professional tools to create a website: freeparking.co.uk for the domain name; 34sp.com for hosting; Movable Type; FileZilla. Admittedly they're a bit harder to grasp than Geocities was, but the benefits of using 'proper' web tools are immediately obvious and I'm already gaining confidence using them. However, despite Iestyn's nagging, I'm still choosing to write HTML by hand in Notepad instead of using Movable Type's own interface.