Web Site Design for eCommerce

That's the title of the next class I'm taking. I believe this is the first time that the technical college has offered this course over the Internet. I hope the instructor has had enough time to plan the assignments. The reason I say that is because they didn't have the name of the instructor listed until a few days before the class was scheduled to start. I have taken one Internet course already with this instructor, so at least now I know a little of what to expect. The class didn't fill up like some of the others, still four seats left. I suspect it was because there wasn't an instructor listed earlier. I'm not taking the classes in any specific order. The web site design for business course did fill up. But I wanted to take this one because I'm hoping that they will be using Dreamweaver as the software tool. All my web sites are done in Dreamweaver, so it would be nice to get the training using that application.

Consulting for Dummies

That would be an interesting title for a book. But no one would read it because the whole point of being a consultant is that you are an expert at... something. There are things you can do that will make youself a more successful consultant. The measure of success in consulting is how much your clients are willing to pay for your advice. I know I've set the bar pretty low by calling my business Budget Homepage. But being able to help one of my clients with a technical problem keeps it interesting for me. With my background in CAD design, I often wonder if I should focus my business solely in that direction. I like working with machine shops. I know the business very well. It feels like such a waste to abandon my years of experience using computer aided drawing software. But I can't go back to endless hours designing and detailing those tiny parts. So what do I do now?... become a consultant. If you own a machine shop, I know the perfect place to host your web site.

BHP web site finished

This past weekend I uploaded all the files to my web host so the BHP web site is ready for viewing. It's not going to win any design awards, but I've seen worse. I also completed the JavaScript order form that I was working on for my employer. It uses arrays to keep track of the equipment needed for each speaker and then populates check boxes based on which speaker the user selects. Then it sends email back to me with their equipment order when they hit the submit button. The only challenge with that one was getting the check boxes to change dynamically and getting the email formatted and sent to more than one person with a text string appended to the subject. Those are the kind of problems that I like to working on. Now I'm looking for my next challenge.