Mary Demuth may indeed have a wonderful website, but when I tried to check it out, I encountered two problems. First, it doesn’t load completely in Firefox. Second, from what little did load, it’s way too graphic heavy. I realize that’s the direction the Internet is going, but, living at the far end of a VERY rural phone line, for me it sucks. My average connect is at 24k, occasionally up to 28.8 on a good day. This leads back to your suggestion from a few days ago to keep it clean for a fast load. And, yeah, FLASH sucks even harder, but for the reasons Pamela mentioned above. Remind me of the old saying, “Think Big, but Keep it Simple.

I visit different websites on a regular basis and I can’t find any fault with Mary’s website. Matter of fact, I have seen much, much worse.

But then, Mary is from Texas, and after I saw my first Roy Rogers movie 42 years ago, I have always held Texans in high esteem.

BTW, there’s another option for blog hosting. I write my family blog on Blogger but then Blogger posts (publishes) it to my own website via FTP. All the blog content files live on my site; I can back them up, etc. Let me know if you want me to write down the specifics.

I’ve had a website for a few years now (not one with my name, however). It is for our agate digs. I also use part of our space for posting my fanfiction stories. When we first bought our domain name it was through the man we hosted with. He purchased it in his name. Perhaps this is what the builder of Pamala’s website did. In that case, he does own the site. She needs to see if she can get this changed if the other party will agree to it.

I’m with you. This isn’t right. Fortunately, I was able to transfer our domain name to me when I changed to a cheeper hosting service that gave us a lot more for our money.

Open a browser window and enter the ftp:// address to your website. You’ll need the password and ftp address, to log in. Keep that window open on your machine.

Open a 2nd window with the folder where your files for upload are located.

To upload or download, simply drag and drop the files from one window to another.

Also, at sites like GoDaddy, they have an FTP program, available from the control panel of a user’s website, that works quite well.

Then you just configure the controls, and you have a great blogging platform right on your site.

Pamela, check your domain registration right away. Chances are you do own the domain but the web designer owns the Flash files. In which case your choices are (1) negotiate to purchase your site or (2) cut your losses and have another designer (if you’re not up to doing it yourself) produce a new site, with the understanding that you want to maintain it yourself.

Otherwise, too many webmasters end up holding their clients’ websites hostage, sites the clients have paid for.

And it may not always be intentional. I give my clients a sheet with all their access info and tell them it’s in case I get hit by a bus

Pamela, or anybody else. I just started out doing website designs (and re-designs). My price is great because I am starting low AND you convert dollar to South African Rand so my hourly rate works out low.

I think a web designer should tell a client how they design their site and why. This should be based on what a client wants - even if they can’t say it in the right tech speak. Maybe somebody should write a novel about this.

The evil website designer vs the intrepid site owner. “I’m holding your site hostage and my Flash is loaded, and I’m just itching to upload it, boohahaha!”

Thank you for this discussion, Randy. It’s got me moving to make a change. I own Dreamweaver software, so may very well have to design a new site from scratch. I’ll keep you updated, if any other posters want to know the resolution, to beware of future problems for themselves.

You can’t go wrong with KISS (Keep it Simple, Sweetie!) There are lots of free templates for download and many sites help with web design. One I particularly like is Webmonkey.com

If you are a complete newbie to all this web design stuff, you can buy a domain and hosting from wordpress.com for $15 a year, and then work your way into more of the technical details as you go along. That way, you get your domain name, and you get a lot of control over the design features and other widgets that you can’t tweak with a free hosted web.