The WebMeister Cometh

Sorry, my legion of avid fans (I wish!), it's been a few days since I last blogged. This has been occasioned by a combination of lack of stimulation, aged parent giving me a few worries and a new mistress by the name of DreamWeaver.

A couple of years ago, I decided to purchase a domain name and some server space with the object of making a small fortune by buying and selling paper money. The idea of creating a website appealed to me and I had visions of creating a tasteful site with hordes of customers avidly absorbing my knowledge of banknotes and shoving each other out of the way in their rush to buy my wares. I had the stock, I had the idea and all I needed was one thing: the ability to actually create the website.

DreamWeaver is the industry standard in web creation software and I accordingly obtained a copy. Tasos, a Greek geek programmer friend of mine uploaded my first page which merely showed the name of the company and the terse comment "Website under construction". He eschewed DreamWeaver and gaily prattled on about HTML, ftp protocols and other such strange expressions and I cannot refrain from using the expression "It was all Greek to me". Anyway, that has been where it's stayed until recently. Occasionally, I would open DreamWeaver and gaze mystified at the screen. I bought books about website design, researched the internet and lit candles to St BillGates but all to no avail. I couldn't even work out how to upload, let alone design a website.

These last few days, I reached the stage where I needed to sort it.Playing around with HTML in the blog had fired my appetite and I had to resolve this big frustration so therefore attacked it with a will. I got a general grasp on the principles but still, whenever I tried to establish communication between my computer and the web, a dialogue box would pop up saying words to the effect of "Ha, sucker, cocked it up yet again". All this changed last night when I found a wonderful tutorial which took me step by step through the process and, at approximately 2am, I became a fully-fledged web site!

OK, at the moment I am merely playing around with templates and the rudimentaries of web design and it's all totally primitive but I've made a start. The desire to devote the site to paper money has diluted somewhat so I want it to be a melange of interests as well as, hopefully, an eventual means of making a few bob so the current domain name of www.papermoneyworld.co.uk seems a tad misleading. Apparently, I can purchase another domain name as well and both will lead to the same site but what other name do I choose?

I've checked what is available and I can have bertiesworld.com, limellama.co.uk or even "my own name".co.uk but I want something a bit special, combining sophistication, pazazz and an indication of my own strange world. Any suggestions gratefully received. Obviously, I can set different tabs for the different sections once I have mastered some more website techniques but this is going to take a while. I have DVDs of some 14 hours of DreamWeaver CS3 training to work through first so, if you are thinking of checking the website, don't be put off by the crudity of it at the moment. In the words of a certain Icelandic gentleman: "I've started so I'll finish".

The WebMeister Cometh!