Behind The Scenes

Come backstage and see how JGO is built and maintained.

First,take a peek into Bob's toolkit

By Bob Patterson
I had been debating for a long time whether or not to write on this subject. After all, this is a jazz guitar site, not a web design site. However, I have gotten a lot of emails from curious folks out there who wonder if I really do all the work on this site (I do) and if I could give them any pointers. Well, I think this is a great time to take the opportunity to talk about this site and perhaps how you can make your site a little better.

HTML

Boy, is that ever a four-letter word! Most amateur webgeeks and even some professional ones shy away from coding the pages by hand. I learned HTML from the very beginning when this site was born. For the most part I used simple text editors to write the code (SimpleText on the Mac, Wordpad on the PC). Most hard-core coders do it that way. I have a teeny tiny programming background, having written stuff in dBase, BASIC and Pascal, so I'm a bit particular about how my pages are coded.

I've been using Wordpad until recently when I discovered a program from Allaire called HomeSite 4.0. Now, JGO is written with this program. This has all the ease of the "wysiwyg" (what you see is what you get) programs like PageMill or Front Page, but it doesn't "pollute" your HTML code with a bunch of weird reformatting or tags that you didn't want. It's a text based editor but with advanced site management features. There are similar programs out there like Hot Dog, but I really love this program and recommend it highly. Of course you can write a great looking page with any of the programs I mentioned (Netscape Editor isn't bad either) but if you're persnickety about your HTML, check out HomeSite.

Graphics

Well, there are two ways you can go here: the freebie easy way or the high-dollar powerful way.

The freebie way first. There's this program from Jasc Software called Paint Shop Pro. You can download a free version from their site. This is a great graphics program that is easy to use. There are tons of neat effects that will give your pages a professional shine. If you like the program you can buy the full version for not a lot of money. For newbies to computer artwork this is the way to go.

For those of you with more dollars than sense (not me) and absolutely have to go to the next level, there's really only one choice: Adobe Photoshop. This is the industry standard computer graphics program designed primarily for print media but used for the Internet as well. Everything from this website to most of the magazines in print to the computer screens in Star Trek were done with this program. This thing is so powerful, I've used it since verson 2.5 (5.02 is the newest) and I'm still learning it. It'll cost you several hundred bucks, but believe me, it's worth every penny.

There are two other titles from Adobe that are perfect for the web designer: ImageReady and ImageStyler. ImageReady optimizes your graphics for the Web, making them lean and mean size-wise while retaining most or all of their original image quality. And it makes creating animated GIFs a snap. I've been doing a lot of the ad banners you see on Guitar Base and here, and ImageReady has made my life easier. ImageStyler has a lot of the awesome effects in Photshop but in an easy to use package. A lot of things that take several steps to do in Photoshop are quick and easy in this program. You can even create Javascript mouse rollover effects without writing a bit of code. (A "rollover" is when an image on a web page changes when you roll the mouse cursor over it without clicking. You see them all over the Web these days.)

If you want your graphics to retain high quality when printed, you're going to have to create an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. That's what I use for some of the lessons so you can print our the music at high quality. I move my original Finale file into Adobe PageMaker (you can use any desktop publishing program) and save it as a PostScript file, then open that file in Adobe Acrobat Distiller to convert it to PDF. That makes the file usable on any kind of computer or printer without losing an ounce of quality.

Of course all the graphics programs in the world won't do a bit of good if you don't know how to use them. There are tons of books out there on all these programs (The Photoshop WOW! Book helped me a great deal) and there are loads of graphics-related websites. Gather knowledge; teach yourself, ask questions, look at websites you like and dissect them. That's the best way to get ideas for designing your own images for the Web.

Music/Audio

This is a music-centric site, so I have considerations that others don't. I create the music examples in the online lessons with a music program called Finale. I'm still using version 3.7 but it meets my needs. Finale is the "industry standard" but it's really hard to learn. There are easier programs like Encore or Score that produce output that looks great on the Web. Of course you have to change your music file to a GIF or JPEG to put it on a web page. In Finale I convert my file to TIFF format, take it into Photoshop and turn it into a grayscale GIF. Voila!

Audio is another question. Audio files are huge; ten seconds of reasonable quality audio can take almost a megabyte in size. Most computers come with simple utilities that convert source audio to either .WAV or .AIFF format. Either of these is fine for the Web. I've recently been using Real Encoder to change my audio files to RealAudio. It makes the file much smaller without sacrificing too much sound quality and it allows the file to stream (begin playing while it's still downloading). I like the compromise. Of course, you can always use MIDI files. They're ridiculously small, but use your computer's sound card to make the sound. There's no actual audio being heard. Whichever option works best for you is fine.

Please bear in mind that when you put a sound file on your web page you are "publishing" that piece of sound. If it's copyrighted material you are legally infringing on it if you use it without permission. If you think ASCAP or BMI don't pay any attention to the Internet you're wrong. Be warned.

Site Management

Once you have your pages written, your graphics done and snazzed up and your audio files ready to go, you have to get your site on an Internet server somewhere for other people to enjoy your work. There are quite a few FTP programs that make it easy. Mac users have a great program called Fetch. It's free and simple to use. PC users are familiar with WS_FTP, a program I used for a long time. Of course if you maintain a large site (JGO has about 200 pages and 300 images) and update it on a regular basis, you need a program that can help you keep it organized. Adobe makes such a program called SiteMill. It keeps track of your files, noting which are the oldest or newest, checks your links and cleans up your HTML where necessary. It's quite a good program. I use a nifty tool called Crystal Site Updater. With the click of one button, it will upload only the latest files; each into their proper subfolders and make sure the version of your website is identical to the version you have backed up in your computer (You do have a full backup, don't you?). It's effective and simple to use -- just like me. ;-)

A final word

JGO takes a lot of work to keep running, but I enjoy it. It keeps my computer skills sharp and lets me try new design ideas. And I hear that some people like it okay. Let me tell you, as long as you keep coming, I'll keep cranking out the pages! And when you have your new website done, let me know. I'll be happy to visit.