Frustration of the Self Taught

I'm a closet computer geek. Most of what I know I taught myself. My boss at church thinks he has a gem because I'm not scared to try anything and he doesn't have to pay a Computer Technology salary and yet gets the benefits. Boy oh boy. Right now I think he'd be better off spending the big bucks.

A little over a year ago we decided I would teach myself web design and create a web site for church. Ok, I'm game. So I research the software and (stupidly) picked the one that looked to be the easiest to learn and as it turned out was also the cheapest. Cool! I got myself a trusty self help book and I was quickly on my way to our very own web site.

Now fast forward to the present. Last week I did my usual web updates and poof - no way Jose'. It wasn't going to work. So I called my web hoster (is that a word?) I was told they had done some tweaking and that the extensions used by Front Page would no longer work. Something about security. I'm not too happy, but what can I do? So I try to tweak things, I fail, and the web page is down.

Sigh.

I might mention here that the other mistake I made was I chose a fellow parishioner's small business to host the web page. I spent time off and on all week trying to tweak things so I could get ANYTHING on the web and it just wouldn't work. FINALLY they call me back today and tell me that Front Page will no longer work. They claim that it won't work on any provider's site any longer, not just theirs. I'm having trouble believing this, but I don't know whether it is true or not. After biting my tongue, I finally let loose and gave them an earful as an unhappy customer only can.

They knew they were going to make these changes. They knew customers (not just me) would be impacted. It would have been so simple to have sent out a notice, email, made a telephone call. Something.

So......

I am now back to the drawing board.

Here is what I bought. I almost went with Dreamweaver the first go around but it is a much more dynamic program than Front Page (which is a nice way of saying it will do more but will be more difficult to learn).

And....

I bought this to go with it.

I almost bought the Dreamweaver for Dummy book, but that word Dummy... hmmmm... I ain't no Dummy!

This book boldly claims I will learn Dreamweaver in 24 hours. Maybe I can take them to court when that doesn't happen....

Anyway, wish me luck.

I'm going to need it!