|
    |
ABOUT ME
I was going to colledge for electronics then, later that year I finished with my electronics school, but never quit building web sites and trying to learn and build better ones. I was building web sites for friends for free then, and buying books and learning as much as I could through them and discussion groups online. Then in 2003 with some pushing from my family and friends I decided to make the jump into the web design business. I had been looking at other web designers web sites and knew it was going to take me a long time to learn to do web pages like them. So it was then that I had to make a decision. I could continue to make pages by hand and learn as I go with the "Hands on" approach. Or buy a program like Netobjects and use it the rest of my life. Netobjects is a program that will do the coding for you, it comes with premade templates, it's a "Web Site Maker" in other words. Or take the long route and go back to school. Well I started this whole thing by learning to do it the right way, learn the codes and "Practice, Practice, Practice", so why change? I didn't want to be a person who took short cuts, and didn't want to be a person that depended on programs and editors the rest of my life. I wanted to learn to do things the right way. If something went wrong with a page I made I didn't want to have to rely on a program to fix it. So I headed back to school, "If your going to do something, do it RIGHT!". I mean, if you got hurt and wanted to go to court and get some money out of it, would you go into court and "wing it by yourself"? Or hire a Lawyer that got his degree through a correspondence course, or got his degree online? Or are you going to hire a lawyer that went to school and learned everything there is about the law and can do the BEST job for you? So I've been taking classes in web design since 2003, and ending in 2007, although I might take somemore scripting language classes in the future, you can never stop learning! Going back to school was the best decision I ever made. I learned so much there. More than I ever would've by just, "Winging it". Talking to my teachers and other students, some who had their own web design businesses was great. They could tell you what works in the REAL world because they have been doing it longer than me, some of my teachers since the 90's, and making good money at it. One big thing we learned in school is that it's better to be good than fast. Make your web sites at a good speed, but don't worry if you don't have it done in 3 days. I learned how to run the programs available and run them fast! Making graphics and other stuff. The teachers and other students always seem to find away to do things with the programs faster than if I would've just by doing it the way normal people would've. This can save time when building web sites, saving your clients money. But always doing it correctly, working smarter, not harder in other words. We learned that American web designers are considered to be the worst in the world. Why? Because they've fallen into whats called the fast food part of web design. Make it as fast as you can, forget about the quality of the work. This actually worked in the early and mid 90's. But in the late 90's computer prices started coming down, more businesses were getting them and putting more of their businesses on the internet. And with the computer browsers getting better and better the W3C started putting higher standards on the web sites. Other countries followed suit by raising their standards of web design. But the American designers seem to be stuck in that rut of getting the web site out there as fast as you can without thinking about the quality. That's one of the reasons why I'm glad I went to school. To learn things like that, things they don't talk about in the real world. So after a few years of learning as much as I could in school, and discussing it with other web designers I am now ready to open this business up and take what I've learned in school and try and make you the best website I can for the best price I can. One thing that has bugged me is the companies out there that charge over 1,000 dollars to make a website and make them using programs like Netobjects, a program you can buy for around $200.00 dollars. They give the real web designers a bad name. They call themselves web designers when their not designing anything at all, their just putting premade templates in that were made buy somebody else and calling them their own. If a company say's they can have a site up and running for you using costum graphics and no premade templates, no programs in other words and have it up a few day's, BEWARE!! Their charging you for something their not doing!! We use a combination of unique graphics and scripting ability to make a one of a kind web site that will make it stand out from the rest. We have actually seen some designers out there make a simple menu, then take a screen shot and image mapping to get it to work. All this because they don't know how to code the page correctly to make the menu work. This will work, but you lose some nice effects by doing it that way. Like mouse over effects where the buttons on the menu change color, or the links in other words. This makes for a nice looking web site, and leaves some people asking, I wonder how they did that? But some people still want to take those short cuts instead of doing the work that is needed. Some questions you will want to ask the your web design company is where they went to school, what programs their using to make your web site, how much actual work THEIR putting into it, and how much is premade buy a program they bought, and if their willing to pass that savings on to you? Another thing to ask is if their making their pages using the XHML standards set forth by the W3C. This is the language now being used all professional Web Designers, not the regular HTML language. Future browsers will ALL have to use this language, so if their saying that their codes are up to date and ready for future browsers and their NOT using this language, THEIR LYING! And ask them if they validate their pages using the W3C Validator. Anybody can learn the HTML language and build webpages and websites, but GOOD Web Developer will KNOW what it takes to make good webpages and Websites because he has gone to school and done the homework and knows what it takes to make the best pages for you. Pages that will stand the test of time. Now, is using a program to make your site wrong? Yes and no on that one. The programs you will want to use is a program like "MACROMEDIA'S DREAMWEAVER". Which is an Editor, and doesn't come with premade templates. This will put in the codes for you, but you will still have to design the page yourself. But above all, a GOOD Web Designer will still know how to code the page if he has too. Coding by hand can be an art in itself, but does take more time, so using a program as long as you still KNOW how to code the page is fine and helps speed things up. And validate your pages to make sure there up to code. The programs I use, or have is the Adobe & Macromedia Suite - version CS2, and all the program included in them. I've also taken classes in all of them to learn to use them properly. The program I use the most would be the Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop to make the graphics. And the Adobe Dreamweaver program. I also use the FTP Commander Pro, and a flash program called "Swish". If you have these programs you don't need any other to make your website and make one that stand out. I also use the, "W3C Validator" ("A validator is a tool that tells you what's wrong with your web site as far as the coding goes, according to the W3C rules that is"), to validate my pages TO MAKE SURE that my pages are all coded and up to date with the rules that the W3C has set for properly built webpages. I've gone through a lot of years of school to learn the correct way to build web sites. The graphic design course taught me what it takes to make your pages stand out from the rest and draw attetion to it. I learned that there are certain background colors and text colors that are hard to see together. I learned that if you use a certain color to much it can make people angry. And I learned just what it takes to make search engines work FOR you. Because the more people that see it, the better. Your web site is important to you and thus, important to us. I've seen a lot of companies come and go over the years. I've seen them charge a lot of money for what I thought wasn't a very good job. So I intend to try and make a difference that way. Offer good websites that people can afford. So please, give us a try, I know you won't be disappointed. Because the number one goal for us is to please you, the customer! Thanks for stopping by! Darin
|
Hello, My name is Darin Loken, and I am the founder and head designer of "TK
WEB DESIGNS". I built my first webpage back in 1998. It was pretty
simple, using the basic HTML language. I started out on webtv, but went
to a PC a couple of years later. Soon I was busy helping people on webtv via
email, I was getting around 70 emails aday back then. So to make things
easier on myself, I made a website to help the Webtv people out and opened it in 1999. Soon
that site grew to over 50 pages covering everything that a Webtv'er
would need to know, it also won me almost 80 
