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treswrld · Guest

Hello Fellow VOs,

I'm looking for a free/cheap web design tool for my personal VO website. Can any of you recommend a good tool that will allow me to easily upload and edit media files (.jpg, .gif, .mp3, etc.)? Thanks in advance for your input.

Cheers,

Trey

louzucaro · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:27 pm Post subject:

Uploading and editing are generally done separately.

A Content Management System will allow you control over various parts of your website, and some of them include basic editing features for images. Many hosting companies offer such things with varying degrees of success as far as ease-of-use and flexibility go.

However for audio and video files, generally you want to have edited those prior to including them on your website. The file sizes, processing power used to manipulate them, etc., are usually prohibitive when talking about online editing tools with any real power.

Of course there are exceptions, but since you're looking for cheap / easy, you're probably going to be looking at more rudimentary tools.
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Lou Zucaro
http://www.voicehero.com

"Well, yeah, there's my favorite leaf!"

Deirdre · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:34 pm Post subject:

Trey,

Who's your web host?
There are ways to sort and upload your files thru your host as well as easy site-setup tools with most hosting accounts.

It is worth saying here that a website is your presentation of yourself to the world, and "presentation is product" as Mike Carta says.
It's swell to get something up to make sure your demos and other media are handy to link to, but a cheaply made website can be worse than no website at all.
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DBCooperVO.com
IMDB

Lizden · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:36 pm Post subject:

What Lou & DB said is abolutely true!

That said:
Free website creation tool: SeaMonkey: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
(Use the "composer" utility)

Free sound editing software Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Uploadingto/having someone host your site isn't free, you need to have a hosting account with a web hosting company (GoDaddy and the like) to upload your website & audio TO, and that's not free

Have fun!

Liz
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Liz de Nesnera O.A.V. ~ Livin' The VO Dream!
English/French Bilingual VO w/ ISDN
HireLiz.com / liz@hireliz.com

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 10:01 pm Post subject:

I blogged about this a while ago:

http://myvoicetalent.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/need-free-software-try-the-creative-sweet/
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Jeff
http://JeffreyKafer.com
Voice-overload Web comic: http://voice-overload.com

brianforrester · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 7:33 am Post subject:

It may not be free, and cheap is always a relative term, but an easy to use web based interface, monthly hosting and e-mail included, newsletter and blog capabilities, e-commerce ready is worth checking out.

www.i-toolkit.com

I've used them for a couple of websites where the end-user needed something pretty much anybody in the office could maintain without having to come back to me with questions.

Their support was great. I have no affiliation to them, I just speak from first hand knowledge at the ease of use.

If you don't know anything about web design, either look at a product similar to this or pay someone who does... it'll just cost you more in the long-run if you bugger it up on your own. A poorly designed website is simply a black hole on the internet, you may see lots of initial traffic, but once they hit your first page they'll be gone forever!

Good Luck!
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Brian Forrester Voice Overs
www.brianforrester.com
brian@brianforrester.com
778.668.5715

jrodriguez315 · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 1:12 pm Post subject:

Great topic and great post Kafer. I like that creativesweets thing.
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Joe Rodriguez, Bilingual Voice Actor | The Voiceover Thespian Blog

treswrld · Guest

Thanks guys for all of your suggestions. I'll be checking into them all. DB, I agree with you that a cheap site is worse than no site at all. It's why I'm waiting to launch my site until I am absolutely proud of it. Right now I'm experimenting with a few looks. It turns out I only need a web page editor. My .wav and .mp3 files will of course be edited before hand on Adobe Audition. I guess I could have beem more clear in my original post. My host is Microsoft's free Office Live service. But their web designing tool is very basic and leaves much to be desired. I can't even find a way to upload audio files using it. I am not an artists. So I'm having to rely on the basic web page templates that come loaded with a web/html editor. But now I'm thinking it may be worth my while to just hire someone to do it for me. Wish me luck.

-Trey

Deirdre · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 6:46 am Post subject:

It is as wise man who said:

bobsouer · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 9:55 am Post subject:

michelleann · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 11:26 am Post subject:

I just used NVU to design my e-postcards. It's very much like Dreamweaver and it's free.

http://www.nvu.com/
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Deirdre · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:31 pm Post subject:

Thank you Bob, you wild man.

Other possibilities were mentioned in this thread:

http://www.vo-bb.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6078
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DBCooperVO.com
IMDB

glittlefield · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:36 pm Post subject:

If you're feeling really brave, you could try Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 Express. It includes the Visual Web Developer, which has a bit of a learning curve, but I've found it very handy in debugging code.
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Greg Littlefield
VO-BB Member #59

bobsouer · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:53 pm Post subject:

ronharpervoice · Club 300 Joined: 23 Jan 2007 Posts: 347 Location: Ohio