Hi everyone. Im pretty new to this website design thing. I have alot of experience in graphic design, but not real familiar with web design.

I started a new business selling golf trophies and awards and Im trying to create the webpage.

Here is what I have so far:

www.awardsandbeyond.com

If you click on trophies on the top, then click on the trophy on the top right, you can see my 3 pages I'v created.

My plan was to just create the 3 initial pages (home, category, then product page), then basically just duplicate it throughout the site changing images and text.

Here is where Im stuck. On my 2nd page (trophy page). Id like to add a navigation bar to the left side kinda like what you see here:

http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/fa...goryId=2273505

I will not have as many categories and descriptions to narrow it down like they do, but I want that look.

I have no idea how to do this. Id love some help and/or a link on how to do it. Im using Frontpage and GoLive9. I have Dreamweaver, but its way beyond me.

Thank you ahead of time.

one more thing, lets narrow it down to just trophies for now to make it easy. Lets say I end up with 100 different trophies, 75 of them come in male and female. 50 come in silver, 50 in gold, 80 are under $10, etc. etc..

The only way I know to do it is make a million different HTML pages with just those searches. Say 75 males, Id make a 75male.html page and have that link go there, then a 25female.html page, etc...

I know this isnt the correct way, just do not know how. Id love to know, thanks

I take it your selling trophies? If so, your best bet would be to learn Php AND MySQL. When used together, they will allow you to create a website which will utilize a database where you will be able to store the information about the trophies such as the item #, price, and other pertinent information.

In a nutshell, using php & mysql will eliminate the need to create all the .html pages. As a side note, this will not be an over-night success in the learning department. But if your determined to get it, you will. Also note, that if your proficient in learning basic programming you could easily do what your trying to do with html as well, but you will have to explore to find out which way works for YOU the best.

For more information regarding php and mysql. Visit these links:

Php Website
MySQL Website

Hope That Helps

I would have to agree with Brian. The only thing is you probably don't have time to learn PHP and MySQL, because it will probably take years to get a firm enough understanding of them to make a functional CMS. So, I say use an existing CMS. Such as Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, or something like that. They're professional, easy to use, and you don't really need to be a programmer to use them effeciently.

- Steve

you are correct, i will be selling golf trophies, etc..

you are also correct, I am a busy guy. I do not have hours and hours a day to learn these techniques. In fact, I really dont even know what Im doing now. Basically Im just creating JPG and BMP in Photoshop/Corel Draw and making tables in Frontpage and filling the tables. Its working so far, but I know there are alot better ways to do it...

On my trophy page, it just looks too plain. Thats why I was thinking the navigation bar on the left like on the dicks sporting good site. Plus if I end up with 100-200 trophies, it would be nice for customer to narrow down their searches...

http://www.awardsandbeyond.com/trophies.htm

would it be something someone who knew what they were doing could do pretty easily? I wouldnt mind paying if someone could do it fairly cheap. Then would it be something I could "copy" when I move on from trophies to my Plaques pages, etc??

I would go one of these ways:

1. Use an existing open source CMS such as Joomla or similar, as suggested. There is a learning curve, but nowhere near as long as learning PHP and MySQL to build a CMS from scratch.

2. Hire a freelance designer/programmer to do some custom work for you. You can get the look and functionality you want for less than $200 (maybe a lot less) if you outsource the work to India, or another good quality, inexpensive place to get things like this done. Just search Google for something like "hire a freelance programmer" or similar, and you will find many sites where you can post your project and programmers from all over the world can bid on it. I have used getafreelancer.com and rentacoder.com and can recommend both.

The only reason I didn't say to go with an open source solution, (which I should have) was because they're widely used and even though they are easy to setup and easy to use for your visitors, I find that creating a new idea is the way to go. Some people get tired of looking at the same old ideas.

Good luck in your ventures.
-Brian

I would start by switching to either oscommerce or another free open source e-commerce script that you can simply install on your website.

I'd make sure they make it easy to use themes or plugins so you can make your own template file for your website design.

You will have more full control with your website and more functions. The way your doing it you would have to create pages by yourself and manually update every page to get things working.

By installing a script it will already have all those tasks for you.

You can PM me if you need more help. Looks good so far keep up the good work.

sent PM