Hello from Hawaii

[Acorn]

Hello!

I'm not a small business owner, nor am I expecting to be one in the near future, so what brings me here?

I'm a recent college graduate with a degree in Computer Science and Math and a few years in the Armed Services under my belt, and I have a small background in networking (some servers, switches, routers, email, etc.). Apparently I impressed my department's faculty enough that I was just hired as a lecturer for Computer Science at my old university. (yay, a job!) And so, I've been assigned to teach a few courses that unfortunately, I've never taken. This is fine for some of my classes, since they gave me enough material to work with that I can figure it out, but there's this one sticky course: CS 300 - "Web Site Management".

It's like this course is half-developed. There is no textbook - my students will be getting 3-ring binders and a lot of handouts from me. It's outdated - the slides and diagrams tell students that normally you use a hub (not a switch) to connect end devices to the network. And the saddest part is that in the department, I'm the one who knows the most about the stuff this course is supposed to cover (and I'm still going through a crash course in CSS and Javascript for another course that I'm teaching). I don't know enough about web site management to even know what topics are important enough to cover.

So that's why I'm here. I want to read what you guys have to say as you are actively trying to set up real web sites for real businesses (or just for fun) with real goals in mind. I want to see what kinds of choices you have to make about how you implement a web server and apply security measures to it and get it noticed by the big search engines and whether you choose to use Drupal or Joomla or to make something up on your own. I'm here to learn very quickly (and hopefully be able to ask a bunch of questions too without being too obnoxious).

So, hello!

[vangogh]

Welcome to the forum Acorn. You wouldn't be the first person here who doesn't own a business and isn't planning on owning one. You might have picked a good forum even if it is about small business. There are a few web designers here, myself included. Feel free to ask any questions you have. I'll be happy to answer and I'm sure others will too. I don't know that you'll get exact answers. We all probably do things different ways at times and questions about things like which content management system we use often come down to preference more than anything else. Still we'll do our best to answer so ask away.

Thanks for joining the community.

[Gabe]

Hello and welcome to the forum. What's your military background? I spent 8 years in the Marine Corps before transitioning into tech, so I'm curious about your experience.

[Acorn]

Thanks for the welcome, guys.

I'm in the local Air National Guard, been in for about 7 years now. It's been very good to me - lots of experiences the average person doesn't get to have at my age.

[cbscreative]

Welcome. I do suggest you post your questions in the Website Management section since we have one with exactly that title. You'll get better responses there.

[Acorn]

I will do exactly that, thanks.