If you're interested in creating and maintaining websites

If you are a regular visitor to Shed 18 you will know that I have been selling a great range of software for Webmasters.

However, I have now given up selling this software although I have retained it for my own use; I believe the software is excellent but have decided to move my business in a different direction and concentrate on information products concerning the various ways of building websites.

When I built my first website I had to learn to program in HTML or pay a huge price for software that was probably harder to get to grips with than HTML.

Things have moved forward so much since those early days. HTML is a language that is moving forward constantly and is now often used in conjunction with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

Other languages have come into greater use and are being used more and more in the construction of websites. Basically, HTML provides a static website, baner, email or what have you. CSS does nothing about this; simply orders the HTML to produce consistent appearance of the website.

But many other languages have appeared or have been upgraded over the last years that can add 'bells and whistles' to a site. These are PHP, javascript, Java, virtual basic. There are many more, each having it's own enthusiastic following and each provide a slightly different function.

A relatively recent development has been the reactive website that takes note of which sections you look at. Two examples are Amazon and Ebay. If you look at a section on Amazon about cooking utensils, in their next emails you will be advised of special deals on cooking utensils or give information that they believe will interest you.

So where does this leave us if we don't have great financial reserves to pay skilled programmers to produce our website?

Because the advances in programming languages is making these all-dancing, all-singing websites the work of skilled personnel in various disciplines working together.

But worry not! The best website is still the one with good content that is easy to read and navigate around. People are looking for information all the time and if you have specialised knowledge and handle things right, people will read and respect your site even if it's completely static.

Newspapers aren't interactive yet most people still buy them because they fill a need. If your website fills a need it will flourish.

So this is what I want for this website; to fill a need for those folk who want to find out how to build different types of website that will attract attention.