Adding to ASP.NET template for beginners

[Clare]

Hi. I started posting a while back, when I was hoping to write a new Club website from scratch. I have since been given a lot of help from a professional web designer, who wrote much of the site in ASP.NET and then "borrowed" a template and colour scheme (a.f.a.i.k) to suit the Club.

So that I can add the content, he put in a WYSIWYG front end, and I have been able to get going a lot faster than perhaps I would from scratch. However, this is now presenting new problems!

For instance I feel that I don't have much control over how DDA compatible I can make certain aspects. I can try to go in and add alt text to the pics, for example, but I am not sure if that is going to be enough.

Also, I am wary of fiddling with the ASP.NET software system the designer got me to upload. He enthused at great length about how we could add themes, to change the appearance for special occasions etc. I am just dreading breaking the whole site by putting a character wrong somewhere, and not knowing what I did afterwards.

Finally, I want to add a button design, but again the whole DDA thing coupled with the template system is putting me off. I freely admit I know next to nothing. Is there any good (specific) advice you can point me to?

BTW The website is at www.vwt2oc.com. It is far too wordy at the minute, and a few articles I uploaded need the pics adjusting for width, etc but the ideas are starting to come together.

Just in case you think I'm a complete fraud for not writing the site from scratch - in mitigation, I will be writing my own personal website sometime soon, which will definitely be all my own work. I got help from a designer because the site needed to be up and running far faster than I was ever going to manage to learn enough to make it work!

[itcn]

The only way you're going to learn ASP.NET or any coding is by trial and error. Here's what I would do (and did, when I started out):
1) Backup everything. Download all the files to your local drive and make a backup copy.
2) Start playing around with the code, making small changes one at a time, upload them, and see what happens.
3) If you break anything, just upload the backup copy or last known good version of the page.