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TiggersBounce

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Everything posted by TiggersBounce

  1. I don't use a CMS because I only work on my own site. But, I know people at a local office who benefit from a CMS in that they can update the content on their own company website, a site that was designed and developed by a web design firm. Now, when the client company has any new courses, seminars, news releases or other time-sensitive information, it can be posted on-line quickly ... no more e-mailing the web developer asking if they would please add such'n'such and then the back'n'forth with e-mails to proof things before even minor updates went live. The client is very happy, being able to have some direct control over content. I'm sure the developer is also happy, having delegated daily maintenance back to the client .. now they can go off and do new creative work. btw.. the CMS they use is Joomla. It was recommended to me when I was asking about their site .. and it must be fairly transparent because they didn't know it as a CMS. To them it was just the website program.
  2. The monthly fee is pretty cheap and I'm sure it does cover the cost. If you are a real paranoid like me, you'd see something interesting. They register and own the domain name. They assert that should you choose to leave their hosting and take the name, you can buy it out but the cost isn't specified. That would be fine if you have a small site that isn't an e-business. But they offer all the goodies like PHP, bulletin boards, shopping carts, secure services, etc. Suppose your site and business grow, and 5 years from now you have a large business that needs to get its own servers ... then they set the buy-out price for the domain name. Want to bet it is as much as the traffic will bear plus 10%? they have all the traffic stats, the SEO and ranking info ... to them it's an investment. Invest in 10,000 penny stocks and maybe 10 will become valuable properties .. that they own .. lock, stock and BB. And if you don't buy it, they'll sell it to someone else. My friend can't stay clear. The site has been hosted for over a year. They'll just have to cross that bridge later. Me, I own both my domain names.
  3. The hosting service offers free domain registration, which they will renew automatically as long as you have your account in good standing. Since they register the domain name, they own it and it is non-transferable unless you choose to buy it from them. Thanks for suggesting a validation. I looked at the code, saw it was messy and stopped there. Only 67 errors and 7 warnings for a HTML 4.01 Transitional page ... that's not too scary is it??? I suppose that answers the question about the worth of Soholaunch. I think I'll suggest my friend contact a professional ....
  4. I have been asked to take over updating of a website belonging to a friend. It is their business site, but the person who did the original work pretty much abandoned it. The site itself is pretty basic information about their small business, no flash, shopping cart or boards or anything beyond my own meager talents. But the site is hosted with free domain registration for life (as long as you pay your bill each month). And the development was done with their promotional free software and templates... Soholaunch. So what is Soholaunch like? I have tried to find some reviews, and didn't get much. I did find something funny ... on a webhost's forum, someone asked for help with Soholaunch Pro .. and was told by a webhost rep to Why have a Forum for your customers if you don't use it to help? Anyways, has anyone used Soholaunch and is it worth learning just for some occasional and minor updates for which I likely won't get paid..?
  5. I'm going to take a shot at answering this, to see if I understand it right. If I'm wrong, a correction will be appreciated. Given you can only use an ID once in a page, you can use a class as many times as you want. So if you have a div you want to style the same 2 or more times in one page, give it a class. If you have a div(ie #menubar) that you use once only, give it a ID. Hope I got this right...
  6. I looked at using NVu a while back when getting started on CSS. Being a long-time Composer user it looked like the right fit. But I found out that the project has been discontinued, due to Netscape being discontinued. No new support, no new development to follow for NVU. Check on Wikipedia. I am using KompoZer which is also free, and is a HTML/CSS editor with a solid relationship with Mozilla/Gecko. I have very limited DreamWeaver experience (used it once). I looked at a template and was surprised to see For what I do, which is my own site and some occasional favours for friends, the free aspect of KompoZer is more important than extra features and high productivity. There are some things you have to hand-code in NotePad, because KompoZer doesn't have a menu choice. It is also annoying that the CaScadeS CSS editor likes to purge all comments from the CSS file, so if you want to markup your work it erases. Great for tight, compact file size but lousy if you like to leave notes. So KompoZer isn't perfect either. You get what you pay for. It does one nice thing ... it creates pages that validate great if you don't go skylarking about adding your own stuff in the view. hth
  7. Sometimes, due to the buffering/history thing, you can use the reload/refresh button on the browser to update the view to see the changes. If that doesn't work, then clear history and troubleshoot from there. Maybe you typed .hmtl after editing, and it didn't over-write ... a good reason not to keep switching file extensions when there is no need. Mistakes happen.
  8. What Andrea is saying is that you can't double-click on an HTML file to open it in Notepad, as Windows opens .htm & .html files in a browser as a default setting. The same way it opens .doc in Word, not in Notepad even though both are essentially text editors. From Explorer, you could right-click and say Open With ... then select Notepad. Or as Andrea said, start Notepad first and then Open, pick the folder, then select All Files to display the .html files, then click the file you want to open. hth
  9. I just redesigned my site, going from a 2 yr old table based layout to CSS. I didn't see any ranking loss on Google, and the new content (those few lines they give in the search results) was appearing within 1 week of being uploaded to the server without me doing anything. That means it was re-indexed pretty quick.
  10. Be careful with iframes. They have limitations as I have discovered. They don't validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict, so use a Transitional doctype when creating the page. The iframe is ignored on most Blackberry portable devices. A minor problem for me since many of my customers use a Blackberry, minimized because the ifame content was non-critical information, just a bonus feature.
  11. mixing em's and px's ... background-position:22em 8px; ?? wis that the problem?
  12. This makes me think I don't need Kindergarten Web design ... I need Pre-School Web Design .... you Beginner's are wayyyyy over my head.
  13. cookies and frame based forwarding is way beyond me .. and I am a Beginner ... as in Beginner's Web Design ... which is where we are ... maybe I am too Beginner to be here? is there a Kindergarten Web design for me?
  14. As an alternate to using the file>save page as command (which I don't like because it saves all the images, ads, etc in the same folder) In your browser, View > Page Source Edit > Select All Ctrl+C Open Notepad Ctrl+V Save as .. all files ... thepagename.htm on your computer. Now you have all the HTML saved, without all the images and things that you don't always need just to edit text. Now you can edit it yourself using a program of your choice. Or you can use the File>Open File command in your browser to view the page while you make changes in Notepad. Another trick is that you can open .css files in a browser window too. Just get the url location from the page source view, copy into the navigation thingie (http://www.whatever.com/css/somefile.css is what it may be) in the browser, then follow the same copy technique. Now you have the css saved, and if you duplicate the folder structure and location it will be found and display right. BTW ... nothing intrinsically wrong with WYSIWYG. I have used Composer and KompoZer for years and can get good results, better the more I learn about HTML/CSS and design. HTH
  15. Are you on Google maps? Add the link and the Google logo so your customers can find you, and see basic listing information about your business. I don't know if Google uses that as a factor in their search engine, but after setting up a Google account and getting a map listing and a calendar (both free) my own business came up higher in the rankings. And I don't have to pay for AdClicks. hth PS: I like your site.
  16. Speaking from some little experience, learning graphic design would be a good first step if you are planning to generate an income. I only build my own business site, and can get away with using Comic Sans MS font and lots of pink background colours if I want. But it is terrible design, which even the best coding won't fix. I use a PC. Actually about 5 of various vintages for browser testing, everything from IE5/NS4.7 up to IE8/FX3.5. Mostly desktop because I have to work at a desk to get any work done. That's a personal choice/failure. Nice thing about building websites is you don't need a lot of horsepower. My latest computer is an off-lease P4 3.2MHz 1Gb RAM which is plenty enough to run the programs I use. Like I said, I am not a graphics designer. So a slightly older and much cheaper computer is fine for me. And used PCs are more plentiful than used Macs where I live. I like using KompoZer as a free WYSIWYG XHTML/CSS editor to get up and running, simple enough that it is almost hand-coding (and will be once you get your feet wet, free stuff has its limits). Its a nice confidence builder to see instant results without crashing because you forgot to close a < with a > that turns your page and file into instant potatoes that will send you screaming for butter to spread on your burned fingers. Best thing about KompoZer is the Help file doesn't help much. You have to go learn on your own, the program is just a tool for turning keystrokes into web design. Good web design if you are a good graphics designer, not-so-good for mere mortals like myself.
  17. I ran into a problem last year with my web host. During some maintenance, they updated (so I was told by tech support) the permissions for my account, and my index.html was no longer permitted and my entire site went off-line. Tech support changed my index to .htm (not what I asked) but I had to go through all the rest of my pages and manually update the links, changing index.html to index.htm. Only the index page was affected. The rest of my pages were fine with .html extensions. Water under the bridge now. Tech guy didn't know why the change, only that it was not going to be reversed. Now I am making XHTML pages by default. I can easily save them as .htm if I like to make life easier. But, do I lose anything saving an XHTML Strict 1.0 compliant page as .htm? The W3C validator didn't show a fault, so I am assuming it is okay... but assume is such a bad word. Hope my question is properly phrased. Thanks. Al.
  18. Thanks to everyone who took the time to check out the page and make comments. I should likely apologize for making something public without making a 'best effort' but I was more worried about whether I was getting things structurally correct, and there is no point putting a fine finish on a piece of equipment that won't survive the first hour in service. Andrea pointed out that when she followed the 'Equipment' link it was like going to another website. That is my current HTML website, built on a table layout with .. what do you call it .. tag soup? That's what I am working to change. But I can't do it all in one day, and I'm not prepared to start messing about with the Home page until I have an overall plan, a template, and most importantly some direction and confidence. I can play with my personal Potpourri page in the background without my mailbox filling up. There are over 20 html pages that all have to be updated, converted, merged or retired. Yes .. I even figured out how to use a table cell as a link. Which is probably worse than using an image as a link, and is completely ignored on a BlackBerry. Here are the suggested changes (amongst others) I made to my PotPourri page, The Comic Sans is GONZO. Except in the #header H1. Most of the pink is gone. New hex color, new gradient, more image height so the darker shades don't show until the bottom of the page. There is so much pink around here I have been desensitized to the colour. "Return to Top" links added periodically through the page. No more jumpy hovers. A simple background change for now, until I decide what I really want for a menu. Padding, padding and more padding. Cleaned up the CSS file, organized and as Andrea suggested, cut some classes. I feel like I'm back in high school .. cuttin' class... Thanks again. This is like the first step in a journey of 1000 miles ....
  19. Oh .... Well, "nearly universally despised" isn't the same thing as "universally despised". And besides, the 'client' insisted on it. It's my first day. The car ran out of gas. My wallet was stolen. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
  20. Thanks for the fix. It works now! I doubt I would have found that on my own. About the suggestions, 1. I have no idea what Comic Sans looks like ... my first choice was Comic Sans MS and the 'font family' it belongs to starts with Comic Sans. I thought I was doing the 'right' thing. So what I will do is eliminate the Comic Sans, and leave the other two choices as Comic sans MS, cursive; 2. I know there is a lot. It used to be a lot more. Opening up the layout is something I'll be working on, especially around the images.
  21. It took a while, but once I got going it went fine. Hard to be updating the content at the same time you are reworking the entire layout. I have validated the XHTML and the CSS, had to tweak a bit but passed. No CC's or hacks. Checked on FireFox 3.5, SeaMonkey 2.0 and IE5, 6, 7 and 8 (I have some old computers) and there are minor rendering differences, but survives zoom and text enlarge without breaking too easy. The rendering actually looks best in IE6 I think. There is a pink bar above the footer in Fx that doesn't belong there, doesn't show in IE. I'd like to fix that. Also some spacing issues around the images, since hspace and vspace in the tags got kicked out by W3C. I'm guessing another line or 2 in the CSS would fix that. Oh, and my wife says it is very nice on her Blackberry. No, it isn't fancy. But neither am I. I am my own client, so my work reflects that. Comments, suggestions and criticisms (with fixes) all appreciated. edit: removed links now that critique is done, back into development bin. Thanks again for everyone's help.
  22. I tried. It certainly is disconcerting when you are used to visualizing in pixels. Based on what I have tried, and the opinions expressed here, pixels are good enough for my small. owner-maintained website.
  23. Thanks for that. I found the Zoom tool on the Firefox menu, and now have another tool to see how my page looks in different views.. I have already been using the View No Style to emulate the look on a small device like a BlackBerry, even using it to look at other sites .. and have learned valuable lessons regarding separating not only position but images as well from textual content. In dealing with images (.jpg, .gif, etc), do you: a) size the image in em x em in the file or, do you have an image in px x px that is sized on the page by the display in ems
  24. Thanks for the info. I have worked my way through that tutorial and it was a valuable starting point. I started with the basic "Killer Handbook" layout and then experimented quite a bit adding things like backgrounds, floating parts here and there, clearing floats, etc. I look forward to seeing the updated site. So I can choose to do all my margins, paddings, heights, etc in either pixels or ems and it won't matter (as long as I consistently use one or the other I assume).
  25. This being my first post, I'm going to ask something simple but important (at least to me). History... I have been building simple HTML websites for my own small business(es) since the mid 90's. All the layout has been done with tables, everything sized in pixels, nothing fancy just WYSIWYG design using Composer, a bunch of hand coding and some javascript I wrote myself. Now ... it is a new millennium, my site doesn't look good on a CrackBerry, gotta learn some CSS and relaunch my site. No more tables. I will be using KompoZer because it is cheap, familiar and after working with it for a few weeks seems to suit my style. But ... a decision .. should I construct with a layout based on pixels? Or do I switch to ems for all the layout. What are the pros and cons of each? Thanks in advance. I tried the search function but it couldn't seem to get any hits for ems.
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