Referred Artists on Feature Pics

Gracey · #1 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 03:49 PM

Well, I am not entirely sure where the heck to put this, so feel free to move it wherever smile

I've spent the last two weeks (okay, not all day, but four to six hours a day) trying to remake my website without the help of a webbuilder tool (specifically, without the yahoo tool that came with my paid site)...a long time since I've had to do html by hand, but this is turning into a bit of a nightmare.

I've been using nvu, and then KompoZer back and forth - basically an html editor but it has helps that will do the links for you...huh. Well, the image links are all wrong and now I am rewriting the links in notepad by hand. Nice...NOT.

Anyway, one of the pages I need some help with is the page that lists the authors on Feature Pics that are my referrals.

There is a photo gallery which includes one image from each referrals gallery on FP, and a listing of the names with a link to their FP Gallery. Right about now, these are the only links I think I have right.

Featured Photographers

The above link is to the page.

The button image links on the menu are not in evidence (except for the Home button which I fixed by hand), so please try to ignore the mess in my house

I hope to have the rest of the coding done over the weekend - the index page for my site has been disabled, so nobody can just wander in and see what a mess I've got.

Before I re-open the site I want to make sure I have all the links right for the referred photogs - they are basically on their own page, and there is a link to this page from the home page of my site as well as on the site menu.

Can each of you (who see this) please check your links and let me know if there is a problem with them...also, please check your names to be sure I have them right - some of the copyright notices were a little difficult to read in the images.

If there are others who think they used my referral link and don't show up here please let me know so I can add you-I've just checked my referred list again, and I'm pretty sure there's no one new on it since I made this list.

Sorry...gotta run. Have a comitment I can't get out of this morning or I'd be glued to my computer trying to fix this.

I posted the same thing over on FP as well, but I think more probably read this forum than that one.

You can just leave a post here if I need to correct your link or name, or forgot to add you.

There is one other thing I find odd - I took the time to add alt text for all the images, yet it doesn't show up (at least not for me) on the page, but it's there in the code? (Obviously I am no code whiz).

Karimala · #2 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 03:57 PM

Very cool idea, Gracey! It's great to see someone providing exposure to their referrals instead of just reaping in all the benefits. If I ever get around to developing my own site, I'll have to follow your lead. :-)

Dave Liu link doesn't work. And I'm pretty sure I was one of your earliest referrals, but I don't see my name on the list. Maybe the cookies expired on my computer before I actually signed up.

nicemonkey · #3 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 04:14 PM

Nice idea, I have just updated my site too

CJPHoto · #4 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 04:59 PM

Nice idea but are you sure you aren't giving them the referal if someone clicks on their link?

Gracey · #5 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 07:53 PM

Giving them the referral? You mean giving each artist the referral if someone buys through that link? Yes, I am not using my own referral link for that page, except for the banners.

Christophe, the whole point of that page is to give something back to my referred photogs, even if it turns out to be nothing more than some extra exposure for them (which you are one of) - believe it or not, I am making some money from my referrals

Karin, you aren't on my list of referreds, but you might have signed up before they started collecting referrals - I know some people did sign up that way. I'll be happy to include one of yours before I finish the page. And thanks for letting me know about Dave's link - I'll fix it now.

Ironmike · #6 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gracey

There is one other thing I find odd - I took the time to add alt text for all the images, yet it doesn't show up (at least not for me) on the page, but it's there in the code? (Obviously I am no code whiz).

The alt text shows fine for me. (your code is not very pretty though, doing it by hand would help there

)

One thing you need to do is to add a blank index.htm page in your root directory, otherwise the whole world can access all your online files.

Gracey · #7 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ironmike

The alt text shows fine for me. (your code is not very pretty though, doing it by hand would help there

)

One thing you need to do is to add a blank index.htm page in your root directory, otherwise the whole world can access all your online files.

Thanks, I know it's pretty ugly

I'll clean it up by hand as I go along. Should've done it by hand in the first place I guess...I thought it would save me a lot of time, but I think it's probably cost me a lot more.

I'll give it a code validation and an html tidy too

When the site is setup correctly (which it isn't) the files won't be as accessible, though what anyone would want with my online files beats me...the images are pretty small and lower rez, the files are just...well, files. Anybody wants that ugly mess right now they can have it

But, I'll fix it soon...well I hope it will be soon.

Thanks for letting me know about the alt text too...can't figure out why I can't see it, but at least I know I wasn't wasting my time.

....whooo boy, that's quite the bounce you've got going on there

Gracey · #8 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 11:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nicemonkey

Nice idea, I have just updated my site too

Liked your 'explosion' creation tutorial. Thanks, it will come in handy.

RacePhoto · #9 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 11:51 PM

Very nice and attractive layout and pages. My web pages were and are still all done in Wordpad. (so I'm a dinosaur?) They don't have any fancy elements, but are functional. :wink:

Here's something I saw at the bottom that you may be able to use. Lets see if it shows in the message or if I have to add some spaces to make it not HTML code? I put this on the bottom of every page.

<div align=right><font face=arial size=1>Pete Klinger &copy 1996 - 2007 &nbsp All Rights Reserved &nbsp </div></font>

OK that worked. What it does is make a small Copyright line, and the &copy makes the Copyright symbol the easy way. You may wish to make it larger by changing the font size.

If you have a site with 80 pages, which I have had at times, plus multiple sites that I managed, and the year changes, you don't have to go in and manually change each one, just get Arachnophilia which takes a little time to get used to... but It's Free! Then you can do a find and replace on "&copy 1996 - 2007" with "&copy 1996 - 2008" and bingo, it's updated on all your web pages. :-D

The reason for the longer search and replace string, is because if I just did 2007, sometimes that can appear in text, image titles, and other segments, and then, I've really created a fine mess to unedit!

Arachnophilia is very useful. Here's the site. * Arachnophilia

The buttons are BMPs? I put all buttons, icons and "do-dads" in the base directory of the site in an icons folder. That way I know where they are and they are easy to refer to. Also that means any page on any site, can cross use icons from any other site, and I don't have to put them on the page. Some days this creates a problem because site#3 is using an image from site #2, but it's really stored over on site #1. :shock: Now and then I just download all "icons" from everywhere, and put them on the master website, just in case I forget where I tucked away something.

Since you use IrfanView, I'm wondering why you have BMPs instead of GIFs for the buttons?

Anyway, hope that's helpful. I saw your locations and it was ../../../sitename/folder/anotherfolder/something else/buttonname.bmp which looked very confusing?

Obviously I have to keep things simple for my simple mind, so I make them very simple. :-D "/icons" fits the bill.

Gracey · #10 (**permalink**) 06-02-2007, 12:25 AM

Thanks, arachnophilia is what I'm currently using to fix up the mess nvu and kompoZer made of my links

I have a template page with my header and footer (the copyright notices) - the other program I used would change the whole site with one click, but it messed up some of my recent pages which is why I am back to hand coding. Someone recommended nvu, but it won't save my code and doesn't save the links correctly, even after I fix them.

That one pageI posted I had to fix the links after I got it online using the servers notepad editor. Should have used mozilla's sea monkey I guess.

I also tried Trellian's editor, which I think has terrific functions but if you don't have IE6 most current update (which I do, however trellian says there is another update for mine, but ms says there's not) or IE7 it turns your page into permanent code - won't display even in the browser as anything but code. Trellian blames it on the browser, which is too bad because it would be a super coding tablet otherwise.

I hate coding - I'm no web designer, and not much of a coder either. 8) And I am talking about the old stuff too - html is about as good as it gets for me - a few java script functions I can manage, but beyond that - forget it.

The button files were made with buttonmaker (only saves bmp files) , I just didn't change them - I was in a hurry- I don't like them much so I'll be changing them when I can breathe again. I'm thinking I will just use one long image map so the menu file is only one image. Those buttons are stored in one directory down from the root - there's the root, then a folder "menu buttons", then the button images. I like to store stuff in folders - don't like files all over the place. I have a couple of subdomains on my site that are separate sites so its just easier for me to keep things organized if I use subdirectories in each domain.

I haven't come across a menu design that I really like yet, so I'm still fumbling to come up with a design I like. I remember using a very simple button from FrontPage - silver that changed to darker gray when you mouse over it, but it had an elegant clean look. I'll probably wind up with something like that, without the mouseover. I'm very tempted just to use a text menu.

These last two weeks I have tried dozens of different editors - FirstPage looks to be pretty good too, but I need more time with it, and I tried one of MS offerings, which - if I could figure out - has a ton of functions. Visual Web Developer - but it doesn't exactly look simple.

Mostly, right now I am running between notepad and arachnophilia, though I am getting better at changing things on the spot when I view it on the web - I can just edit a quick fix in firefox. I just don't have the whole site loaded yet.