Help needed building a Web Site (2 Viewers)

[stanacko]

Hi

I thought I might as well give you all an insight to what it might look like. It is on someone else's web site at the moment.

Here is a link to it. I will be calling myself Coventry Birder.
http://dawney.co.uk/coventrybirder/index.htm

Anyone looking at it be hypercritical if it is needed. You won't offend me. If you think there is something wrong say so. I might not agree but then again you might state something so obvious, that David and I have missed, that needs correcting or adding.

BTW I should mention that you won't get into the gallery as it isn't functional yet. That won't become usable until I have purchased a site and linked a gallery to it.

John

Hi John,
Just had a look at what looks like the begining of a very pro site. I must say I,am very impressed, I have been following the start of your journey and could,nt wait to see the result keep on that route and I,m sure you are on a winner. Best of luck.
Stan. :clap: :clap: :clap:

 

[Colin Key]

Hi

I thought I might as well give you all an insight to what it might look like. It is on someone else's web site at the moment.

Here is a link to it. I will be calling myself Coventry Birder.
http://dawney.co.uk/coventrybirder/index.htm

Anyone looking at it be hypercritical if it is needed. You won't offend me. If you think there is something wrong say so. I might not agree but then again you might state something so obvious, that David and I have missed, that needs correcting or adding.

BTW I should mention that you won't get into the gallery as it isn't functional yet. That won't become usable until I have purchased a site and linked a gallery to it.

John

Well done John, REALLY EXCELLENT. I am not one to hang back where criticism is due but I honestly think this is far better than anything else held up as a "model" in this thread. I look forward to seeing it develop.

Colin


:clap: :clap: :clap:

 

[Colin Key]

P.S. Didn't copy Stan's post, we "cross posted", otherwise I wouldn't have used the hand-clapping. Reminds me of the "Three Degrees" (that dates me!).

 

[Colin]

Hi John,
This looks like the beginning of a great site and makes mine look like rubbish. There is a spelling mistake on the opening page. The word 'journey' has the 'r' missing. Keep up the good work and I shall be looking in on it regularly in future as I used to live in the Birmingham area and know many of the locations.

 

[timeshadowed]

John,

Just as I was afraid - nothing shows up on old my 'windows 95' computer except the very top banner. The page does use a 'shock-wave-flash' plug-in, which only shows up as a centered 'blue symbol' with a box around it. The rest of the page is just blank. As it stands now, I can go nowhere else on the site, as no links show up. If you made the top banner 'clickable' - see example - leading to a very simple html links index that would not spoil your look for those who have newer computers, yet it would give us 'oldies' a place to click to see an index page.

Use this code to make your top banner clickable:
<a href="url to simple index page"> <img src="url - to banner"></a>



Thanks,

edited to correct the html banner example

 

[colonelboris]

I went for a real bottom-up approach and ended up writing each page in notepad. Learnt a fair bit about html doing it, but not really sure if I've got the time to go to animations, etc.
Originally, I did most of the pages in MSWord and saved them as web pages, but when you looked at it on older browsers, the pictures appeared in the most random places, often over the top of the text. I got so annoyed with it, I just started looking t how to write it myself.
If anyone goes in that direction, two very useful sites are:
http://www.idocs.com/tags/
and
http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html#general
The first one is more useful and tells you how to do a lot of stuff simply at a basic level.
If anyone wants to, they can save and edit pages from my site. It's not very flash or exciting, but gets the job done.
http://www.tonykeenebirds.co.uk

 

[colonelboris]

Oh, and the place I got to host it is http://www.123-reg.co.uk/
You can get web addresses for £2.59 a year and hosting from £1.59 a month. There's a £9.99 one-off fee for starting up, but I've never had a problem using them. Because the file sizes are very small for pages written in notepad (or at least mine are - most are only 2kb), I've never run out of bandwidth, even when I put a pretty big video clip on there which got viewed a few hundred times in the first month.
There's probably better deals out there, but I'm lazy and didn't want to trawl the net for ages finding them...

How are you going to organise the photos? Date, trip or species? I've gone by species, but I don't usually get enough photos to make a page per trip worth while.

 

[Reader]

Hi Tony

I will be doing three galleries. One for digiscoping, one for DSLR and a movie gallery. The first two will be then split into family groups (Waders, Wildfowl, BOP's etc) and then further seperated into species. That will mean if you want to find a photo of a Dunlin you click either into Digiscoping or DSLR and then Waders and finally Dunlin where all my pictures of a Dunlin will be stored. The movies won't have seperate catergories as I don't take that many and those that I do are only 35 second movies taken with my CP4500 camera.

Regarding purchasing a site. I will probably go with these at £59 per year for the advanced option. http://www.ukhost4u.com/

John

Oh, and the place I got to host it is http://www.123-reg.co.uk/
You can get web addresses for £2.59 a year and hosting from £1.59 a month. There's a £9.99 one-off fee for starting up, but I've never had a problem using them. Because the file sizes are very small for pages written in notepad (or at least mine are - most are only 2kb), I've never run out of bandwidth, even when I put a pretty big video clip on there which got viewed a few hundred times in the first month.
There's probably better deals out there, but I'm lazy and didn't want to trawl the net for ages finding them...

How are you going to organise the photos? Date, trip or species? I've gone by species, but I don't usually get enough photos to make a page per trip worth while.

 

[colonelboris]

That looks like a fairly good package - a lot of bandwidth for the money.
For each species, say a dunlin, are you going to have links between the digiscope and DSLR pages? Might make it easier to compare.

 

[level seven]

It looks very nice. Congratulations Reader.

When first getting the home page though, the cursor is the 'hand' everywhere on the page, not just over the Enter button. This makes it look like the photos around the margins could be links. Unlikely, I know, but might be worth correcting before the final version goes live.

I might make the equipment a fraction smaller (less tightly cropped within the frame). They appear just a touch overpowering to me, but that's being hypercritical.

 

[Reader]

That looks like a fairly good package - a lot of bandwidth for the money.
For each species, say a dunlin, are you going to have links between the digiscope and DSLR pages? Might make it easier to compare.

That's a good thought Tony. I will let the chap who has done the work know of that suggestion and see what he can do with it.

John

 

[Reader]

It looks very nice. Congratulations Reader.

When first getting the home page though, the cursor is the 'hand' everywhere on the page, not just over the Enter button. This makes it look like the photos around the margins could be links. Unlikely, I know, but might be worth correcting before the final version goes live.

That doesn't happen with me. Does it happen with anyone else? With me the cursor stays constant until over the enter button then it changes.

I might make the equipment a fraction smaller (less tightly cropped within the frame). They appear just a touch overpowering to me, but that's being hypercritical.

I'm not sure if I agree with that. I think that is probably a personal thing and some things in every website won't suit everyone but if that is all you find wrong then i feel for a first attempt then we haven't done too bad.

Obviously as time goes by, and I start to know what I am doing (a long way from that at the moment) then I can tweak the odd thing or two as I go along.

John

 

[level seven]

I'm using Internet Explorer 6.0 with XP Home. It corrects itself after clicking once anywhere on the home page. Then only the Enter button appears as a link.

As I said, I was being hypercritical with the photo comment. It looks a really professional site.

 

[colonelboris]

I've had a thought - if anyone looks at my site - what font are you seeing the pages in?
try: http://www.tonykeenebirds.co.uk/bbirds/kingfisher.html
Although I've not set a font in the page itself, it always comes up Times New Roman. Just wondering if different browsers and computers see it differently.

 

[Mickymouse]

Looks good to me. I was a bit worried when you said about the images coming out of the camera and scope but you have it nice and snappy, some people over do that sort of thing and it becomes a pain. No problem with the cursor, behaves itself properly for me. I do think that when the little pics plant themselves they do look like they may be clickable thumbnails, just a thought but maybe it would be cool if you changed the pictures to something that represented the different subjects and made them clickable.

Mick

 

[Reader]

Looks good to me. I was a bit worried when you said about the images coming out of the camera and scope but you have it nice and snappy, some people over do that sort of thing and it becomes a pain. No problem with the cursor, behaves itself properly for me. I do think that when the little pics plant themselves they do look like they may be clickable thumbnails, just a thought but maybe it would be cool if you changed the pictures to something that represented the different subjects and made them clickable.

Mick

Hi Mick

I must admit that I never thought of using the images where you could click on them. They are basically a statement that I have two forms of photography with totally different disciplines. One through a scope and one through a lens. I was hoping the pages that followed told the story after that.

If I used the images would they not bypass the links I have set via the home page, which is where you go after clicking on enter.

John

 

[Tranquility Base]

I've had a thought - if anyone looks at my site - what font are you seeing the pages in?
try: http://www.tonykeenebirds.co.uk/bbirds/kingfisher.html
Although I've not set a font in the page itself, it always comes up Times New Roman. Just wondering if different browsers and computers see it differently.

Hi Tony!
IE6 and Netscape both show as Times NR........
Do you write in Dreamweaver? You can select the font and preview in a range of browsers if so........
Lovely site, though! (But I HATE 'TNR'!)

 

[colonelboris]

Thanks TB - I guess that must be the default for browsers, then.
I don't use dreamweaver (didn't even know of its existence until reading this thread) - I went the full nerdish hog and did it all in notepad...
However, if TNR offends you, it is possible to change the default font under the 'options' tab, but I like it...
Cheers,

Tony

 

[colonelboris]

Hmm. And after having a brief trawl for dreamweaver I see that notepad comes free while dreamweaver 8 costs $399...
ker-ching!

 

[colonelboris]

Has anyone got any experience with having ads on their website and does it generate enough money to cover the upkeep of the site?