Pet Peeve on topic websites

Thanks Vicki.

Dreamweaver is a breeze to make the changes if I use a template. The problem is that if I change the Template, I have to republish the whole site, which is a pain. Although I think I'm going to be getting rid of a lot of pages and discontinuing a lot of what I have in my catalog so that should get rid of a lot of pages.

The graphic idea is interesting though. It's one graphic with multiple links? My nav bar are individual graphics that are buttons right now.

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Lori Greenberg" :

]The graphic idea is interesting though. It's one graphic with multiple ]links? My nav bar are individual graphics that are buttons right now.

i think, the last time i looked, Kandice's is multiple graphics. there IS a way to do one graphic - i just don't remember how right off the top of my head. mine LOOKS like one graphic, but it has actually been "sliced up" and is actually several. i think johanna did it with an Adobe program. it's a "border" in a table to get it to all line up properly.

----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Lori Greenberg" :

]Dreamweaver is a breeze to make the changes if I use a template. The ]problem is that if I change the Template, I have to republish the whole ]site, which is a pain.

ah! but many search engines use the file date as part of their ranking. republishing can be a pain, but i do it periodically if i make a change to one of the borders. in the long run, it's worth it?

----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)

The single graphic menu is called an image map. Image maps can be done with a certain amount of html coding, by hand, without a special progam.

I've never done it myself, but I'll bet if you searched

Arondelle

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from Arondelle :

]The single graphic menu is called an image map. Image maps can be done ]with a certain amount of html coding, by hand, without a special progam.

yep - that's it. but when i tried it i got so frustrated i gave up. note - i have a relatively low frustration level.

----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)

I did the search on Webmonkey for client-side image maps and found an outdate (1996) version of the instructions for creating them. Good luck trying to follow those instructions. :-(

However, I seemed to recall that my version of Corel's Photopaint has a facility for making image maps, and so I went an fooled around with it.

Doh. Pretty easy compared to hand-coding. Whipped one up in about 15 minutes.

I'd be willing to bet that if you have Photoshop, JASC, or any one of the more complicated image editing software packages (i.e., not the bitmap editor that comes with Windows), you probably can make your own handy-dandy image maps for navigation with a lot less sweating and straining than hand-coding one.

Of course, getting someone else to do it for you is even easier...

Arondelle

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from Arondelle :

]JASC

that one i have. i'll have to play with it.

----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)

I have mostly text on my front page so that people aren't stuck waiting for a dozen images they don't care about to load. From there, though, it should be fairly easy to just go straight to whichever category of stuff they want to look at.

-Kalera

Well, yeah, Kalera -- but you have linked, in a horizontal line above the text, all your goodie-page choices. That's ideal, I'd say. ~~ Sooz

------- "Those in the cheaper seats clap. The rest of you rattle your jewelry." John Lennon (1940 - 1980) Royal Varieties Performance ~ Dr. Sooz's Bead Links

Oh ugh, music! And mouse trailers. OMG I hate those! I just won't bother with a site that has them, because they slow things down SO much and cause so many problems. And I'm on cable, with a brand-new computer... I won't even talk about what they did to my OLD computer. Well, yes, I will; they crashed it. I sure can't buy anything from a website if my computer has a fatal error every time I go there! It wouldn't matter if they were selling gold coins for a dollar.

-Kalera

That's the technique I favor...

-Kalera

That's the approach I chose... I have enough categories that I didn't want the front page to take you straight to merchandise, but I did want people to be able to see examples of my work, to "grab" them. So, there's a lot of chatter on the front page, but also a row of bead pics so hopefully people will go "oooh pretty!" and click on the category links.

-Kalera

Thanks, Sooz. I tried to make it as... well, painless... as possible from the user-end. I buy everything I can possibly buy online (that reminds me of an OT post I need to make!) so I tried to apply as many of my own pet peeves to me website design criteria as possible.

-Kalera

The way I do my templates, with PHP, if I want to change the look of my site I just have to edit & upload one file. The different pages are simply text files specified in the links. The script I use is mind-bogglingly simple and many webhosts are PHP-enabled. If anyone wants the script let me know and I'll email it with instructions. A little knowledge of HTML is handy for formatting the text/any pics in the content part of the page (i.e. the gumph in the text file).

Me too, and I don't need them with my PHP script :)

WELL! I was thinking about a lot of the comments made here about what makes an ideal website, so I started fooling around with mine to see if I could make some changes.

Sheesh... it ain't as easy as it seems, and rather than redo the whole thing (which I don't have time to do right now), I left the basic frames structure the same, but made the menu to the left smaller and moved some things around.

If you have time, please let me know if you think the changes have helped somewhat. TIA

Hi Helen.

Thanks for that offer. If it's as easy as you say, I'd LOVE to have the directions. You can either email me from my site or send it to anything at beadnerd dot com.

Now that I totally revamped my website AGAIN, I'd still like to have the option of the toolbar/navigation bar being ONE file to update rather than the whole site.

Check out the new site if you're interested. The front page and gallery are still going to take some time and thought but it's getting there and it should have new pictures every few days and definitely every week!

I looked at your site and some of the pictures do not enlarge when you click on them. Roxan "Karleen/Vibrant Jewels" wrote in message news:vBecc.11139$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...

A few rules for when I look at sites. If a site doesn't follow at least most of these, I usually move on.

1. No music, EVER
2. No frames, EVER
3. No cursor trails
4. No or very little flashing or moving ads or graphics
5. Text that is easy on the eyes - pay attention to color and background (i.e. - no red text on a blue BG)
6. No popups unless they have a really good purpose (such as viewing products or announcing something important.)
7. No marquee text (the kind that scrolls across the page or down in the toolbar)
8. Decent, easy to follow navigation, preferably on every page
9. Fast loading, or a warning about heavy graphics so that I know it's going to load slowly
10. Decent, clear pictures that are large enough to see detail - can have thumbnails linking to larger pics
11. Very, very few advertisements. If a page is littered with banner and button ads, I move on. One or two per page is enough, if you have to use advertising as a way to earn money for the website.

If the site is commercial. these are in addition to the above:

1. An order policy page detailing shipping, returns, contact info, privacy policies, etc.
2. An online way of ordering what I like. Emailing is okay, and I will if I have to, but a shopping cart is better.
3. The acceptance of PayPal or credit cards through a merchant account. I will not mail payment.

Am I picky enough?? Sheesh! LOL But I know I am not alone....