Advice appreciated

[kealaz]

The old one
http://www.bayareascrappers.com/
And the new one
http://www.bayareascrappers.com/newsite/

In building the new site (only the home page works) I've learned a LOT, and sometimes it seems like just enough to get me in trouble. Any tips, pointers or suggestions on how I can improve this site would be greatly appreciated? I'm trying to work out all the details of the design and some of the "new" features before I start adding pages and content.

One question I specifically have, and I'm not sure if there is an answer out there that I can implement, with my limited skill set. I have a section on the homepage called "Quote of the Week". ((bottom right hand corner)) I want to give someone else the ability to manage (change) this part of the site. Can I create a form that I can tell her (the Quote girl) to go to and type the new "quote of the week" in and when she clicks submit, it will automatically update the website. I'm looking for something already written, as I do not know how to write scrips and barely have been able to implement the scrips that are being used on my site.

If you're still reading... <<yawn>> I have another question. Different browsers are seeing my page differently. The third column gets messed up in netscape (sometimes). How do I fix this? It looks fine in Adobe GoLive (preview mode) and Explorer.

Okay, I know I'm pushing my luck here... but hey, free advice is free advice. I'm really excited to be learning this stuff. Okay, question #3 At my current site (http://www.bayareascrappers.com) , when I click on a class (from the home page or from the calendar) I use a pop-up window to display the details of the class. Is there a better way to show this, or is what I'm currently doing the best way?

To whomever replies, thank you very much for your time and generosity.

Kealaz

[YvetteKuhns]

Any tips, pointers or suggestions on how I can improve this site would be greatly appreciated?

The site is cute, but there are alot of colors. The green on the left looks blah and the calendar blends into the background in comparison with everything else having more contrasting colors with the background. The overall design is great. Now, can you get that to work with the things you want to do with your website?

I have a section on the homepage called "Quote of the Week". ((bottom right hand corner)) I want to give someone else the ability to manage (change) this part of the site. Can I create a form that I can tell her (the Quote girl) to go to and type the new "quote of the week" in and when she clicks submit, it will automatically update the website.

You can use a script to edit contents on the website or you can use an "includes" to pull the text from another file into that part of the website. You could probably use an external Javascript news ticker script and edit the text there for her to reupload. That is if you don't let her update the entire web page or use an admin script to edit the page on the web server.

The third column gets messed up in netscape (sometimes).

You have nested tables with attributes that may be ignored. The attributes could be specified using css. Read css tutorials online to learn how to specify attributes for tables. Be sure to include that in your existing css file bas.css .

At my current site , when I click on a class (from the home page or from the calendar) I use a pop-up window to display the details of the class. Is there a better way to show this, or is what I'm currently doing the best way?

Since you are only showing an image, the pop-up window is okay, but if you want to include additional info, you can create a new page for each link.

The new site is much nicer looking! Nice job. :)

[kealaz]

Yvette,

Thank you so much for your feedback. I really appreciate the time you took to look at my site and reply to me.

About your suggestion to use a script or "includes" for the 'quote of the week' section. Do you know of a good tutorial that I can peruse to help me get there? I want to make it as easy as possible for her to update this section of the website. I've seen forms that take entries and emails them to an email address. I'm looking for one that will enter the information gathered directly into my site. I don't even know if it is out there or possible, but thought I'd take a shot and ask. You never know unless you ask. So if you or anyone else could point me to a website that could help me figure this out, or let me know that this is not possible because..... and I should stop hoping, I would appreciate it.

Also, my classes (at the old site) do have pop-up windows that have all the class details in them. They are accessible from the home page and the calendar. If you click on the images, that will just take you to a larger view of the same image. However, if you click on the class title, it will open a new window with just the class in it. I think the reason I originally went with the pop-up windows is because I didn't want to do frames, and I didn't want to dramatically increase the number of pages I had to edit every time I changed the navigation bar. I suppose if I learned how to use a template to edit my navigation bar for the whole site I wouldn't have that problem, but such is the life of a novice webbuilder. Do you know of a tutorial that could help me with that also???

Thanks again for all of your feedback.

Have a great week!!!
Kealaz

[YvetteKuhns]

You can search Google or another search engine for tutorials on anything you want. Since you use Adobe GoLive instead of hand coding web pages, I don't know what recommendations I can give you that you would understand.

The site would be better if it was entirely in php so you can have a php administration panel to update any part of the site. I don't like the open source php programs such as phpNuke, because they are often exploited. You can find php scripts and use php includes which are not unlike using a line of code to include an external css file or js file.

Maybe you should decide all the features you want or need, then find a way to implement all of them. If you are not allowing others to have an ftp login to edit pages, then they need to login to the website to edit them.

I've seen forms that take entries and emails them to an email address. I'm looking for one that will enter the information gathered directly into my site.

Do you want people to fill out forms on your website, then have that information sent to your email address? That is easy. There are many form processing scripts that do that. Do you want the info to be stored in a text file or database on your server to be able to display it on your site? That is different, but possible.

You could even use a guestbook type script to have things posted directly to the webpage and receive an email when someone posts to it. You can customize the script to suit YOUR needs. There are alot of free scripts out there for you to try. You need to know what you want. Try http://www.hotscripts.com or other free script websites, then choose the category you want to find something you like.