View Full Version : Website design...
Curious if there are any site builders amongst us.
SGT Rock
05-20-2010, 17:50
None that I know of ;)
Cannibal
05-20-2010, 17:53
I know of one that is doing a great job for me. Hopefully he'll see this and contact you, cause I don't know if he wants to be 'outed'.
Greg Dunlap
05-20-2010, 17:59
I do the website for my unit from Vietnam
http://366thspsk-9.com (http://366thspsk-9.com/)
Why are you asking?
I would like to have a slightly more aesthetically pleasing website. There are some specific things I would like that I just can figure out how to do.
SGT Rock
05-20-2010, 18:22
What are you trying to do opie?
Curious if there are any site builders amongst us.
There are a few here, I think. I'm pretty sure Albert Skye can do that kind of work.
SGT Rock
05-20-2010, 18:27
You could probably trade some hammock parts for some design work.
Specifically what Im looking to do is on my website, not the store, is to have the product descriptions next to pictures of the products. Eliminate all the "~~~" that seperate the different descriptions. I want it to flow a bit better. Perhaps do some design work on the store too.....
Id also like to change the background to a somewhat dark color and the text to something along the lines of a pale yellow. Some of this I can do in the Godaddy dashboard, some of it I just cant figure out.
I did download Open Office and played around with that trying to see what I could do, but I couldnt get a paragraph of text to remain next to a photo. It would allow the first sentence to stay at the top of a photo, but would drop the next sentence down to the bottom.
Im not looking for a freebie either. I expect to pay someone to do it.
orangebananas
05-20-2010, 18:44
I made mine. http://www.orangebananas.net (http://www.orangebananas.net/)
I did download Open Office and played around with that trying to see what I could do, but I couldnt get a paragraph of text to remain next to a photo. It would allow the first sentence to stay at the top of a photo, but would drop the next sentence down to the bottom.
Did you try to right click the image and then play around with the 'wrap' options? You should be able to do what you are wanting to do. Good luck.
Shevy77
SGT Rock
05-20-2010, 19:31
Specifically what Im looking to do is on my website, not the store, is to have the product descriptions next to pictures of the products. Eliminate all the "~~~" that seperate the different descriptions. I want it to flow a bit better. Perhaps do some design work on the store too.....
Id also like to change the background to a somewhat dark color and the text to something along the lines of a pale yellow. Some of this I can do in the Godaddy dashboard, some of it I just cant figure out.
I did download Open Office and played around with that trying to see what I could do, but I couldnt get a paragraph of text to remain next to a photo. It would allow the first sentence to stay at the top of a photo, but would drop the next sentence down to the bottom.
Im not looking for a freebie either. I expect to pay someone to do it.
You need to learn to insert tables into your pages. Tables won't always show the lines around them, you program that when you set them up, but they are great for keeping things in the place you want them in relationship to each other. A table floating left with a picture and another table in the same row to the right of it with the product description and probably your "add to shopping cart" in the same table cell as the description.
trigger hurt
05-20-2010, 19:42
I used to do design semi-professionally. Nothing I have done is online anymore. There is one I did the Cascading Style Sheets and layout for, but everything else is the owner's responsibility. It's at www.oesm.org
If you want something done and no one else sends you a message, let me know and we'll talk about your desire. My "style" when I did design was similar to this http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/03/05/45-fresh-clean-and-impressive-designs/ minus the graphics and backgrounds.
Just easy to read text, optimized images and well organized.
Greg Dunlap
05-20-2010, 19:53
I agree with Sgt Rock in the use of tables to format the outlook of your pages. Text here, pictures there, never the two to get mixed up. Part of the problem you may be having is that you are using the build a website format that GoDaddy gives you to work with. In some respects this is good, and not so good.
It does allow you to get a website up and running quite easily, it has built in tools for menus, flash, etc that you would have to either purchase individual programs to accomplish within your site, or learn html code to do it yourself. However you are limited as to what they offer you. For example if you cannot find the color for the background offered but they allow you to import in a background, then you will have to create a small jpg with the color you want to use, and import it in and use it for the background. Also if you want to do that with a color of font that is not offered, you will have to place your text on a section using the color you want, color the section the same as the background your using, and import that in as a jpg.
If you go out and purchase Dreamweaver and make your site yourself, you will have to purchase some programs to enhance the experience of being on the site, the flash and zowie-wowie shall we say! Also you could then create your own shopping page using the buttons PayPal gives you and design the shopping page the way you want it to be.
Web pages are never done. Doing a web site is a constantly evolving process. I've changed the one I do 3 different times.
OK... I did some reading on advanced set-up of website tonight and found the tables option. Thats exactly what I was after. Still trying to figure out how to change the background color of the page behind the text(table) block. I am able to pick the color of the table background, as well as text. I got one done, now I need to see how they look stacked.
trigger hurt
05-20-2010, 20:08
You can nest tables inside of tables to better organize text and images. To change the background color of your page, use bgcolor="#000000" substitute the "000000" for whatever color you would like to use.
You can use this page http://www.december.com/html/spec/colorhex.html to find the hex code (that's the 000000) for the color you want.
ful... I just figured out what I think you are talking about. Rather than have say 1, 2 column row, I can just keep adding rows to keep the background color consistent.
I do know about the color codes...but for some reason I cant change the background color of the actual page. I can change the background color of the border..where the green is....but the white I can not figure out how to change.
fr8pilot1
05-20-2010, 21:23
Opie,
I am currently maintaining four sites and all have been designed with Wordpress which is free and is compatible with GoDaddy. A lot easier to work with and you can do a basic WYSIWYG or switch over and use xhtml to further define the site. The best one is password protected so I can't show you that one, but go to http://citywatchpac.wordpress.com and see the one for my wife's political action committee.
Let me know if I can help.
pb
SGT Rock
05-20-2010, 21:23
you need to change the body tag:
<body bgcolor="Silver">
<p>We set the background...</p>
</body>
SGT Rock
05-20-2010, 21:24
http://www.eligr.com/images/colors.gif
Look for a color you want to use on this chart and replace "silver" with the code number.
Sgt... Ill look into it later. Im about all webbed out. I did manage to get everything in tables, which looks somewhat cleaner. Between the individual blocks, which I think there are 2 or 3, they arent lined up within the body.
There always something to do!!
trigger hurt
05-20-2010, 23:51
ful... I just figured out what I think you are talking about. Rather than have say 1, 2 column row, I can just keep adding rows to keep the background color consistent.
I do know about the color codes...but for some reason I cant change the background color of the actual page. I can change the background color of the border..where the green is....but the white I can not figure out how to change.
Unless you want the table to have a different background color than the page background, don't bother defining the tables bg color.
Nesting tables is putting a table inside a row/column.
For instance, you have this
<table border="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>
That is a basic 1 row, 1 column table. You can use this to put everything in the center of the page, left justify or right justify. To do that, you'd change the align property.
To nest a table you would do this:
<table border="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td>
<table border="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
The reason for this doesn't become abundantly clear until you're doing multiple columns across a page with lots of text and pictures. Think of it like using MS Excel and merging cells together to organize data. It's also kind of cumbersome. Which is why most designers these days choose to use style sheets to arrange the items on a page rather than get crazy with tables. But tables are the old school way of doing it and don't take much more than a decent WYSIWYG editor.
I do websites. Last project was http://www.southlandservicesusa.com
Well... I think Im making progress. Im getting some guidance from several members so I may be able to get it done...
Thanks for all the help and tips. I think one thing I need to do is drop the template and go with a blank slate.
texashanger
05-21-2010, 23:46
Opie,
I'm in the software business and have built websites, and businesses from the ground up (it's what I do). I can probably help you or point you in the right direction. Send me a PM if you want to discuss what you're looking for... Also, I'm not interested in making any money out of it... I'm just another hammocker who has bought a set of your slings and would be happy to help you fix your site...
gunner76
05-22-2010, 00:21
Bite the bullet and get Squirrel Cart http://www.squirrelcart.com/. This a very powerfull shopping cart and low price for the money that can also be your web site. Like you I use to maintain a web site and a seperate shopping cart and after a couple of years realized that I was wasting my time and now just use the Squirrel for my site/store.
Dreamweaver is a very powerful web site authoring tool and pricey. Try using HTML Kit, its free. I use it for several other web sites that I do for myself and others.
Your local Community College should offer some web development class and they can be well worth taking so you can learn more about what goes into making a good web site, that way you know the basics and when talking to someone who claims to write web sites you have a better idea if they are blowing smoke up your a** or do they know what they are talking about.
tex, thanks for the offer.
gunner, excellent reccomendation on taking a class. I hadnt thought of that. A resource I havent tapped into enough is my local small business development org. thats offered through the local CC.
gunner76
05-23-2010, 10:13
If your small business development org is like mine they can offer a lot of help but web design is not one of them. My wife found the micro loan folks classes to be very helpful for business ideas.
I found this image to be accurate in the web design process
gunner... that table is about spot on. Although I still dont get the disdain for Bill Gates people have.
I might spend a little more time swearing than the chart predicts. Most of it is the horrible placement of the mousepad on this laptop. Ill be typing along and suddenly the cursor is somewhere else and Im still typing. I look and and wonder what happened.
SGT Rock
05-23-2010, 13:24
The site is starting to move along. A couple of suggestions...
1. Make your navigation links for the site the same on all pages.
2. Black backgrounds with light lettering are sort of hard for some users to read. That is why you will find most pro websites are using a light colored background for text areas. I recommend you make the box color background something light and use black lettering on pages where you have dark background or dark images for the page background.
Rock... As far as I can tell the navigation links are all the same on the different pages. I dont like how they are laid out now with the new "template" which GoDaddy calls a clean slate. Still looking at getting those moved.
I havent gotten off the hammock suspension page with the re-design yet. Thats why the rest of them are hard to read. I have 1 more order than Im all caught up at which point I can devote my undivided attention to the site.
Most of it is the horrible placement of the mousepad on this laptopHuge selling point for HP. Most, if not all, have a little button just above the mouse pad which disables it for typing. Took me a while to find out what that button was for.
Let me know if I can help. I can help with programming, etc. PM me.
hancock.. Thanks for the offer.
Through some advice and opinions from others, and doing some research through Go Daddies forum, Ive come to the reliazation that the Website Tonight is geared more towards those what want to use templates. And the templates have a limited range of customization. Ive got the site set up about how I want it now.... Just need to move over to the store now.
Allright.. I re-opened the store. My Clark wont be here until next Wednesday. At which time Ill be going into R&D mode to get that finished up.
mtucker502
06-21-2010, 12:18
Opie, were you able to get your site updated? Though there is a learning curve, you really should use css on your site so that the styling for all your pages is uniform throughout your site. I can show you what you'll need to get started and can possibly assist with redesigning the site if need be.
-Mike
fwiw i'm a datacenter technician and have a fair bit of experience on a variety of topics related to web hosting and coding... if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer if I can. Sounds like you've got it going fairly well... just thought I'd offer up.
good luck!
Thanks for the offers. Things are going better. The store wasnt what I had anticipated, so I got frustrated. Now that Im relatively well past the learning curve, things are going well.
And learning about tables was a huge plus.
If you are looking for store software I use Zen Cart which is very flexible. There are also many themes that can be applied to it.
Zen Cart is free shopping cart software with an excellent forum for support.
If you are looking for store software I use Zen Cart which is very flexible. There are also many themes that can be applied to it.
Zen Cart is free shopping cart software with an excellent forum for support.
Just have to watch for exploits on zen cart... when we see one come down the pipes, we brace ourselves for hundreds of our customers getting their servers compromised. Since they manage their own boxes (unmanaged dedicated servers or colo style) it really isn't up to us to watch for this stuff, but ultimately since it means we have to reimage the box if it gets rooted it is in our best interest to keep our customers informed.
don't get me wrong... zencart is great, flexible, and very widely used/implemented... just have to keep your eyes open for patches/updates and keep it up to date.