Need Help accessing Web site...

[LH4]

I need to build a website for my uncle. my other uncle is hosting him, but i'm designing it, but i have a big... and dumb question. we have the domain name, hosting... everything is ready, but how do i access it to put all the info/pics/designs on? do i have to get passwords from the guy hosting it?

also, is it notepad i use to do all the text for html? sorry, i did web developement a long time ago in junior high, and i remember using this.

i know these are probably the easiest questions and probably so obvious to anyone interested in web design (which i am, in fact i am going to college to learn all about it in the next few months) but i guess he needs this asap and would give me pretty good experience. thanks for any help :)

[ViprXX]

you probably do need a username and password from your host. you usually either upload your website files through an FTP client (such as smartFTP)and you'll need your host's ftp server info or if your web host provides a file manager for uploading files via internet explorer.

[LH4]

okay i got the username and password, but everytime i go to the website it says "welcome to the future home of www.signatureinterpretive.com" (my domain). when i login, and go to file manager, there are two files, "www" and "cgi-bin". all i did was upload the photo that i wnat teh background to be... but nothing. where do i put it? and how do i add pages? thankyou for any help...

btw if its any help, i am using netfirms.

[Wickham]

I use IE7's ftp upload facility which is adequate for uploading batches of files or images and for deleting files.

See
http://www.wickham43.supanet.com/tutorial/generaladvice.html#hosting

It won't be the cgi-bin. My host has a directory called public_html where all html files and image files are put. You should be able to create sub-directories to keep html files and images separate if you want.

When it has been uploaded you should be able to see the image online just by entering www.your-domain/image.jpg in the browser but it will show on its own. If you want it to be a background you need to edit the html file and insert the image code there.

[LH4]

the image code? like it's direct site?

[Wickham]

the image code? like it's direct site?


You can (nearly) always view any part of a web page separately like an image all by itself or as part of the whole web page. It seems as if you have quite a lot to learn.

Find a good online tutorial. Here are some links:-
http://csshtmltutorial.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/ a very good tutorial but so detailed you may get lost among so many pages.

[LH4]

oh haha i do have a lot to learn, i've never actually done web design, that's part of the program i will be taking in the Fall. i did find some tutorials as well :) . hehe and i figured what you said about the image, sorry to ask before trying to figure out on my own. but the website still won't show anything i have done, it keeps saying "welcome to the future website of...", and i tried creating another page using note pad, but it uploaded as a .txt file, not an html page, am i saving it wrong?

[Wickham]

... but the website still won't show anything i have done, it keeps saying "welcome to the future website of...", and i tried creating another page using note pad, but it uploaded as a .txt file, not an html page, am i saving it wrong?

When you are ready to save a web page prepared in Notepad, use "save as" but then add .html on the filename and make sure by looking at the saved file details that it hasn't saved as filename.html.txt; it should be just filename.html then upload that.

For simplicity your html file needs to be uploaded to the root (main) directory (folder) on the host server and then you would view it online by entering www.signatureinterpretive.com/filename.html in your browser.

Having said that, I don't know what the root directory would be on your server (mine is called public_html) so upload the file into every directory/folder you can see, including the main one that contains www and cgi-bin, and also the www and cgi-bin directories, and see if it then shows online.

Later go into each directory in turn and delete the entries not needed (trial and error).

Another edit:-
Just to confuse you further the root directory should have an index file, either index.htm or index.html, index.php or some other filename extension for index. This means that when someone enters www.signatureinterpretive.com/ in the browser without specifying a particular filename the browser will look for an index file.

Some people make this their homepage. The message you are seeing "welcome to the future home of www.signatureinterpretive.com" is probably in an index file already there provided by the hosting service, so it will need editing either to your homepage or to have a different message and a link to another file. Look for an index file in the File Manager and put your new html file in the same directory.

[LH4]

Okay i got it up! thanks for all of your help!

lol i have, yet another question, though. i made my background/title on photoshop, but if you go to the site you can see that it's repeating itself. how can i just center it so it doesn't repeat itself?

[Wickham]

Okay i got it up! thanks for all of your help!

lol i have, yet another question, though. i made my background/title on photoshop, but if you go to the site you can see that it's repeating itself. how can i just center it so it doesn't repeat itself?

Your background image sits-2 copy2.png is 1324*768px so I don't see it repeating on my screen resoltion and nor will most other people.

First, don't leave spaces in filenames, your image shows as sits-2%20copy2.png in my browser window when I downloaded it separately as browsers fill the spaces with %20. A space can confuse browsers. I had to delete the space in the filename and the code to get it to show from my local version of your page.

Secondly, every htm or html page should have a doctype so that browsers don't have to guess when they meet a problem, they know what standards to apply to your page. See
http://www.wickham43.net/generaladvice.php

You are using old-fashioned code like background="sits-2 copy2.png". It's better to use CSS, preferably in a separate stylesheet so that it will apply to all pages but for just one page put a style tag in the head section, then close the head tag (which you put at the bottom), then delete the background from the body tag, then close the body tag before the </html> tag at the bottom:-
So the top part off your index.htm page should be:-

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
body { background-image: url(sits-2 copy2.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: top center;
</style>
</head>
<body>......................</body></html>

See also http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_background-position.asp

The background image is so large that when it centralises in smaller windows some of the left side text moves out beyond the left side.

Put align="center" in the top table tag to centralise the main table:-

.............</marquee><font size="5">
<table align="center">
<tr> <td><b><body link=.............

Add some other things in the head tag like a title, character set, meta tag description and content.

See http://www.wickham43.net/basicwebpage.php

The marquee tag doesn't work in Firefox except with javascript.

[LH4]

Yeah i had changed the background, made it longer, so i don't think thats an issue anymore, but i still did what you said. that stupid netfirms banner is screwing everythign up though, it keeps following that table, i dont know why.

Is there any way that i can write beside the table? i want it to stay on teh left hand side (except on the home page, i might movie it to the middle since i doubt anything will be written there) but now i can't right in the middle of the page for the services, compnay bio and contact pages without it effecting the table on the side, it's either right below it in the middle of the page or above it, which in that case it will move the table down everytime there's new line, how can i just align it with the table?

[rockboy]

You've made some progress by moving the banner code to the end of the page so it's no longer contained within your content. Unfortunately you also moved some other tags that shouldn't have been moved. When you move the banner code, start with the begin banner and end banner comment tags.

You currently have some serious html problems. When you moved some elements you moved your basic html page tags too. This is a basic html page format with your current style info added:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Put your page title here</title>
<meta tags go here>
<style type="text/css">
body
{
background-image: url(sits-2 copy2.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: top center;
/* background-color added to make it match the image */
background-color: #B31519;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>

Page content will go here
between the <body> and </body> tags.

</body>
</html>

You should also take Wickham's advice above and rename all of your files, including the html files, so that they DO NOT have spaces in the file names. If you don't do this you'll regret it later.

Another thing is your use of a background image for your main logo. You should make a separate image and include it in the actual page content instead of the background.

Keep at it, it's getting there. :)

Edit: I added the background-color so that when the image no longer repeats (when you add the style tags) the background color that shows outside of your image will match instead of being the default white.

[LH4]

alright Thanks :)

i seperated the logo/title from the background, and i added a little brush design to the left side because it looked to empty to me, i think it filled it up pretty nicely. i also added some faded logos. now, i just can't make a choice on the menu style, i have the hyperlink pictures which just looked out of place, but i added a border and that seemed to have made a big difference in my opinon, but then i changed it just to text on the other page which doesn't look bad either. maybe some of you can give your opinions on what looks better (if any). just compare between the "Company Bio" page and the "Contact" page.

oh, hehe and ill get on re-naming my files soon.

another thing is with that html format you made for me, well i tried using it but it moved the banner back up to the middle of the page so it interferes with the page content, so i put back to the "old' style.

[rockboy]

Aesthetically, the border around the navigation doesn't do much for me. The text nav probably looks different to you though since you have the "vladimir script" font and I don't. I see "Times New Roman" (the serif default). No one will see your font unless they have your custom font installed on their computer.
...
another thing is with that html format you made for me, well i tried using it but it moved the banner back up to the middle of the page so it interferes with the page content, so i put back to the "old' style. Where to begin? The format I made is just the standard page tags and won't affect your layout at all. I think it has something to do with part of your table tags in the head of your page not being rendered properly. The problem is that the multiple html errors have cancelled each other out and made the visual result somehow look like you want it. Try looking at your pages in Firefox and Internet Explorer. I think you'll see a big difference in the way they display html errors. You should start fixing them by moving everything out of the head of your pages that doesn't belong there. img tags, table tags, br tags, etc., do not belong there. When you get started fixing stuff you can validate your html using the link in my sig.

[LH4]

Hey thanks for all your help!

i've changed it up a bit, colour basically. but i have another question.

when i put a hyperlink in, there is an outline around each image. i knwo i can change the colours of it which i did, but is there any way i can just have the hyperlink without the little borders?

[rockboy]

When you use an image for a link and don't want the borders, add border="0" to your image tag. Example:
<img src="compbio.png" border="0">

Good html coding (http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/special/img.html) should also include height, width, and alt attributes to your image tags.

[LH4]

Thanks :)


okay, i've always had this problem.. which is why i put the navigation at the top going across. but now, he wants it on the left side, and i've done that. so now i don't know how to fill in all the center space next to the navigation with text/info.... how do i do it?

[rockboy]

I see you've implemented some css layout on the company bio page. I was going to suggest something similar.
http://www.signatureinterpretive.com/CompanyBio.html

The problem with the float method you've chosen is that the content will wrap underneath the menu. If that's ok you're pretty much good to go with some minor tweaking. If you don't want it to do that you could do something like this three column layout.
http://www.glish.com/css/7.asp

Since you want the main content centered on your background and the menu on the left, you could use this layout template and leave the right container empty as a spacer and add something later.

Just a headsup on the use of css. You should put your new css info in the same style tag that you're already using. You've put the new css in the body of your page and added some extra html tags that shouldn't be there. If you keep it all together you can eventually remove the css on the individual pages and put it in a separate linked css file that all of the pages can use. Saves lots of coding.

[z1p]

My 2 cents for what its worth...

From a user interaction point of view I see a problem with the menu being in the middle of the 'Home' page. I'd keep the navigation buttons in hte same place on all the pages.

On the bio page, I personally think it would be easier to read if you didn't center it. Because the start of the lines are not in the same horizontal location, the reader needs to 'hunt' for the start of the line.

[LH4]

yeah i switched back, i can't use CSS right now, well i just don't understand it after doing all this on HTML. but even when i tried using the above codes, they (the codes) were all showing up on the actual website.

I guess the problem is that the left menu/naviagtion is pushing my main centered text a little off to the right... how can i change that so it is all centered correctly and alligned with eachother?

[Buzz]

The thing is you are using css. Your site is laid out using divs (layers) rather than tables. So.... if you want to position items how you like you are going to need to learn some css.

The reason the css was showing on your page earlier is you put the code in the body of the page. Not in the head where it belongs.

Basic css web page structure



<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
* { margin: 0; padding: 0; outline: none; border: none;}
body {
font: 12px Verdana, 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, san-serif;
background: #fff;
}


/* ALL YOUR CSS CODE GOES HERE */


-->
</style>


<!-- IF YOU WANT TO USE JAVASCRIPT, PLACE IT HERE -->

</head>
<body>



<!-- THIS IS WHERE PAGE CONTENT SHOULD BE PLACED -->


</body>
</html>




Your pages are a bit of a dichotomy... Your DOCTYPE declaration is for HTML strict, yet the code is more xHTML in nature.

If you don't want to use CSS you should layout pages with tables.

[LH4]

Okay so if i use that above fromula/coding, where do i put my bacground image, image title "SIGNATURE", etc?

also, how do i save it? i tried saving it before as index.css, CompanyBio.css...etc but when i went to the actual website to test it it asked me if it could open it/download...

[Buzz]

The background image would be a property in the body selecting inside the css.

Like so...


body {
font: 12px Verdana, 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, san-serif;
background: #fff url(path/to/image/here.jpg) repeat 0 0;
}



And you still should name the files index.htm, companybio.htm etc. CSS is merely a technology to use with HTML. It doesn't replace HTML.

[LH4]

See i did it on teh company bio page, and nothing showed up but the background, what am i doing wrong?

[Buzz]

Remove the html comment tags...


<!--


and


-->


will hide anything between them.

[rockboy]

You've "commented" out the content. Remove the <!-- characters after the body tag and the --> at the end from your html code:
<body>



<!-- <center><img src="sitslogotitle copy2.png"></center>

[rockboy]

:D

Just a bit late. At least you know for sure what's wrong.

[LH4]

lol thanks everyone! lol i think it's safe to say that i'de be lost without you! (not that i'm not already, but you guys are saving me!)

okay, so now, everything is centered in the middle of the page...

[LH4]

Nevermind, i figured it out! thanks again everybody!

[LH4]

Okay, i need some more hlep :P

hehe sorry for being so annoying.

so i need to make a 3 or 4 colum list of languages, how do i do this in CSS?

EDIT: Okay i just put a table in it, hehe so i have everything under control... i think!

[rockboy]

It could be done with css but a table would be better for that.

[LH4]

Okay Thanks!