Problem with a website I'm writing.

[E-Liam]

Hi all,

Afraid it's my turn to ask for a little help.. :)

I'm setting up a little website for my local club... the evidence of which can be seen here..

http://e.domaindlx.com/HanworthSocialClub/

Don't be too cruel.. :) I've spent ooh! about an hour and a half on it so far.. :)

I'm using Coffee Cup as my html editor, only because it was the first one I downloaded. I'm using Word's wysiwyg editor to create the main bulk of it, but needing a little bit of artistic licence I want to muck about with the HTML. I'm happy enough with HTML, and my homepage (click on the WWW link above) is sort of half the template and half me. (okay, I may have those proportions a couple of orders of magnitude out, but you get the idea) :)

I can get CoffeeCup to let me into the index.html page to edit manually (I've inserted the links etc by hand) but it won't let me see the daughter pages.. the files of which end in *.htm. Is this something that the program decides, or is it because I've neglected to do something obvious.

The most immediate problem I have is putting links back to the homepage, from each daughter page. I've tried to drop the links in via the hyperlink facility, but it just closes Word down, with a Sorry but.. etc.

Any help appreciated, and although I'm off out in a little while, I will check back later. :ok:

Cheers

Liam

[Binoculars]

What, you think you can just waltz in here and ask for help? For free?? Hmmpphh. What a cheek!

[E-Liam]

:D :D :D :D :uhoh: :{ :sad: :oh: :ooh: :ok:

[Ridley]

E-liam, I've never used Coffee Cup before, having only ever used Visual editors, such as Macromedia DreamWeaver (I believe they have a lower cost version called contribute if you want to get into something a little more powerful, yet easy to use), or built websites via the raw source code.

So I can only guess at what the problem might be with Coffee Cup.

What I do know, is that these visual editors, generally need a bunch of information about the site your trying to create, such as the local and remote paths to all the files. (IE: C:\mywebsite\home might be the local path information that you need to put in the editor and http://www.mywebsite.com/ for the remote) This is how they find all of the daughter files as you say.

If this doesn't solve it, maybe it only recognizes .html files, and not htm.

One last thing, try and stay away from using Word to edit the HTML, as Word ends up adding so much useless and unneeded markup, that when you do want to migrate to another visual editor, it may corrupt your files.

Good luck.

Ridley

[WestWind1950]

@E-Liam

I made my homepage(s) with FrontPage and I'm quite happy with it. It does what I want and isn't too complicated. Some people may not agree, but for my purposes, and I am no "expert", it serves it's purpose.
There are lots of tricks in it that I haven't even discovered yet! Since I started it some years ago, I don't want to change things too much... it might mess things up. And the best thing: I don't need to do any html if I don't want to... the program does it all for me!!. AND, you can write something in word and simply copy & paste it if you want.
I found it best to work with tables (the borders can be left out and are thus unseen). That way the text always stays within the same dimensions and you can add to it anytime.
Feel free to take a peek at my page www.skytanz.de (brag). If you have any further questions, feel free to pm or mail me. ;)

Westy

[mazzy1026]

but for my purposes, and I am no "expert", it serves it's purpose.
And very well indeed. Front page is good for a beginner because it has lots of useful wizards and help files, including some half decent templates to help you get up and running. I started off with front page and then migrated to Dreamweaver - as you get to know front page (not in that way) you will slowly discover its limits, but they are not an issue.

Slightly off topic, but when you have finished your site, post back about "meta tags" - they are very important and will allow people to find your site - I can help you out there. But thats just a thought for the future ;)

Good luck,

Maz :ok:

[E-Liam]

Hi, and thanks for the tips.

It seems CoffeeCup now works perfectly.. :confused: :) How strange.

Thanks anyway.. Cheers

Liam

[Binoculars]

Glad to help, Liam. We're even now, right? ;)

[flybhx]

Liam,

It may just have been a corrupted dll flile in memory. I had a similar hiccup with some dvd authoring software I was trying. A quick reboot sorted it.

[mazzy1026]

Glad to help, Liam. We're even now, right? Ahhh, such a relief :E

[Mac the Knife]

Have you ever tried 1st Page 2000 ?

http://www.evrsoft.com/

It's very good and completely free - lots of useful scripts too.

[Memetic]

Hi Liam,

I think WestWind1950 was sgoing along the right lines.

You may want to consider using relative links between your pages rather than absolute links. It makes life lot easier while developing a html based site (More complicated when you add active pages.) You can always run a find and replace later to convert to absolute links if you are paranoid about search engine rankings.

A couple of good pages on this:

http://www.uncw.edu/itsd/client/tutorials/rvaurl/

http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/smallbusiness/wpn-2-20040514RelativeandAbsoluteHyperlinks.html (Notice the cunning use of example links promoting this guy's services and acting as search engine fodder!)

I too would say stay clear of word as a html editor if you excuse the pun it is very wordy in the html it generates.

[E-Liam]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the links. I'll go through them in the next day or so.

Binos.. yep, we can call it quits.. :D Clean sheet.. :)

Cheers

Liam

I'll just add taht if anyone else wants to play around with a website, then the hoster..

http://www.domaindlx.com/

makes it very easy to do so.. :ok:

[E-Liam]

Hi all,

well it's been a week now, and after picking up a HTML book from the library (I have the advantage of first pick from the Discard shelf, so I have more books than I will ever possibly get around to reading) :D I have pretty much written the lot in my own fair hand. I've still got a tiny bit of cleaning up to do, but it's nearing the end of basic construction. I'm probably going to put the heading in a banner frame.. or at least see how that looks anyway, tomorrow.

The background picture is one I've taken from the back of the garden (it's in full on the testpage) and I've also created the buttons myself with same picture darkened up a bit.

I've got to put the content in next, and I'm mucking about with a couple of tables for league fixtures etc on the sports (Ha.. darts, pool and crib??? Sports??) :) pages, but if you'd like to have a look, I'll put the link in again.. I'm quite chuffed with it so far.. :E :8 (Evil Nerd emoticon) :)

http://e.domaindlx.com/HanworthSocialClub/

Cheers

Liam

[Lost_luggage34]

Looking good E-Liam.

Agree that CoffeCup is good. What did you end up using for the coding ? Did you stick with Word ?

Cheers

[E-Liam]

Hi LL,

Re the coding, I hand wrote most of it using the book, (an older edition of this one (http://www.peachpit.com/title/0201354934)) or in a couple of cases, found it on the web, and rewrote it to suit. Then just played around with it until it did what I wanted it to..

I think the index.html page is brief and to the point.. :)

<head>
<title>Hanworth Social Club</title>
</head>
<FRAMESET COLS="*, 83%">

<FRAME name="navbar" SRC="navbar.html" marginheight=11 marginwidth=20 scrolling="no">
<FRAME name="main" SRC="home.html">


</FRAMESET>


<body>

</body>
</html>

And then I've just targetted all the pages from the buttons in the "NavBar" to open in the "main" frame.

Keeps it simple. :ok: :) I like simple. :8

Cheers

Liam

[E-Liam]

Hi,

I'm back again.. :) I've even done a couple of logs this evening.. :D:D

This past week, Oi've been mostly up to my elbows in code.. hence my lack of appearances here.. but the site almost looks good now. It's changed a few times though.. Still need to fix a couple of links in the picture gallery, and add some more content, but it's getting there.

Mazzy, if the offer is still there for meta tag lessons, I'm all yours. I did add some, (somewhere or other) but I'm open to suggestions.. :ok: :)

Cheers

Liam

[amanoffewwords]

What, you think you can just waltz in here and ask for help? For free?? Hmmpphh. What a cheek!







I guess you already heard that one? :)

Started reading your blog - fell asleep when you mentioned C+C :zzz: - otherwise very good.:ok:

Charles (who hasn't been around much either 'cause I've got two many bit and bits to do - like finding a job....)

[Basil]

Don't know anything about websites but loved the Pool Page :D :D

[WestWind1950]

It's changed a few times though..

you'll be changing constantly. Every time you get a new idea, or you become more familiar with all the tricks, then you'll re-do and re-do. The biggest problem is making sure ALL the links also get re-done!!

Pity you have to have all those pop-up adds though.... I call such things "negative advertising"..... if they annoy me enough they won't get MY business :}

Westy

[mazzy1026]

Ok, here goes. The following is something I wrote for someone else a while ago:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first and most important thing in getting into search engines is having a decent TITLE meta tag. Meta tags provide identification of your website. The title tag is that which appears in the top left corner of your browser, and that which appears as the title of search engine results.

Get as many keywords as you can into your title tag as most search engines these days use this is the primary identifier for the site - providing that the content does match the title.

You could also try googleads but if your not selling anything it may not be worth it.

Posting it on the forums is a good idea to because it provides a link TO your site and will improve its overall position. (hint) The more people that link TO your site, the better it's rankings.

I have had endless battles with search engines and you may notice that you can go up and down all the time.

DMOZ (http://dmoz.org/) is a great idea as suggested but do STAY AWAY from those companies who promise inclusion to hundreds of search engines - they dont work and they will make your site go down in rankings, perhaps not even appear at all. Just submit them to the big guns individually. IMHO it takes about a year before you have a good foundation with the search engines - this is a game of patience.

Do follow web building guidelines especially where design, layout and META tags are concerened.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You might want to check out the following:

How to use Meta tags (http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167931)

I was just about to offer to re-write your index page with all the tags you need when I found this (http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-metas.html) which is a META tag builder - give it a whirl and see what comes up. Make sure the words you use reflect the actual content of the site - for example, a site may be advertising something, say DVD's, yet the author could use obscene meta tags to get visitors if you know what I mean? Well, this doesnt happen anymore, cos the search engines actually crawl through your page and physically look at whats on it - so get all your important words (words people may type in to find your site) and get them on the front page!

Other than that, get back to me if you need any more help :ok: