Recent Posts

3326

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 23, 2008, 05:26 AM »

Does anyone know of a PHP/MySQL blog that can be embedded in a DIV so that you can just see the content (not all the other stuff you usually get in something like WordPress)?

I know you can probably do this in WordPress by using a customised theme but I didn't want to go down the road of trying to figure out how to create a suitable theme - looks time consuming and not totally straight forward.

Ideally I would like something that you can just take the content section (and possibly a search module) and embed it into the news window and then access the admin side through a separate URL so that articles can be added, edited etc.

3327

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 22, 2008, 10:38 AM »

Just done a load of new updates.

The news section has changed completely.

The new wall photo is better but unfortunately the wall had got dirty. We are still trying to track down the original wall photo so that I can produce a decent version but at least it is readable now.

I have also tidied up all the picture positioning and it now either uses straight text formatting if it is in a clear space within text or a float style to embed it cleanly with some padding around.

I have also added a PHP script to force the PFD membership application form (the menu 'Become a friend of GOVI') to download rather than open in a browser window. I think I may actually point this to the 'You can help page' and provide the option to download or open the PDF form. Maybe I should make it a fillable form on a webpage which can then be printed and posted. Since it involves bank details I don't want to have to get involved in secure web transfer.

Next things to do -

• add RSS news feed.
• sort out banner image.
• sort out the links page and make it useful.
• consider using dynamic news page generation so that others can add and comment on articles.

Not sure I want to get into the last of those as it is pretty easy to add articles now 'cos they are just dropped into a simple template. The person who is editing articles isn't really keen to make it a site where lots of people can contribute directly - and I suppose realistically at this point the contributions are from a fairly limited pool of contributors that have direct knowledge.

3328

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2008, 06:43 AM »

Thanks - I'll see if I can find the original

3329

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 09:08 PM »

Thanks.

3330

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 07:41 PM »

Here's a poser - can anyone help ...

If I open a website in IE 7 and tap CTRL + repeatedly the page scales up brilliantly.

If I do the same in FireFox 2 the text scales up but other page elements are unaffected.

How do you code so that a whole page will scale properly in both IE and FF (and Opera, Safari etc. if it comes to that)?

3331

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 12:51 PM »

Pink excess space now (matches current page marker in the menu - taken from one of the kids clothes).

I agree the wall isn't ideal but it is a real symbol of the school and what it stands for.

Try viewing the page with page reader software and it will read the wall to you

3332

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 11:39 AM »

OK - I have removed the roll over on the menu but it now indicates which page you are on.

Getting things to line up is enough to drive you to drink!

Look at these two:

IE:   FF:

They are both to the same scale and same bit of page:

• top spacing is different
• div text alignments are completely different from the menu to the main text
• doted bar is a different style!
• even the background colours look different to me (though it is probably my eyes!)

3333

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 10:43 AM »

Menu is now an unordered list - took me a while to work out how to sort out the correct CSS tags though!

Pictures in main body text are all now frames

The top of the menu and text are better aligned (though still not perfect).

Re. PDF stuff that is a problem that will be passing soon. Ideally the only PDFs on the site should be sponsorship forms and membership forms that need decent print quality. The content editor for the site is getting to grips with cutting down the rather verbose style of previous articles. Hopefully the whole thing will become a bit more 'multi media' orientated. Personally I'd rather look at pictures, find out about the kids and tecahers and their fmilies, hear them singing etc. than read long reports.

I have an idea for an article to follow the journey of some friends who delivered minibuses to the school from the UK by driving across Spain, North Africa and the Sahara - it would give a sense of place and I think could be interesting.

I am thinking about how to indicate the current page on the menu - not sure what would be the easiest way. One thought was to put each menu entry into a separate div on the template page and then on each page override the background colour of the div in the stlyesheet by a local page CSS tag. I'll have a play. Anyone got a better solution?

3334

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 08:10 AM »

Yes I am aware of the news and links page problems.

I can't figure out how to get the menu and main body aligned correctly - there doesn't seem to be an border or padding on either so I can't see why they don't align.

I agree about the PDF version of the newsletter - unfortunately I am not editing or supplying the content. Hopefully it will get sorted.

The email form has validation - not sure what you mean. It only accepts an email address in valid format, and insists compulsory fields are filled.

I agree about the menu - maybe I will change that altogether. It was done for speed and it needs to be better.

3335

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 06:56 AM »

OK I have placed 'kidsatschool.jpg' in its own div, reduced it a bit and centred it.

I have a VMWare IE 6 running and it seems to work OK now. It was just the index page that seemed to cause an issue.

I have now removed the top banner (didn't like it - and it got blocked by AdMuncher because of its size - so probably other ad blockers wouldn't like it either) and added a bit of padding at the top of the page. Strangely the padding available seems to vary from browser to browser so the 'gap' in Firefox is more pronounced. I have placed the ad in much smaller form in the menu and it takes you to the original ad on "You Can Help" page using an anchor link.

I'll redo the banner (and this time I'll keep the PhotoShop source - not the first time I have done that - you think I'd learn!). I agree it looks fuzzy.

Thanks guys for all the suggestions and help. Keep 'em coming.

3336

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 04:16 AM »

OK I have done a bit of cleaning up (not everything) and http://validator.w3....endsofgovi.org.uk%2F now says the site is valid.

I found a few errors (and HTML version differences) and corrected those.

Dreameaver checking says it doesn't have any obvious browser compatibility issues.

I also found that the meta tags were in the wrong place - and the style sheet import in the template was in the wrong place (Dreamweaver's fault - strange 'cos I used apply style sheet and that is where it put it - maybe it looks with ref. to meta tags rather than the head tag as it should ... odd though).

I have fiddled with the banner image - unfortunately I was REALLY REALLY stupid as I rasterised and flattened the text in PhotoShop so I can't go back and edit the antialiasing settings. I have done the best I can manually - what do you think Mouser?

Server seems to be up again now.

Is the width fixed now Perry? I increased the margin for the content div and reduced its size by a couple of pixels. As I can't see it on my system I don't know if I have done enough!

3337

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2008, 03:38 AM »

That's odd - which browser are you using. Here is what it looks like in two browsers on my system with the windows dragged really narrow:

Firefox:     Internet Explorer:   


Unfortunately I can't access from the domain at the moment as the server seems to be down (I can't access any of my domains)

3338

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2008, 05:54 PM »

Thanks for the comments guys -I'll have another look tomorrow.

3339

Living Room / Re: Anyone know of webmail that will filter and forward?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2008, 11:59 AM »

Good grief I am dense - and I am using gmail !!!

Seems to work great!

Thanks yotta for point out how stupid I am 

3340

Living Room / Re: Anyone know of webmail that will filter and forward?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2008, 10:23 AM »

Thanks I'll check it out

3341

Living Room / Anyone know of webmail that will filter and forward?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2008, 08:16 AM »

I have email delivered from a webform to a single email address.

There are fields in the form that will allow me to filter the messages by using rules and forward them on to the appropriate person.

Does anyone have any idea of a reliable web based mail system that can do this automatically without me doing it through my own computer?

It is easy enough to do this with a POP client such as Outlook but I don't want to have a computer running 24/7 just to filter emails.

3342

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / First website for a client

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2008, 08:03 AM »

I have just set up my first website for a client (albeit on a voluntary basis).

It is a UK charity that supports the only school for the blind in The Gambia.

I figured it is an opportunity to develop a website for someone else and that involves working with others and to a deadline (not something I am good at). It has taken about two and half days in total to get it to this point - but half a day was spent on editing the links page - which needs some serious organising to make it useful!

A lot of the contact basis for the website is local friends who are involved and do things like deliver minibuses to the school (yes they drove from the UK to The Gambia across Europe and half of Africa - including the Sahara)!

Note the actual content is as supplied by the client but the site design and page graphics are mine. I know some pages need some extra 'interest' in the form of graphics. The news page is a work in progress - I will add a breadcrumb trail to archive stuff so that the page becomes a manageable length.

For now here is is - warts and all www.friendsofgovi.org.uk

What do people think? Constructive criticism is welcome.

3343

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: CD-RW/DVD-RW emulated drive?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 13, 2008, 04:29 AM »

I tried Tunebite ages ago but IIRC it doesn't play .AA files (maybe wrong it was a long time ago).

3344

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: CD-RW/DVD-RW emulated drive?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2008, 04:29 PM »

Been looking at Phantom Drive (at least at the website).

What I don't really understand is why the same company produce two competing products (they also sell VirtualCD) and sell the new product with HD formats support for 50% of the price of the other product. Strange ???

I have Virtual CD 8 and found its ability to produce ISO images from apps such as iTunes was a bit hit and miss. Maybe it was my system ??? Strangely the upgrade to VCD 9 costs the same as a new license for Phantom Drive ???

3345

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: CD-RW/DVD-RW emulated drive?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2008, 02:16 PM »

I have VirtualCD - it sometimes works OK but often the write function is a bit temperamental (or plain just doesn't work).

I actually want to burn discs from things like Windows Media Player and Audible Manager so that I can rip the DRMed stuff back to MP3 (or WAV) without having to burn a disc.

For mounting drives I now use MagicISO (which is free). It mounts just about any format you can throw at it.

I'll give Phantom drive a looksee - thanks for the tip.

3346

General Software Discussion / Re: GloryLogic, you guys suck!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2008, 06:32 PM »

Here are three 'hands-up' smilies (well of sorts): 

3347

General Software Discussion / Re: GloryLogic, you guys suck!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2008, 04:49 PM »

Much as I sympathise with users who like the freeware version is there anything to actually stop a developer moving to the paid model? I don't think it is particularly immoral either. Developers are free to do what they like with their programmes - it isn't as though there is a kill code on existing installations and I'm sure some of the usual websites will keep old versions of it.

Actually lots of developers work precisely this way as a marketing strategy.

Hands up if you have ever run free pre-release software which eventually turned commercial?

3348

General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting Approach by the Profiteering Malware Author

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2008, 04:45 PM »

They will need a net as big as SETI if the virus proliferates! Guess what - that net would be the next target!

3349

General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting Approach by the Profiteering Malware Author

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2008, 12:07 PM »

It hardly plugs their AV product if they are appealing to the public for help to solve the problem 

3350

General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting Approach by the Profiteering Malware Author

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2008, 10:31 AM »

Can't the money trail be traced if people are paying?

Solution - backup up regularly and tell him to go f*** himself.