New look

[Ginnie]

admin said:

The front page of the site uses PHP coding, it's not just plain HTML so working with it offline is not possible on a typical home PC. If you want a copy to play with I can make you one that doesn't use PHP.

Nah, I'm just having some fun so don't bother. Should I throw out my HTML 4 book?

Today I thought I'd redesign my website, using Komposer. Although its capabilities are considered limited, it still does more than the tools I used a few years ago. Then I had to resort to hand coding at times to tweak a bit. I find that by using plain HTML you have to be very clever and you can do about 90% of what most web pages have as content. I've never used CGI scripting though, so there would be much for me to learn if I wanted to say use databases on my web site. For what it's worth, here is the 'new look' personal site I have - just a simple site to view my artwork online, nothing fancy!
pauljhalley.110mb.com/

The globe I created almost by accident. I found an animation tool in the gimp that creates GIF animation in different style. One was an animated circle. So then I downloaded a flat earth picture and used that and applied the effect. The star background was originally a much higher quality picture, but it was 1.2 megs in size. I reduced it to a two colour GIF (black and white). Of course all the details are lost but it still looks like a starfied kind of.
I don't know what else to put on my site or even if it needs more. It's just a gallery anyways.
There is one thing I couldn't figure out though:
When you click on a thumbbail a bigger version of the picture opens up in the same window. The background is white but I'd like to change the colour.

[gillianren]

My view is blue, and I wouldn't have it any other way. (Hooray, being able to change skins!)

[reynoldbot]

Evidence?

ginniegatrit said:

[shadow=red,left,300]YOUR LIFE WILL BE BETTER!
Promise[/shadow]

Orange says...guarenteed eyestrain

Blue says...NO MORE EYESTRAIN !

Orange says...garish against the background

Blue says...the background is a friend of mine!

Orange says...harder to see is better

Blue says...a vote for blue is a vote for you !

I was joking, but as has been pointed out, the orange used in that "comparison" is not the shade of orange used in AH and in fact is much lighter and harder to read than the AH orange. That's what I call dirty politics.

[Ginnie]

That right shade of orange wasn't available in the pull down text colour box. So you can't blame that on Mr. Blue.
I would like to add that at the last minute I switched sides because I didn't want the Blue Banner. And LO wouldn't change my vote before midnight for me. ;D
HOORAY FOR ORANGE!!!!!!!!!!

[reynoldbot]

I agree. Let us rejoice in our victory.

[LunarOrbit]

ginniegatrit said:

Should I throw out my HTML 4 book?

No way! Most of what you need to know for making a webpage is HTML, and once you've got a good understanding of that you should learn CSS which makes creating a uniform colour scheme and layout for your pages much easier.

PHP is very useful when you want to generate pages on the fly using databases, but don't worry about learning that. The only thing I used it for on the main page of ApolloHoax is to include the same header and footer information that will eventually also be used on other pages. It makes updating the site easier because instead of modifying 100 files when the header or footer changes I will only need to change one or two.

Then I had to resort to hand coding at times to tweak a bit.

I find it's best to hand code HTML sites, WYSIWYG editors almost always generate messy code that is harder to understand when you do need to go in and modify something manually.

I find that by using plain HTML you have to be very clever and you can do about 90% of what most web pages have as content.

Definitely. Like I said, PHP is mostly only used when content needs to be generated on the fly. You couldn't do create forum entirely in HTML, for example, because the information changes too often (and appears differently to each user). But even the PHP code generates HTML as it's output, so you need to know it.

For what it's worth, here is the 'new look' personal site I have - just a simple site to view my artwork online, nothing fancy!
pauljhalley.110mb.com/

Looks great! And I must say that you seem to have picked a pretty good host for it too... most free hosts don't even let you use PHP and that one does. I'm thinking about using it for a new ApolloHoax forum if when I decide to move to different software. That way I can still keep the forum separate from my other sites (AH is currently sharing my hosting for my other sites).

I don't know what else to put on my site or even if it needs more.

Nah, keep it simple. If your art is the main focus of the site then anything else you could add is probably unnecessary.

There is one thing I couldn't figure out though:
When you click on a thumbbail a bigger version of the picture opens up in the same window. The background is white but I'd like to change the colour.

I think the only way to do that would be to create a separate HTML page for each image and link to that page instead of directly linking to the image.

[Ginnie]

There is one thing I couldn't figure out though:
When you click on a thumbbail a bigger version of the picture opens up in the same window. The background is white but I'd like to change the colour.

I think the only way to do that would be to create a separate HTML page for each image and link to that page instead of directly linking to the image.

I think I'll live without the black background. To create a separate page for each picture is more work than I want to do. It's just so much simpler to link to the image. I might put a border around the pictures or something like that.

Looks great! And I must say that you seem to have picked a pretty good host for it too... most free hosts don't even let you use PHP and that one does. I'm thinking about using it for a new ApolloHoax forum if when I decide to move to different software. That way I can still keep the forum separate from my other sites (AH is currently sharing my hosting for my other sites).
Thanks. I don't know anything about 110mb.com really. I just found it last minute when I changed internet providers. Their server does seem slow though. At my old site the images loaded much quicker. Tonight even when I clicked on a link to an image, the page took about 20 seconds to load.

[grashtel]

ginniegatrit said:

I think I'll live without the black background. To create a separate page for each picture is more work than I want to do. It's just so much simpler to link to the image. I might put a border around the pictures or something like that.

I think that there are automated tools for generating HTML pages for individual images, and even if not a simple template would be all you needed to do it with very little effort (basically pasting the image name in and naming the file appropriately). Also it would be pretty easy to do a single PHP page that would do the same thing, also there definitely is at least one free PHP based image gallery tool out there.

Thanks. I don't know anything about 110mb.com really. I just found it last minute when I changed internet providers. Their server does seem slow though. At my old site the images loaded much quicker. Tonight even when I clicked on a link to an image, the page took about 20 seconds to load.

It looks like a pretty good host from the quick glance over I gave it, allowing PHP for free accounts is a definite plus. The speed issue isn't constant, when I tried just now the images loaded pretty much instantly, perhaps the server(s) were having issues or your connection was misbehaving.

[Stout Cortez]

I like the new look.

[lionking]

BLUE for the reasons I stated here apollohoax.proboards21.com/index.cgi?board=paranormal&action=display&thread=1199664951&page=5 The first thing I thaught of was that this forum reminds me of the opposition and that wacko leader in it.

[Ginnie]

lionking said:

The first thing I thaught of was that this forum reminds me of the opposition and that wacko leader in it.

I'm curious, how so?

[lionking]

I'm curious, how so?

as stated in the other thread I linked to, because that opposition party has the orange color

[laurel]

In Canada, if you work at a polling station on election day, you can get sent home for wearing red, blue, or orange. Party colours can be inconvenient.

[Ginnie]

laurel said:

In Canada, if you work at a polling station on election day, you can get sent home for wearing red, blue, or orange. Party colours can be inconvenient.

For those folks that aren't familiar with our parties:
Red = Liberal Party
Blue = Conservative Party
Orange = New Democrat Party

Laurel, what about green (Green Party) ?

[laurel]

I don't know if green is allowed. When I was an inside scrutineer and a poll clerk, I wore black and white every time just to be on the safe side.