webgyrl

I am going to be setting up a website for a client that uses AOL and I was wondering if it is wiser to advise them to either check email using webmail or for them to get another ISP and set up Outlook for them. It's a small office and these people barely know how to use the computer and check email. I think using webmail might be daunting for them. Only one person in the office really knows how to use email but he has never used Outlook before, just AOL. The gist I'm getting here is that forwarding domain email to an AOL account is a real troublesome thing. I'm meeting with this client next week and will be reccomending that they get hosting with TCH. I just want to alert them to the possible AOL conflict. Thanks, Nat

I haven't seen that much in here regarding Flash. Are there any Flash Gurus here on the TCH forums? If anyone knows of good online Flash Tutorials or books that are easy to follow, please post links or titles of books here. This is something I'd love to learn and impliment in my design in the future. It just seems like quite the beast to tackle. Nat

I'm getting around to taking the hundreds of bits of code I have compiled and inputing them into DW MX's great code snippet feature. The only 'snag' I have run into is that most bits of code are 2 part... some goes in the head and some in the body. If I use the INSERT BLOCK feature, then all the code is lumped together and I have to drop the snippet into where I want it and then take the HEAD tag and manually move it by highlighting and dragging it. I noticed that there is a WRAP SELECTION feature in the create a new code snippet interface... I was wondering how that works? It seems to break code into two sections, but I am not sure how it all works. Is anyone familiar with this, and if so, how do you use it? Thanks, Nat

Gaberville, Thanks for that link. I am using a PC. Nat

Does anyone know how I would back up my DW Preferences and Snippets in case I crash and loose everything or need to re-install DW on another system. I am thinking of upgrading my computer and I wanted to know if there was a way to save all the snippets of code I have besides copying and pasting them into .txt files and saving them that way. Thanks, Nat

Ah! Thanks Dennis! I never noticed that before you mentioned it. Nat

TCH absolutely RAWKS. I am SO happy I found you guys! I've learned so much just by being on these boards and from the incredible and helpful staff. And it is nice to see ya'lls mugshots! Heee Heee Nat

S'ok I did a search and found a download site for it. Gonna check that out this evening. Nat

Jim, That's exactly the sort of thing I am looking for! Do you know where I can download a recent version of Xenu? Thanks a million! Nat

Thanks for those PHP scripts! I'm actually looking to count the pages that are on other peoples' sites, not mine. I thought I ran into something like that a few years ago online. You would just plug in the URL and it would spit out the total number of pages that were included on that site. Thanks for the help. Nat

I was wondering if anyone out there knows of a service that counts the number of pages in a web site? I'm looking for something that would allow me to plug in the domain name and then it would count all pages and sub-directory pages and give me the total pages that make up the web site. Thanks, Nat

Ryan, Thanks for adding your insight. I think for some jobs the per hour thing works very well, and for others the package rate deal type thing. I'm still doing more research, but it all seems very open ended and like someone stated previously, it seems one has to figure what one's time is worth and then go from there based on the project scope etc. Thanks for sharing Nat

Hey Everyone! Thanks for the great replies and your personal insights. I've been sequestering myself over at the local Borders doing tons of reading on the subject. What would I do without the "For Dummies" series! LOL I've gleaned a lot of info. This LAN is going to be a basic peer-to-peer as they have already bought the computers and each system has its own software package. They basically just need to all have DSL access. Wireless is not an option as security is important in this case. They just got into a new office (the old building that housed the Embassy burned a year ago and they have been in transitional places and working from the Ambassador's residence since then). Anyway... it should be a really interesting excersize and great learning experience. As always, I appreciate that the TCH family is so willing to share insight and knowledge and I very much appreciate it! Happy Sunday Nat

Aren't I just the chica with a zillion questions this week! LOL Ok... here's one for the more technically able around here Say I wanted to set up a LAN for 5 computers... just for fun (yah right ha ha) Any books or tutorials that will step me through the process? Also, what hardware, cables and software will I need? Is it very costly? Would they need an internal server that all the applications are installed on or does one computer act as the motherbrian type thing that runs the rest of the computers. Does everything store to the main computer or does it just share applications and then whatever is on everyone's PC's is stored on thier own drives? A friend of mine works at an Embassy here in DC and they are finally trying to get out of the dark ages and get some computers, but they want to share a DSL connection, software and printer capabilities. I'm the only 'computer person' they know and they don't have a huge budget to hire an outside IT company to do this. It's a 3rd world country Embassy, so they really don't have an IT dept or anything... in fact they can barely send email... but they need help and I feel like it would be a nice thing to do to train them up and improve the productivity in their office. From the very little I have read on networking, it seems feasable to do it without having a computer science degree... but I have never done this sort of thing before and before I even offer to help I want to know what's involved in case it's way out of my league. Also, does anyone know if it matters if they get Windows XP Pro or Home if one wants to do a LAN? I am also assuming that for any software they purchase they will have to get licenses for each computer that the software is going on? I think they want Office 2004 with Word, Excel, Outlook, Publisher etc., and also they will need Norton Antivirus, Zone Alarm Pro and Pest Patrol to protect them when they are online. Thanks for any insight you may have regarding this topic Nat

Bruce! Thanks so much for the links. That is a great site and those scripts are exactly what I was looking for Merci! Nat

I was wondering if anyone here knows how to make a "Fast Find" type of drop down list like the one ON THIS PAGE. It's on the left hand side of the page under "Find It Fast". Is there an extension that will do this in DW MX or can it be done another way? Thanks for your help. Nat

What will happen to a page with CSS when someone tries to view it with an older browser? Speaking of browsers... anyone know where I can get old versions of IE and Netscape to test this stuff in? If I have the latest version if IE (6) on my system... what will happen if I try to install an older version of the browser? Thanks Nat

Yeah, a few people here suggested to me that I stick to tables for now as well. Seems it's a lot harder to do the CSS boxes etc and get cross-browser similar results. I do like the uniformity that CSS gives the text. Argh! I do have SO much to learn still. S'all good tho... what is life without learning! Nat

Presto! Don, that worked perfectly. Now I just wonder how that happened? Was it something I did when setting up the Style Sheet in DW? I will have to play again and try some different style sheets to see if that postion: absolute shows up again. I'm only venturing at formatting the text with CSS at the moment. Not so good with the boxes and other goodies. Thanks for the help. I shall keep playing to see what more damage I can do! Nat

I actually did the CSS sheet in Dreamweaver and uploaded it via DW's FTP. I will try taking out that absolute position. I just did the by-the-steps approach to the style sheet in DW MX. I wonder how it got that messed up? Ok... will tweak it and see if it works. Thanks a mil guys! Nat

Hi! Ok, so I have been trying to learn CSS and impliment its use in my sites. I made a little mock up page to play around with and something has gone horribly wrong. For some reason my navigation bar is below my CSS text and it's supposed to be above. In fact, the whole page is backwards... things that are on the bottom are supposed to be on the top etc. The text also goes beyond the paramaters I set for the tables I created. And for some strange reason the images are not all loading so the navigation interface I created is not showing up. I fact, it sort of looks like the CSS portion of the design is covering up the graphic... but I never inserted any layers etc. into the design, so I don't understand why this is happening. Do CSS and HTML tables just not mix well, or did I do something else to make this not appear on the browser as I designed it in Dreamweaver? I checked it using IE 6. This was done using Dreamweaver MX and Fireworks for graphics. If you could check out the PAGE HERE and perhaps point out where I made my boo-boo's it would help me a ton. If you want me to post the code, let me know and I can do that. Thanks, Nat

Hey everyone! Thanks for the very helpful info and perspectives on this. It seems that design can be very open ended and I don't think I'd want to venture into doing massive sites or anything like that. Things 50 pages and under seem doable to me right now. I'm very familiar with small business, musician and org. type stuff and it's not hard to do that type of thing... just gotta figure out the pricing structure. I know that for a site like my official site, you could pay upwards of $2500 plus a monthly fee (that's what I gather from looking around at other co's anyway). The sites I have been approached to design are a tad smaller with not so many features... so of course they would cost less... but I just want to figure out a good and fair pricing scheme. Anyway, it's just something I'm toying with as a few of people have been asking me to design sites for them lately. If anyone has anything further to add, I'd love to hear it. Thanks again Nat

I was wondering what other scripts or packages exist that allow you to have a login members only section on a website? Also, what if this was for an organization where only paid members could log into the site? One of the sites I designed is a Music Organization where members sign up using acteva or a mail in form and then they get a membership package sent to them. We were thinking of putting up a members only section on the website for a forum and other things but I wouldn't want just anyone to be able to sign in and use that section without first having paid the annual membership fee. I hope I explained that clearly enough. If not let me know and I can clarify. With Amember it seems that anyone could sign up and log in. Thanks for any help you can give. Nat

Heya! I've been doing a bit of researching on e-commerce site design for a friend and have noticed that a lot of web design and development sites don't list prices for services. A few of the sites I found do list rates, but there is such a variance it got me to wondering how web design companies or individuals go about setting rates to design web sites. Some charge a per page fee, some do packages and some do an hourly fee. It all seems very confusing to me. For those that are designers here, how do you set your fees and what critera do you use when you quote a job? I was thinking about maybe getting into this type of service for other musicians who need web pages, but I have no idea how I would go about quoting to design a site and web graphics for them. Any insight would be mucho appreciated. Nat

I was wondering if anyone here knows of a tutorial or a book that would step me through how to set up an e-commerce site? I have a friend who is interested in me designing a site for him, but he will have an online store with various products. I haven't set up this type of thing where the store is actually embedded into the site. For previous sites I have used other payment type services like Acteva, CDStreet and Paypal. I am guessing I'd have to find some kind of storefront or shopping cart script (I think there is one included in the TCH plans?), and a gateway to connect the cart to the merchant account. Any suggestions for merchant account companies that don't charge huge setup fees? How does the client apply for a merchant account and what are some things to watch for? Do they run credit checks etc? I was also wondering what kind of tax info I would need so that state tax would be calculated. How does that all work online? Do people from that state that the site is in only pay the state tax, or is there some other way it works? I am very new to designing this type of site.... so if there is a book or an online tutorial that would help I'd love to hear about it. I am just doing this one as a favor to my friend, but I don't wanna mess it up and if it proves to be out of my league I may just refer him to a design company. Thanks in advace for any help Nat