Free Web Design Advice

[vangoghrentals]

I just wanted to offer to answer questions about webdesign, forms, html, Dreamweaver, Frontpage, FTP etc for those of you who are ready to create a site for advertising your gite.

Rebekah Owens

[Le_Jars]

Hello Rebekah, I've got a question! Does the first page made in

Dreamweaver have to be named 'index' for it to be the first page to be

seen? What I mean is, when I've uploaded my site to my server, is there

another name I can call the first page and it still be the first one on

the site when live? I don't want it's address to be something like

...www.stuff.com/somepage.html... I still want it to be just the domain

name (does that make sense?).  :)

[Ex Forum Admin]

Hi Le_Jars

Depends on the server I think as to which file it calls first when someone types the domain but it's usually 'index.html'.
If you name your homepage index.html it should call up from just the domain name anyway and you wouldn't need to type the /index.html after it.

James

for example (and I have no connection with this site!)

http://www.villas-apart.net shows http://www.villas-apart.net/index.html

Does this help?

Additional example is that your web address in your sig could be shortened to http://www.galerielepetitchien.com/paintings

 

 

[Cassis]

All the guides say call your homepage 'index.html' because that's the accepted html protocol.  If you think about it, there has to be some standard start point for every website.

[diotima]

[quote user="Le_Jars"]Hello Rebekah, I've got a question! Does the first page made in

Dreamweaver have to be named 'index' for it to be the first page to be

seen? What I mean is, when I've uploaded my site to my server, is there

another name I can call the first page and it still be the first one on

the site when live? I don't want it's address to be something like

...www.stuff.com/somepage.html... I still want it to be just the domain

name (does that make sense?).  :)

[/quote]

Have a look at this page - http://www.pageplanetsoftware.com/mgiuserguide/Understanding/defaultpages.html. I always use index.html because it's the first the browser looks for, and anything that speeds up the process by even a microsecond is generally good [:)]

When posting a link to my web site to someone I always include the slash at the end of the name, because what happens when the browser contacts the server is (roughly!) this:

If the name is http://www.website.com (without the slash), the browser says to the server 'Hey server, I'm looking for the home page of this site, which is it?'

Server says 'Er... just a mo'.. I've got index.html... is that the one you want?'

Browser: 'Yep, that's the one'.

Server: 'OK - here you are!'.

Putting the trailing slash in the website name eliminates half that conversation, and maybe reduces the delay in displaying the page by another microsecond. This is as told to me by the head server manager of a major UK business website. [:-))]

[nimportequoi]

Hi Rebekah,

I use dreamweaver to do my site but it was originally done by someone else. All pages except the index are HTML, except the index which is SHTML and whenever I do updates to the index page, I get kicked out of Dreamweaver after the update has been done (or if it is a major change, before). I know it is a dense question, but what is the difference and if I re-name the index page as HTML would this solve the problem? I never have any problems with updating and changing the other pages.

Thanks in advance! my website is here if it is of any use to see the code.

 

 

 

[Ex Forum Admin]

Hi.

See here for a basic explanation of SHTML: http://www.within-reason.com/tutorial/shtml.html

Having looked at your source code it looks like straight html.

What you could do is this:

1. copy your index.shtml index file to local drive and make a copy.

2. Rename the copied file offline to index.html

3. Add the index.html to the server.

4. Rename the online index.shtml to xindex.shtml

Check website (make sure it isn't cached version your viewing by hitting simultaneously control and f5 key).

If it doesn't work you can always switch back. You'll have a copy online and offline of the original.

 

[Cassis]

Here's another excellent 'How to do a website' website.  I used the search facility whenever I was stuck on how to do something when I was all virtuous and making the site WWW compliant.

[Cassis]

[quote user="SusanAH"]

Hi Rebekah,

I use dreamweaver to do my site but it was originally done by

someone else. All pages except the index are HTML, except the index

which is SHTML and whenever I do updates to the index page, I get

kicked out of Dreamweaver after the update has been done (or if it is a

major change, before). I know it is a dense question, but what is the

difference and if I re-name the index page as HTML would this solve the

problem? I never have any problems with updating and changing the other

pages.

Thanks in advance! my website is here if it is of any use to see the code.

 [/quote]

Your place looks lovely. 

Hope you don't mind me saying, the images on the front page are a bit big (file-wise) for anyone viewing on a dial-up connection.  You can see what I mean - page load time is very slow - if you put the page address in the box on this website that tests pageload times:

Page load test

You could reduce some of the image file sizes considerably without affecting the image quality too much.

[Cassis]

What happened to the original poster here?  [8-)] [:D]

[nimportequoi]

I don't know, but thanks very much James, for your advice.Should there be a seperate section for all this as I'm sure there are a lot of people in addition to gite/B&B owners who have their own websites? Cassis, I know the pages are a bit slow to load on dial up - the cottages page is a lot worse than the homepage! How do I reduce the filesize without changing the size or quality?

[Cassis]

The image size onscreen is defined in your html code; the file size is a separate issue.  You really need a bit of photoediting software to do it easily.  You usually get this with a digital camera if you have one.  There is lots of software available free online, though.  I use Photoplus for changing image sizes and file sizes because it is dead simple (like me) and lets me see the end effect of any changes before I export or save the image.

[Cassis]

Here is your image straight off your website, weighing in at 57kb approx.

[IMG]http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/pics/HouseBest.jpg[/IMG]

Here is the same reduced to 12kb approx.

[IMG]http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/pics/HouseBest2.jpg[/IMG]

[Cassis]

Duplicate

[Cassis]

And here it is at 12kb with the power lines taken out.

[img]http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/pics/HouseBest3.jpg[/img]

Phil

[nimportequoi]

A great improvement without the power lines! I've got photoshop, but haven't had time to work out how to use it. I usually use Ifanview myself as it is simple, but hadn't ever got round to adjusting the file sizes. Thanks Phil!

[Cassis]

Here are the other 3 oversized files, now reduced, from the Index page. 

Note that these and the others I posted have slightly different names to your originals so if you decide to use them you should right click, 'save image as' and then load onto your PC using your original names before you upload to your website server.  Make sure you put them in a different file on your PC to your originals otherwise you'll overwrite the original big files.

[img]http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/pics/Trampoline2006.jpg [/img]

[img]http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/pics/Garden2006.jpg [/img]

[img]http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/pics/Pool06.jpg [/img]

I like your pool. [8-|]

[nimportequoi]

Cheers Phil. I will have a go at changing the homepage so I can alter the layout without being chucked out of DW and I'll put in the photos as you've done them. Then I need to get to work on all the other photos on the website! No time to use the pool, unfortunately....

[shimble]

iwould appreciateit if you could contact me if you have any experience of dynamic pages using php in dreamweaver if  you can advise me on this subject please give me a contact email so we can talk privately the more i try and learn the more involved and complicated it gets

[Ex Forum Admin]

I'm only just starting to figure out php at the moment as we don't use it here at work as we have windows servers not Linux...so it's something I'm doing at home.
The majority of coding that I do is hard coding rather than using programs such as Dreamweaver, so I'm not much use to you really...sorry.

James