Web Development & DesigningGot any web designing skills? Or maybe a question about a script that doesn't work? Use this forum to talk about this type of thing.
/*
Thanks to Virtuosofriend for helping me learn first
*/
This tutorial will teach you how to convert your template slices into a fully working page, text and all.
1. Lets start with slicing properly. You want to make as little amounts of slices as possible because you are going to be converting each image, manually, into a background. It doesn't seem as hard as it sound though, so don't worry.
Begin by slicing through the unneeded areas leaving any areas you want to make into links. When clicing up a template, they can sometimes be big and your Swatch window or your layer window might be covering the image. You can tuck the away by minimizing them since you don't really need these while slicing. If you wish, you can keep the History window open, I use this window a lot if I make a mistake. Do it like in this image:
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
This is image is zoomed out, to show you all of the slices. Notice how the slices that don't include links are large and the links are small and precisely on the image. This is how you would slice up a link:
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
2. Now it's time to convert it to an html file and begin our code work. Go to File -> Save for Web. Now choose the image types you want to the right, then click save. Choose a folder to save to. Choose "index.html" as the name, Save As "HTML and Images" Default Settings and All Slices.
3. Depending on hwo you want to do your work, open up your index.html in Dreamweaver or or favorite text editor. If you don't have a text editor, Google "Textpad," I personally use this. If you use a text editor, make note of the file names of the images that are going to be turned into links.
4. Use the Split view in Dreamweaver so you can see which images you are editing on what line. In your editor (Dreamweaver and Text Editor) you will see code like this for each image:
Notice that we now have an extra variable in the <td> tag, "background=""" and we have removed the <img> tag. First you add " background="link/to/image.gif" " without the outside quotes. Then you remove the <img> code. Do this with every image that is not going to be turned into link.
Dreamweaver users will have to refresh after each code change to see the next image,. You will notice the images dissapear, this means they are in the background. Now you can just select the images that are left and they can be turned into links. You write text you just enter your text with any <font> tags over the image where they should be.
Congratulations! You have created your sliced image website!
This tut may not appear anywhere but the following sites:
- [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] - Visit for more tutorials
- Agerage
- MPC
- Admin Fusion
This tut may not appear anywhere but the following sites:
- [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] - Visit for more tutorials
- Agerage
- MPC
- Admin Fusion
I don't mean to cause offense, but your not going to attract any visitors in with the way the site looks now. I'm on 1024 x 768 and I have to scroll across your page. You have hardly any information on your front page and yet users have to scroll to see your website. Look at it in 800 x 600, you'll proberly have to scroll to see the navigation bar.
The page is too long, and too wide. The forum you need to sign up to view any posts except the tutorials. But the tutorials aren't anything special, you can find them acrost the internet on alot more active sites with hunderds of tutorials.
Don't do signature tutorials, do REAL tutorials. Say if you created a navigation bar for a website and it was really usable. Create a tutorial for that...
Also, don't create one gaint image as a tutorial. Type the text and link to the images, looks more professional.
I'd be suprised if your homepage even gets indexed, theres hardly any textual information with any real content.
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Tips;
The less text you have the less scrolling, whereas yours is the opposite.
Don't use one long image with custom fonts for tutorials. Type it out and add images.
When you create a website, act more professional when you do it.
Check the webpage in different browsers and at different desktop resolutions. I know you proberly use some redicously HUGE desktop but aim for 800 x 600 when designing a website and it can cater for all users.
Add more textual content, buttons WITHOUT text then add the text later. Or if you can't add the text on the button to the "ALT" attribute of the tag, for search engines and text-to-speach browsers.
Never try to force people to do something, I know you want your forum to succed but if they can't see the posts then how will they know weather they want to join or not? Most users will just turn away, just like I did.
You haven't declared a DOCTYPE.
Don't link to sites like those, link to sites that are relative. Altough if you got MPC to link to you then you would shoot up in the search results of some search engines.
I don't mean to cause offense, but your not going to attract any visitors in with the way the site looks now. I'm on 1024 x 768 and I have to scroll across your page. You have hardly any information on your front page and yet users have to scroll to see your website. Look at it in 800 x 600, you'll proberly have to scroll to see the navigation bar.
I realise that. I've been reworking the code to make the page load faster. All will be fixed in a few hours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd~0v3R|r!de
The forum you need to sign up to view any posts except the tutorials. But the tutorials aren't anything special, you can find them acrost the internet on alot more active sites with hunderds of tutorials.
I've been busy the last few days and didn't have much time to do much work on the forum. It was just brought to my attention that guests can' read topics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd~0v3R|r!de
Don't do signature tutorials, do REAL tutorials. Say if you created a navigation bar for a website and it was really usable. Create a tutorial for that...
The signature tutorials are old tuts I posted on here a while ago. They are just there. And forums don't usually have much content 2 days after they are started either
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd~0v3R|r!de
I'd be suprised if your homepage even gets indexed, theres hardly any textual information with any real content.
Homepages are rarely indexed. It's usually the forums that are indexed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd~0v3R|r!de
When you create a website, act more professional when you do it.
Check the webpage in different browsers and at different desktop resolutions. I know you proberly use some redicously HUGE desktop but aim for 800 x 600 when designing a website and it can cater for all users.
Add more textual content, buttons WITHOUT text then add the text later. Or if you can't add the text on the button to the "ALT" attribute of the tag, for search engines and text-to-speach browsers.
I test the page in all resolutions and all browsers. The problem was when I reqorked the page I had forgotten to remove the side images and instead add a background color. This is how it was before and the page was fine in most resolutions. I try to get the majority of resolutions working, it's just that 800x600 is a rediculiosly small resolution and it's impossible to accopany that without compromising for 80%+ of users. Most users use 1024x768 and that is what I aim for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd~0v3R|r!de
Never try to force people to do something, I know you want your forum to succed but if they can't see the posts then how will they know weather they want to join or not? Most users will just turn away, just like I did.
This is the exact downfall of most forums. People come in, look at the tutorials waste the bandwidth and leave. Every site has this. I decide to choose which forums I want guests to view and which I want them to sign up to see. This shows them a preview. Like I said before I have been extremely busy the last few days with family issues and didn't have enough time to double check that everything was working and the way I want it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dM
the tutorial was meh, stuff i already knew. then again, im a photoshop God and you arent.
This tutorial is more for the beginner, not the "god."
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd~0v3R|r!de
Don't link to sites like those, link to sites that are relative. Altough if you got MPC to link to you then you would shoot up in the search results of some search engines.
I don't find linking with competitors very productive. I try to reach a broad audience with a site that has a sub-genre of what my site is about. If a competitor wants to link with me, I will. I have no problem with linking with competitors but it definatley is not my first choice to target an audience.
EDIT:
We've been thinking about doing a conversion from IPB over to vBulletin. If I can get the license and it happens that is when I will be redoing the whole site over most likely. I'm thinking of going with a CMS instead of a custom homepage. It can bring the forum topic over to the main page. I'll see how everything goes. We can just make a custom skin for the CMS and it would be more functional than the current page. The current page is just limited by my knowledge of PHP (or lack of ).
Homepages are rarely indexed. It's usually the forums that are indexed.
Actually, unless you submit your homepage the search engine won't index it at all until someone links to your site. Then it enters and goes through all of your links. If your forum never has a link back to the home page then your home page will never be indexed.
If a user has never used or seen a forum and they enter on a topic rather than the forums' index they'll be drenched in information and might not be able to figure out where they are. Rather than by going to the index page and following links they create a "bread crumb trail" back to the index page if they get lost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyline_R34
I try to get the majority of resolutions working, it's just that 800x600 is a rediculiosly small resolution and it's impossible to accopany that without compromising for 80%+ of users. Most users use 1024x768 and that is what I aim for.
The last site I created todo with design more users visited in 800 x 600, 63% in fact.
The last general site I created which wasnt design had about 70-80% 800 x 600.
800 x 600 isn't redicuously small for the amount of content your website has. If you created the site using CSS then you can accomadate all resolutions. Width: 100% for example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyline_R34
This is the exact downfall of most forums. People come in, look at the tutorials waste the bandwidth and leave. Every site has this. I decide to choose which forums I want guests to view and which I want them to sign up to see. This shows them a preview.
It's not a downfall, it's the internet. You cannot, and will fail, if you try to force users to join or do anything they don't want to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyline_R34
I don't find linking with competitors very productive. I try to reach a broad audience with a site that has a sub-genre of what my site is about. If a competitor wants to link with me, I will. I have no problem with linking with competitors but it definatley is not my first choice to target an audience.
Your a design tutorial site, we'll that what it looks like to me. Linking to other tutorial sites is not competition. You can only have competition if your both selling the same product or making a profit.
But in a tutorial website's case, your more likely todo well by linking to other tutorial sites. By creating a "web" of tutorial site your search engine position will rise, meaning you'll get more users. If you link to MPC (which is irrelavent to your theme), your not going todo as well as linking to a equally sized (as MPC) design forum.
You say your targeting an audience but your forum is being wayyy to ambitous and loosing sight of its purpose. You have politics, gaming, programming, and THEN a design section...
BTW, if your focusing on design should that section be higher in the forum instead of at the bottom. Users scan and only read about 60% of the textual information. Many users don't even scroll down if the top half of the page doesnt contain anything of interest to them.
These figures arent ******** by the way, the two examples; were/are real sites. I'm also a "Master CIW Designer" which is all about web design, but it also included development, usuablity, accessabilty and databases/servers. So everything in this post I have studied for exams.
Your a design tutorial site, we'll that what it looks like to me. Linking to other tutorial sites is not competition. You can only have competition if your both selling the same product or making a profit.
The main topic is not design or any type of tutorials. It's for gaming, computer hardware/software/programming and design such as sigs AND web design. Basicly anything to do with computers.
Linking to competitors doesn't do much IMO. It just either:
A) Steals their visitors, which is not what my aim is.
or
B) Does nothing because users rarely switch over from a forum they are used to to another one the same as the current.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd~0v3R|r!de
BTW, if your focusing on design should that section be higher in the forum instead of at the bottom. Users scan and only read about 60% of the textual information. Many users don't even scroll down if the top half of the page doesnt contain anything of interest to them.
That's the point. My plan is to draw in designers, gamers and programmers. They will scroll down to post in their forums but will see the other forums as well. It's not perfect, I'm not going to put something on top of another. I'm trying to stay as unbiased toward any of them as possible.
If you still wish to argue, reply to me in a new thread in the mod forum and I'll move the posts over. Leave this thread on topic .
It's not arguing, it's what a forum is for. I was giving you tips and advice on your tutorials and website. What's wrong with that?
Of course if you don't wany any help then I won't bother... I'l just stay out of the site.
I appreciate tips. I thank you for trying to help. it just seemed like an arguement . As an admin I am interested in what the public thinks, I just go overboard sometimes .
Linking to competitors doesn't do much IMO. It just either:
A) Steals their visitors, which is not what my aim is.
or
B) Does nothing because users rarely switch over from a forum they are used to to another one the same as the current.
Couldn't disagree more. Personally I go to at least 5-6 forums of the same theme (game hacking) and still would go to more of the same topic, by linking to 'competitors' your giving the people more info to look at, and rather then stealing visitors are giving the visitors more to look at then just one place.
It's not arguing, it's what a forum is for. I was giving you tips and advice on your tutorials and website. What's wrong with that?
Of course if you don't wany any help then I won't bother... I'l just stay out of the site.
Sorry to meddle in this, but although i know ur advice is benevolent for sure, discussing this here would probably give a bad image to his site. So i also suggest these posts are moved to a private section. That's just my point of view
And i thought that an American and an English would never fought in this lifetime.
Althought Dan sounded a bit too harsh, he has a good point of view. On the other hand, Skyline just started so we better give him some margin of error. I personally know noone who knew what he was doing when he started a website, either from designing view or from administration view. Their website, looks terrific in 1200x1024 , but terribly in the standart 1024x768. I have already told Skyline about that, but i guess that's why he started the topic on the forum, so he can gather more information from much more experienced guys than he.
Lets focus on the real tutorial in this thread, while we can u se the other one for site problems that we might have came across .
.
