Forums > Social Chat > website questions

Posted: 23rd May 2005
You could do with cleaning up your HTML a bit. I see you've used Dreamweaver, go to Commands > Clean up HTML. That'll make your site nicer (the code anyway) and might speed up as well.

The images could be compressed a lot, on my megabit ADSL they were quite slow.

I would go on about CSS and XHTML, and I will if you want.

I can host your site for you if you like, just PM me. It's FreeBSD, LAMP server.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 23rd May 2005
Its good piper, no bugs that i could find.. I'd pick the brains of Sym if i were you...in fact, i might just have to do the same for my website...;)

Tomorrows World isnt on anymore...Does that mean its tomorrow now?

Posted: 23rd May 2005
hehe, feel free

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 24th May 2005
well, I'm realy looking for a hosting solution where I can be removed from the loop eventually...



I know it really should be done with css positioning rather than html tables, but its a design i started before i knew css and I've had great problems trying to convert it...



also, i will makit xhtml on my next pass over the code... i didn't realize I hadn't finally gotten around to it.



I really want to make the images smaller, but i couldn't figure out how to compress them further without it looking funny on 800x600... how?? I was usin PhotoSshop CS save for web



soo, the code is a bit messy.. i don't know what os your on, but its messier in windows, because after my next door neighbor made the original design in dreamweaver, I've been using object edit (stardock.com) to change the code in a notepad like setting. OE doesn't use \r\n enters like windows, but only \n like unix. other than that, its a godawful mess of tables, but we couldn't find a way to simplify without something going horribly wrong... you should have seen the orig code...



anyway, details on improvements to the html/css would be greatly appreciated, so be as specific as you like.





also, in case you're wondering about the use of JS instead of PHP&MySQL, we were not sure until this week that we would pay for hosting, so i scripted it all originally with a free host in mind (i.e. client side), but then hacked out a php to alter the files driving the JS... a really ugly hack... eventually it will be mysql and php driven.



wow, asking people for help here is really productive! wanna review my resume?



thanks

Q:What's the difference between the Great Highland Bagpipes and the Northumbrian Pipes?
A:The Great Highland Pipes burn longer.

Posted: 24th May 2005
If you got rid of the tables and did it all in CSS it'd be much nicer. It's a real mission to convert websites sometimes though, so that one might take a while.

Firefox displays your code with linebreaks just fine, and I expect Sym's using Firefox, so I'm guessing he's not talking about the linebreaks. I'll leave that up to him to clarify though...

Design-wise, if I were you I'd put some padding around the news stories and "Next event" type boxes, and maybe put a bit of a border around them, possibly in a darker green? I am of the opinion that borders around boxes, even really subtle ones, makes them look much tidier and, err, "complete", I guess is the word I'm looking for.

The history page is a bit broken. I guess you know that...

I am rubbish at bugfinding, but I've had a quick poke about and I haven't managed to break anything.

On hosting, I'm currently hosted at www.ipaska.com who seem to be good so far, but I haven't been with them a month yet so I can't really comment. My friend has used them for a few years and says they are good. They do everything you need cheaply.

On the whole, it's quite a nice design. Good stuff.

"Take that, math!"

Posted: 24th May 2005
thanks for the tips, do you know how large your MySQL databases can be on ipaska? also, i've seen a few hosts listed for prices like 30-40 per year!! does anyone know if any of those are reputable? I really need to get off the free server, and i don't currently have $60-$70 bucks free for it.



thanks for the offer Sym, but I need to get a host that is idiot-proof i.e. i'm on the alumni page for the band, I can't be this involved forever, and i need my (likely clueless) successor to be able to use an online file manager, and a "no instruction required" interface for zone files, transfers, chmodding, ect...



my neighbor's brother is a designer in CA, he says make the pages have a light grey(#F0F0F0) bg around the outer-most table and then a thin(1px) darkgreen(#00CC00) border. I'm gonna convert the entire site to php over the next week, then I'll start with the changes.

Q:What's the difference between the Great Highland Bagpipes and the Northumbrian Pipes?
A:The Great Highland Pipes burn longer.

Posted: 24th May 2005
also, Sym, are you sure it's not just the host that is slow? I'm on cable, and my phpbb (not my images, all just gradient gifs) take a while too... i'm currently reasding my graphics folder as only 780 kb total

Q:What's the difference between the Great Highland Bagpipes and the Northumbrian Pipes?
A:The Great Highland Pipes burn longer.

Posted: 24th May 2005
I was using Safari, but I wasn't worries about the line endings or anything, it was the inline styles and stuff I was talking about.

Remember, the W3C is your friend. Validate your site on it and see if you can fix the 53 errors on it (like the doctype and charset for a start).

I don't like the idea of a 'splash page' all, they just get in the way for me, but everyone else sems to like them.

You could try anti-aliasing the fonts a bit, they look a bit rough. I can't help you with the image compression as I use fireworks. I can get it from 100k to 15k without any visual loss, so you can do something more to it. (I'll do them for you if you want to email them to me PM me for my address)

My hosting offers a control panel but there isn't any file manager or anything like that. I'm not sure how a 'clueless' person will cope with chmodding and zone files, but it's for them to worry about!

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 24th May 2005
(Yes, you're right, I'd forgotten I was downloading loads of stuff on my PC when I looked at your site the first time!)

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 24th May 2005
Sym, or anyone, another question... i have a chunk of PHP code that used to work and now doesn't... does anyone know why I can't do this:

Code:

---

$handle = fopen("https://www.cafepress.com/ghpb",r);
while (!feof($handle))
{
$buffer = fgets($handle, 4096);
echo $buffer;
}
fclose($handle);

---

Q:What's the difference between the Great Highland Bagpipes and the Northumbrian Pipes?
A:The Great Highland Pipes burn longer.

Posted: 24th May 2005

Written by: Singed Piper (formerly Mark1)

---

thanks for the tips, do you know how large your MySQL databases can be on ipaska?

---

There's no defined limit. Best thing to do is to drop them an email and ask - I've seen companies charge a fair bit ($40ish I guess) for one 150mb database, so I guess seeing as they don't charge extra for them if it was pushing 50 megs or so there'd be problems. Do you have 50 megs of news posts to store?

My PHP is rusty so I can't really help you on that. I didn't think it was allowed to access offsite stuff by default...

"Take that, math!"

Posted: 24th May 2005
its not for just news... we have a forum, gallery, schedule



and, sym, as far as I can see, my code has three invalid items... no doctype, no charset, no type atribute on a script... suprisingly the rest are problems with the ad banner and the validator not parsing javascript well... whoops, it has more, but they're mostly missing alt tags on thing that were already labeled
EDITED_BY: Singed Piper (formerly Mark1) (1116965334)

Q:What's the difference between the Great Highland Bagpipes and the Northumbrian Pipes?
A:The Great Highland Pipes burn longer.

Posted: 24th May 2005
Oh, you're right, sorry about that, but fixing the doctype is a good idea (it might fix the other errors)

try removing the line lenght in your php:

$buffer = fgets($handle);

AFIK it's optional

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 24th May 2005
it is, but it defaults to 1024... so that shouldn't hurt

Q:What's the difference between the Great Highland Bagpipes and the Northumbrian Pipes?
A:The Great Highland Pipes burn longer.