Help with my website please gents.

Entai

Entai

Entai

Caporegime
Joined
28 Feb 2004
Posts
74,822
HI all, a little bit of help required please.

I have built a small website for the swim school that my wife and I run, very basic, (the website not the school :p ) but it does the job.

I used dreamweaver to build the site, and personally I am very happy with the result, as 3 weeks ago I had no idea about webdesign at all. I am all self taught, probably very obvious when you see the site.

The site is here

The only thing that is annoying me is when you view the main home page there is a blue bar running across the screen from left to right just underneath the title logos and name etc, on this page it is a thick bar.
When ever you click on one of the page links on the left and move to another page that blue bar becomes much smaller in height.

If I open the two pages in dreamweaver the properties of the bar appear the same, so what am I missing???

I would like the bar to be the larger size on the other pages.

The index page is seperate from the other pages on the site which are built off a main template page.

Obviously any other comments on anything that could be improved, and what you think of the site in general would be very much appreciated.
 
Looking at some of the source it appears as though you are using tables to set out your web pages (good man!). I'd suggest firstly looking at the source of index.htm by highlighting logo and clicking the code button. It might simply be that the row height is bigger on index.htm than on the other pages.

Sorry to be so vague but its the best I could come up with whilst munching on a packet of McCoys :D

Post your results :)
 
Freakish_05 said:
Problem?

1) He is using tables
2) Tables Pwn :D
Click to expand...

1.) He is using those tables to structure the site. That's a basic web design mistake these days.

2.) Tables 'pwn' at displaying tabular data, not the entire site.
 
I've checked and double checked all the row heights etc but they steadfastly refuse to budge from being the same, or at least that is what it appears. I am pretty sure I am missing something really simple but just can't put my finger on it.

iCraig what is the problem with using tables?

That was what a mate sugested was the easiest wasy to start.

Why are they a mistake and what would be ther better way of doing it??
 
Entai said:
iCraig what is the problem with using tables?
Click to expand...

There isn't a problem using tables as such, it's the problem of misusing them.

As you know <table> is a HTML element, and like all the HTML elements it's there for a specific purpose. The job of a <table> and it's child elements, <tr> <td> etc is to display tabular data properly.

Tabular data covers things like, football league tables, recipes, scorecards etc. Although tables can be manipulated to display other information, such as menu's and content areas they shouldn't be. There is a list of reasons why tables are unsound for structuring websites, all you need to do is Google for some information and you'll come across thousands of articles on the subject.

Entai said:
That was what a mate sugested was the easiest wasy to start.
Click to expand...

He's not wrong as such, tables are easy to grasp and manipulate but they cause more hassle down the line, like what's happening now.

Entai said:
Why are they a mistake and what would be ther better way of doing it??
Click to expand...

I'm sure you've heard of cascading stylesheets? An external file controlling the styling information of a website? Well CSS is designed specifically for styling and structuring every HTML element ever made, and it's much easier to use.

Again, Google for more information on the subject and you'll find loads of articles and tutorials on how and why CSS based websites are the present and the future. :)
 
He is making a very basic website for a swimming school which probably wont be updated that often - it isn't worth the effort of learning standards / css etc etc. If I were him I would just have got a web design package and made some tables as well!
 
Lagz said:
He is making a very basic website for a swimming school which probably wont be updated that often - it isn't worth the effort of learning standards / css etc etc. If I were him I would just have got a web design package and made some tables as well!
Click to expand...

Shoo, begone n00b etc. :p

To be honest it isn't that hard. Also, its seems like a bit of a business. And as every marketing is concerned a professional look would be a lot better :p
 
Lagz said:
He is making a very basic website for a swimming school which probably wont be updated that often - it isn't worth the effort of learning standards / css etc etc. If I were him I would just have got a web design package and made some tables as well!
Click to expand...

But it's worth the effort trying to squash the many bugs and compatibilities that you get (one right now that spurred this thread) with tabled layouts?

Learning CSS is extremely easy, and I'm guessing that if he designs one website it's probably a hobby or something, so he could well end up doing more than one - so why not learn how to do it properly anyway?
 
i would take iCraigs very good advice, tables for layout is a nonono :)

you should have div containers for different navigation/content areas of the site. then you use CSS set the size/position and layout. then some CSS to define the style for your website.
 
if it's going to be a one-off...use www.mrsite.co.uk

if you want to do it for a hobby, use compliant html (or XHTML if you think the X sounds cool) and CSS. that website and the format you've chosen offers great potential to be a lovely learning curve.

as iCraig rightly pointed out, html and css are extremely easy to learn, and you'll thank him later for learning it now. i promise
 
Maybe worth learning.

If you just want the quick fix, from looking at your source I deduced that:

The code for the big bar is:

<tr bgcolor="#00FFFF">
<td height="2" colspan="3">
<div align="left"><br>
</div> </td>
</tr>

The code used on the other pages where the bar is small is:

<tr bgcolor="#0CE8F6">
<td height="4" colspan="3">
<div align="left"><font color="#FFFFFF" size="7"><b> </b></font></div>
<div align="left"></div>
<div align="left"></div> </td>
</tr>

Just replace one with the other and it might work?
 
Thanks for the quick fix Lagz, I tried what you said, but i found somethging that seemed a bit odd.
I found the part on the main index page with the large bar then looking on the template for the other pages I found the part for the small bar, but the height and width and colour etc were all the same. :confused:

If I then look at the code for the other pages, where it pulls up the template the height (as you showed) is different but the code is greyed out and dreamweaver won't allow me to change it.

I guess this is one of those bugs iCraig was on about.

I am not really wanting to get into webdesign as anything serious, we just wanted a small little site so that our customers can get a few bits of basic info about who we are where we are etc.

Is there a quick way of converting this to CSS stylee or do I have to start from scratch all over again and try to learn something completely different, a bit annoying as I haven't even got my head around this sort of stuff yet!!!!

Otherwise thanks for all the advice guys.
 
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