Mic's Noob Website Thread - Advice / Help

da_mic_1530 · 26 Sep 2008 at 17:38

Hi there, I'm going to be building a website over the next few weeks, but I'm not that hot at website creation so I thought I'd create a thread for advice over the next few weeks

Currently I have this very basic CCS layout

I wish to get the picture in the images folder positioned in the Header

The image should be positioned to completely fill the header but be in line with the main container below on the right

Any help would be mostly appreciated, but I would like to know how it's done, I want to learn

and google has not yeiled many results

Link to website

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MV5INU7T

AHarvey · 26 Sep 2008 at 17:43

Firstly I would suggest you get the following book:

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

Great for beginners!

Secondly, if you want advice on a specific problem it helps if you have the website hosted already as people won't want to be downloading and setting it up just to help you troubleshoot it!

Look for some free hosting to start with until its built and then get yourself some paid hosting.

da_mic_1530 · 26 Sep 2008 at 17:44

AHarvey said:
Firstly I would suggest you get the following book:

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

Great for beginners!

Secondly, if you want advice on a specific problem it helps if you have the website hosted already as people won't want to be downloading and setting it up just to help you troubleshoot it!

Look for some free hosting to start with until its built and then get yourself some paid hosting.

cheers big ears, will look into it

AHarvey · 26 Sep 2008 at 17:47

da_mic_1530 said:
cheers big ears, will look into it

Check your email, sent you something that might help.

da_mic_1530 · 26 Sep 2008 at 17:53

AHarvey said:
Check your email, sent you something that might help.

hotmail wouldn't let me open it

da_mic_1530 · 26 Sep 2008 at 17:57

sorted it myself, was looking at the wrong bit of CSS do'h

Tripnologist · 26 Sep 2008 at 18:57

AHarvey said:
Secondly, if you want advice on a specific problem it helps if you have the website hosted already as people won't want to be downloading and setting it up just to help you troubleshoot it.

Definitely agree with this.

da_mic_1530 · 26 Sep 2008 at 20:48

my next question is this

I'm looking for a program / script that is an online ticket program, I'm looking for something really basic, SQL driven or something, google seems to think I want a ticket system for support, I actually want one for tickets for concerts or football matches

As for the hosting, should be up around next week, for now I'll look for a free dodgy one that supports php, any suggestions?

mr.sly · 26 Sep 2008 at 20:51

da_mic_1530 said:
my next question is this

I'm looking for a program / script that is an online ticket program, I'm looking for something really basic, SQL driven or something, google seems to think I want a ticket system for support, I actually want one for tickets for concerts or football matches

As for the hosting, should be up around next week, for now I'll look for a free dodgy one that supports php, any suggestions?

http://www.000webhost.com/

da_mic_1530 · 30 Sep 2008 at 20:55

anyhoo, thought I'd give a bit of background on the website

It's for uni project, not after the perfect site just need to prove I understand certain techniques, anyway

I currently have a few forms , see here http://micholden.site50.net/register.html

For some reason the forms text fields are not showing their boarder's, therefore "disappearing" into the white background

Any ideas?

t31os · 2 Oct 2008 at 19:00

I see borders in both IE7 and FF3.

HungryHippos · 2 Oct 2008 at 22:44

Centralising your layout

in the HTML create a <div> with an ID attribute like this:

<div id="content">

then in the CSS create an entry for it like this:

#content {
width:1000px;
position:relative;
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
}

This sets the content div to be 1000 pixels wide and centralises it on the screen also. Then you can just add the content within the div tags of the content div.

Simplifying your borders

Some of your CSS code can be simplified, rather than saying:

border-top-width: 1px;
border-right-width: 1px;
border-bottom-width: 1px;
border-left-width: 1px;
border-top-style: solid;
border-right-style: solid;
border-bottom-style: solid;
border-left-style: solid;
border-top-color: #999999;
border-right-color: #999999;
border-bottom-color: #999999;
border-left-color: #999999;

You could simply put:

border:1px solid #999999;

this would create a border for all edges of the content that is colour #999999 and is 1px.

Font choices

for your fonts you should consider using a multi font entry like this:

font-family:Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

This uses the fonts in order stated if they are available.

Labelling your labels

Your labels should be specified "for" something, for example:

<label for="inputname">Enter Label Text</label>
<input type="text" name="inputname" id="inputname" />

Select tags for the options

Your options dropdown box should be within <select> tags for example:

<select id="subscribe" name="subscribe">
<option value="subscribe">subscribe</option>
<option value="unsubscribe">unsubscribe</option>
</select>

Helpful tip

When setting up a layout I sometimes find it helpful to give my divs a temporary background colour so you can see where they are positioned even when empty

da_mic_1530 · 8 Oct 2008 at 17:16

hello there again, I have been plodding away and have got to

http://micholden.site50.net/indexrss.html

Please don't laugh, it's just to prove to the examiner I understand certain features

Note some links are dead

ANYWAY

I have to look at storing a subset of data and have looked at the array php method

I'm going to ask each customer what their 3 favourite toon players are within the current register page

I've looked at a good 10 tutorials and had a go but I don't know how to paste the array code within the current register.php

<li><a href="map.html">About Us</a></li>
<li><a href="finaltest.xml">Subscribe</a></li>
<li></li></ul>
</div>
<h2 align="center"><em>Newcastle United</em></h2>
<p><?php
include "connection.php";
//Get the information from the form. NB This must be validated and cleaned
$id = $_GET['id'];
$firstname = $_GET['firstname'];
$secondname = $_GET['secondname'];
$username = $_GET['username'];
$email = $_GET['email'];
$password = $_GET['password'];

$query = "INSERT INTO a5168769_cust (id, firstname, secondname, username, email, password) VALUES ('$id', '$firstname', '$secondname', '$username', '$email', '$password')";
// execute query
// print $query;
$result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

// print message with ID of inserted record
print "<br />Your customer ID number is ".mysql_insert_id();

?>

</p>

<p>
<?php
print "<b>Thank you for registering with us</b>" ;
echo "<b>$firstname!</b> <b>You can now access the NUFC Shop, full of great Geordie Gifts for all fans</b>";
print "<b>We will send all updates and news to <a href=mailto:$email>$email</a></b>";
?>

The SQL for this is

CREATE TABLE a5168769_cust(
id VARCHAR(20) not null,
firstname VARCHAR(20) not null,
secondname VARCHAR(20) not null,
username VARCHAR(30) PRIMARY KEY,
email VARCHAR(20) not null,
password VARCHAR(10) not null );

So obviously I know how to create the array fields within the SQL but I can't for the life of me work out the register.php method to stick the stuff in the SQL database

da_mic_1530 · 8 Oct 2008 at 21:17

I'm also looking for an open source app that will allow someone to update RSS xml documents once I've gone, sort of like an icon driven thing