My Web Page

[writegirl1949]

I am so excited to announce that I finally have a web page -- :eek: www.francinebiere.com

My husband is responsible for finally getting it up and published. We are such a wonderfully matched pair. God certainly knew what He was doing when he brought us together. We are like the tortise and the hare ... and he's the one with the hard shell. :rolleyes:

I'd appreciate any feedback or comments. It's our first try and I'm sure there will be some changes and obviouslly updates as things progress on the publication of my book.

Blessings, Francine

[AngelAzariah]

_____My cheaf and main complaint is the pozitioning of the contents bar. Would helped if it stayed in one place, to the sides, or the top. People may just look at the opening, see no contents, and leave. I almost did.
_____Other than that, I love the color sceam, and it's clean looking otherwise. Oh and maybe get your hubby to indent your paragraphs if he can. ;)

[FireFeet]

Woohoo...good job! !thumbsup!

My only suggestion...and this is TOTALLY based on personal preference...is to not have such huge blocks of text. I like short little things to read, interspersed with lots of pretty pictures and bright colours. That way you've got my attention and calmed my little ADD mind enough that I can enjoy the pages that have to have lots of text...book excerpts, for example. You've got the image of a blog more than a website, imo.

And, hey, congrats on the book publication! :)

[writegirl1949]

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it. And Angel ... the idea of the contents bar is a good one. Got to see how I can do that.

And yeah, big blocks of text probably isn't good.

As I said, this is a first attempt so it'll take some time to work things out. Just to have it up and published is a major accomplishment.

Thanks much.

Blessings, Francine

[AngelAzariah]

_____We're rooting for you. That content bar should even help make your text feel less chunky. Let's face it, the pc screen is wider than a book page. Even MSNNews and others make their text into a little 3 inch bar.

[David Meigs]

Nice website! I say a big Amen to helping folks in the desert. It don’t matter which way one feels on the subject, Jesus would give them to drink.

Did you do all the HTML stuff yourself? If you did, I’m impressed! I purchased Dreamweaver, but couldn’t figure out how to subjugate it to serve my will. It was a hurtful thing to admit that this dog is too old to learn a new trick. It’s not that I didn’t try. I spent weeks chasing my tail round and round until I tripped and hurt myself. I also have the Adobe suite, but it was every bit as cryptic. Now I see that Adobe bought-out Macromedia (Dreamweaver). I’m not holding my breath for their software to get easier any time soon.


Curm

[wgjones3]

This might be a start on Dreamweaver: http://www.pennmanor.net/troops/howto.pdf

or this: http://www.entheosweb.com/website_design/dreamweaver_tips.asp

[writegirl1949]

Hey Curm, thanks for the comments.

Confession is ... we bought a fairly inexpensive program called "web easy 5" -- which is a complete design studio (their words) that is, "Simply the most powerful, easy-to-use web design tool available!" -- also a quote. You can check them out at http://www.v-com.com Cost us about $40 at the PX.

It is very WYSISYG oriented and I absolutely loved it. Coming from my experience in layout and design as a newspaper editor, it was perfect. Once you get the feel for it, it is so very easy. I designed all the pages. There are some challenges in that the page size is set (as is with my web site) but I found it very simple for this technologically challeneged person.

The challenge came in getting it published on pow web -- my web host (I think that's what you would call them). Another great service but not for the uneducated. But our biggest problem was dealing with the German telephone system. We still have dial-up internet service (we're in a small farming community) so it really presented my husband a challenge. But their (pow web) chat boards were a tremendous help for him.

All in all, we've been working on this for about three months but it wasn't until my husband took some time off and spent hours and hours working methodically through things and interacting with the chat folks. He had to find away around the German telephone system :eek: I'm so computer illiterate I wouldn't even know what questions to ask.

Anyway, bottom line ... I'd definitely recomment Web Easy as a simple way to design your web site.

Okay, enough said. Hope to get some changes made soon.

And thanks for all the kind and encouraging words.

Blessings, Francine

[David Meigs]

Shiny!

Thanks WG. I checked it out, but by page-4, I developed the same headache I had when building my website. I just bought a spare bottle of aspirin (for my wife), so maybe it’s time to give it another go. I hate my website, and would love to fancy it up. Here’s hoping...

Francine, Web-Easy eh? I think I might have it. I picked up just about everything out there in my quest for a website builder. I will have to see if it is in my stack of unused web software (not kidding). Thanks for the heads up!


Curm

[FireFeet]

I have my website at mychristiansite.com. The whole thing is so ridiculously simply...it's basically all programmed and you just stick your stuff in. But there's still lots of options to customize and personal. I figured it out all on my own in just a few days after only owning a computer for about six weeks and having zero computer knowledge.

[Hisart]

I wrote my own in html, took me ... All total about one week. :eek: Yep.
Taught myself html in about a week. It's actually quite simple and any questions I had, I e-mailed a friend. ;)
Here's my site, Hisart (www.Hisart.us), check it out, if you have any questions e-mail me.
I also bought this book - HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide, Fifth Edition (Paperback) by Elizabeth Castro (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321130073/qid=1126139646/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-2172671-9405519?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) - which has answers to just about anything. !thumbsup!
Like I said within two weeks I had my site up and running, very easy. :D

God Bless!
Hisart :cool:

[writegirl1949]

Just to let everyone know -- we made the changes on the websit and I think it is much improved. Only challenge we haven't figured out is indenting the paragraphs on the excerpt page. All links but one are working as well. But since my husband rushed to get it done before I left (arrived in Arizona last night), there are some small glitches.

Anyway, it was well worth the money we spent for the Web Easy software.

Blessings,

Francine

[wgjones3]

Yeah, Francine, that looks a lot better.

Curm, have you ever tried a program called HTML Kit? It's free... a lot of people like it. But I'm spoiled by Dreamweaver.

Oh, BTW--a buddy of mine does websites for a living. He uses photoshop for the bulk of the design process. He lays out the page, uses a slicer to make little chunks out of it, and exports the whole thing as a webpage into Adobe GoLive!. There, you can add your text and format your columns or whatever... You can go from photoshop to Dreamweaver, you just have to open your exported webpage in dreamweaver and then do your work. I know the process but I can't get the results like he can.

His best work (IMO) is http://www.covenant.cc/

[Hisart]

Looks good. !thumbsup!
My only comment is the page is too wide. If I go to a page where I have to change settings to view or drift side to side, I leave. My page reads 90% of what I click on with no problem so I know it's not me alone. I was also told that those little things are important to getting your message across.

Just my $.02 worth. :D

God Bless!
Hisart (http://www.hisart.us):cool:

[writegirl1949]

Thanks for the comments guys. I have noticed that my format is wider and not as deep as other web site pages. I'm thinking that when my husband gets more knowledgeable about html, he'll be able to go into the contents of the pages and in html, change the width and length of the page format.

I agree ... I think the easier it is for folks to view the page, the easier it is to get the message out.

Since I'm now here in AZ and he's (alone) in Germany, I know he plans on spending more time getting up close and personal with html. So, your comments will be passed on to him. He's one of my biggest fans, ;)

Again, thanks for taking the time to look at the site and being honest with your feedback.

Blessings, Francine

[Rebecca]

I took a look at the source code. If you change the table width, it should take care of your page width issue. Change the width to a percentage instead of a set number, and the width will adjust to fit the user's screen.

Here's what you have now:

<TABLE BORDER=0 WIDTH=984 HEIGHT=726 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0>


Change it to:

<TABLE BORDER=0 WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=726 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0>


Hopefully your software will adjust the table cells to use percentage, too.


You did a fantastic job! The site looks great! !thumbsup!

Rebecca

[whitehawke]

Francine,
your web site looks great. Perhaps one day I'll get brave enough to do one to.
How's life treating you? How is your sister doing?
Rulan

[writegirl1949]

Rebecca:

Thank you so much for that information. You are so kind to take the time to show me how to correct the problem. I'll email my husband with the information.

And thank you for the comments as well.

Rulan ... I have no doubt you could do the same ... that software I used is soooo easy to use. It takes a little time to learn the software but it's EASY to understand and that worked for me.

My sister is doing so well ... she's got a final diagnosis of arthritis and bone spurs which isn't great but they finally started treating her pain and, in fact, tonight is totally without pain. She's got some physical therapy ahead of her but I know all the prayers helped.

Thanks for your comments on the web site. I really enjoyed doing it.

Blessings, Francine

[whitehawke]

Francine,
Glad to hear about your sister. It's no fun to be in pain. Let's pray for the Lords glory to shine.
Perhaps when I get the time, I might have a go at a web site. Thanks for the encouragement.
Rulan