Answering Your Frequently Asked Questions
Frequent Request: "Can you help me make a web page?"
I'm sorry, I can't. I like to help people but there isn't enough time in
a day to personally answer all my email --let alone help any or all who ask
me this question.
I have a Web Resources page
for the purpose of helping people make web pages.
~~~Regarding
"It's a Wonderful
life", Duckpin Bowling, or the
60's and 70's... I've put all the
information that I have about those subjects on the web. I'm not "an expert"
in any of those subjects, I just enjoy them and am enthusiastic about them.
Please visit the
Message
Boards under those subjects to post your requests for more information
or items you wish to buy or sell.
More Frequently asked questions.... the long answers!
"How long have you
been doing this?"
I first sat down to a
friends computer (Marv in Santa Barbara) in 1981 and promptly became addicted
to PacMan. During the 80's, I used the computers at my husbands office. (286's
or less, everything DOS). Then in 1992, my brother,
Scott, hand built
my first PC for me. It was a pre-Windows operating system. The OS was called
"Geoworks" and I loved it! Then a month later he installed 'the latest
thing', which was Windows 3.1 and said "You have to use Windows now, it's
new and everything is going to be made to work with Windows in the future."
Well, I hated Windows ! Geoworks was a much better OS! (Honestly,
looking back, I loved the Tetris within Geoworks) So he put both operating
systems on and I used both for a few months. The system booted to DOS and
then I chose which OS to use for each application.
Right away I signed up with Prodigy (DOS Version, at 2400 kbps), then in
early 93', then I signed up with AOL to compare services, I liked Prodigy
better because it was faster. I finally logged on to the WWW for the first
time in 1994 when AOL first offered internet access. In the beginning,
when signing up to an online service, there was no internet, just access
to their systems, like an INTRANET. The AOL sponsored internet home
pages were crude, no graphics, just text. Each was one page and only had
a color as background and were written like resumes.
But, I said; "This is the future and I am there!" For the next
seven years I would ask people if they had 'e-mail' and most of the time
get a blank look. "Huh? What's e-mail?"
When TV finally started promoting the internet, that's when it clicked with
the national consciousness. That would be 1999 to 2000ish.
I still have the same AOL account, but my kids use it now. I have been surfing
the web on a cable modem since 1998. Being on a cable modem can be dangerous.
It's like having a huge "kick me" sign on your back. I learned the hard way
after hackers got into my PC and created chaos. Now I am "stealth", so no
hackers can get in, and you can be too, if you go
visit Zone Labs.
I also highly recommend
Ad-Aware to
get rid of Spy-ware. I use it at least every three days.
"Your website is so
large! How did you do this?"
My answer is simply,
--one page at a time. <G>
This website has been online for since 1997 and parts of it go back
to 1992, due to the content [original writings and lists] that I cut and
pasted to start the site out to begin with. It's been redesigned dozens of
times. A lot of my original content was stuff that I already had on my computer,
(jokes, recipes, inspiration, etc..) which was great for me, since I hate
to type!
Believe it or not, I felt that I was behind the times when I finally
decided to make a homepage in May of 1997, after surfing the web for three
years.
It was 'finished' (ha, web pages are never finished!) and ready for
mass voyeurism on October 10th 1997. After five months of tinkering around,
it grew to be almost 100 pages, so that when people started visiting, it
looked like an established site that had been there all along.
"Find a need and fill it."
I started my free graphics section, for the simple reason that I found many
sites/people stealing my original graphics. Others would visit here and sign
my guestbook with an invitation to visit their sites. I can't tell you how
many times I'd click through to some Geocities/Angelfire site and find my
graphics all over it. One time I clicked through to a man named Robin in
Australia, and he had taken my first logo and all the other elements. At
first, I thought I was still in my own site! I distinctly remember the time
frame, my site was one month old and that began my "free graphics" section.
The graphics were offered as an alternative to not using the graphics that
made up the design of my personal site.
"How do you get so
many visitors? Why don't people visit my page?"
I am not quite sure why
I get so many visitors, probably because it's been here for so long --in
web terms and is firmly ensconced in the search engines from when they used
to be free. Ask yourself if YOU would visit your own page. Do you offer anything
unique or insightful? Is your website easy to navigate? Is it laid out
pleasantly? Is the text readable against that wild background? Or does it
take five minutes to load and is each page four feet long when it finally
does load?
The biggest newbie error I see is that the pages are too long. Break up those
pages, align the text to the left and break up the sentences into readable
paragraphs. It's hard to follow text that spans the width of the screen.
"Eat an elephant one bite at a time."
Advertising your site:
Join webrings, use meta tags, submit your site to search engines, start a
newsletter (if applicable), sign other peoples guestbooks, offer an award,
offer something for free (if applicable), ask for feedback, and make your
site interactive. That's it in a nutshell, folks!
"If you build it, they will come."
"Who taught you how
to do web design and graphics creation?"
I taught myself. In 1995,
my first scanner came with small, free Adobe program for manipulating the
scanned pictures.
"What programs do
you use to create graphics and web pages?"
I use Paint Shop
Pro [Ver. 5, 7, 8 & 9] by
Jasc.com for graphics creation
and have a gazillion plugins for use with those programs. My favorite
is still Ver. 5!
For web page generation, I use a little known and defunct for years program
called AOLpress. It is a simple program originally called Navipress, that
AOL bought and then decided to discontinue to offer. They gave it away for
free for a few years but they recently pulled it, what a shame. I paid for
my original version in Feb.1997, when I made my husband's business site.
I love it and have no plans to change to the more popular web page generating
programs. My program has no templates, I start with a clean screen each time
and let my imagination go.
Please do not ask me for advice with Front Page by MS. I have never used
it and have no clue as to how it works. Front Page adds a ton of JUNK TAGS,
I know as as I have cleaned up so many web pages for people using FP. Bill
Gates needs to go back to "web page 101".
"How did you make
the password protection for your graphics site? I want to do that, is it
a java script?"
No, it is not a java script.
You need .htacess, which is a function in the administration panel for websites.
You need to have a real domain and not a free page such as Tripod, Angelfire
or Geocities. If you do not have your own domain, you can go to a
java script site
and use a password script for basic, simple password protection, but they
are not nearly as foolproof as the method I use.
"I tried to get into
your graphics site, but the password won't let me in."
Please, read the
Terms of Use and remember to
use 'lowercase' only, the passwords are listed right there. The password
is not your email address.
"I notice that you
redesign frequently. Doesn't it take forever to change all those
pages?
No, it doesn't. I employ
CSS, which is "Cascading Style Sheets". First I created an HTML Template
and remade the pages using that template. All graphics are directed to a
folder called "templates". (Hit View/Source to see my code.) I only have
to change the graphics in the "templates" folder and upload, and then
all the pages automatically change, it's the greatest, like "magic"!
If I had to open each page to change the style --it would take weeks
to do a redesign. With this method, it only takes a few minutes and I don't
even have to open any html pages!
I learned how to do CSS from
CNET, they have excellent
tutorials. Visit my Resources
page for links to other tutorials, mouseovers and the like.
Here's a quick definition of CSS from
CNET:
"Style sheets work like templates: you define the style for a particular
HTML element once, and then use it over and over on any number of Web pages.
If you want to change how an element looks, you just change the style; the
element automatically changes wherever it appears. (Before CSS, you had to
change the element individually, each time it appeared.) Style sheets let
Web designers quickly create more consistent pages--and more consistent sites."
What kind of computer
do you have?
Updated: March
05 - 9310X Gateway Desktop
Pentium 4, 3.2 GHZ, 1 Gig Ram, 2 Gig Hard drive
OLD ANSWER: 1998, I bought a Gateway, 333 GXL, w/ 128 megs of ram,
9 Gig, and a 17 inch Vivitron Flat Screen Monitor. It was "state of the art"
at that time (verrry expensive) and I never thought I'd need another PC for
the rest of my life!
However, I recently (4/02) upgraded, as I did run out of space on my 9 gig.
I hired a tech guy to add a 60 gig harddrive and went up to 384 megs of ram,
and Windows XP Professional version. Still working the bugs out of XP.
It also features a great Boston Acoustics Sound System, Zip drive, a DVD
and a CD Burner, which I installed after the three year warranty expired.
I bought my husband and his secretary two HP's last year. Even though they
should be better than my computer, they're not. They crash all the time,
not nearly as reliable as my Gateway. HP and Compact are total crap.
...Please check out the
misprinting of the checkerboard of the recipe pages. Thanks, Susie
That page has a "fixed
background". It means the graphics don't move when viewed, the text does.
I don't create web pages to be printed, they are created to be viewed on
a computer screen. I have never printed any pages on my own site!
There are two things you can do to get the text.
1) Set your preferences to print "Text Only".
It's under: Tools/Options/Advanced
(That's what I do, if I want info from another site.)
To me it's a waste of colored ink to print the graphics, when it's the content
that I am after.
2) Scroll over the text and copy into any windows program, or scroll over
info copy and email the text to yourself.
Do you have a question that wasn't
addressed?
