FRUSTRATION!! I hate my homepage.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

http://opalcat.com

Basically, I’m redesigning it and having a bitch of a time. It’s all run from a php content manager (postnuke) and I’ve made this custom theme (based on one of theirs because I don’t know php) and it works fine for the front page…

…but as soon as I go into any of the sections, it screws up. I’ve been messing with it for 2 days now with no luck.

Also… I am having trouble just getting pages into it. You’d think that would be easy, being the MAIN POINT OF THE THING. sigh

So if anyone knows anything about php or postnuke… save me.
Otherwise, commiserate with me, wouldya? I need a shoulder or three. I need some chocolate.

I want a pony.

cry

2

Can’t offer you any help, but it looks really good so far. Chin up!

3

Never heard of postnuke, but I know a little php.

However, since php is a scripting side language, nobody is going to be able to see your actual PHP code by doing “View Source” on your page. The PHP code is processed completely on the server side – it’s not sent to the user’s browser. (Only the results are sent to the browser).

If you want anybody here to look at your PHP code, you’ll probably have to download a copy and post it somewhere accessible as a plain text file.

4

Well yeah, I have a zip file that I will send to anyone who thinks they might be able to help. I just figured I’d wait and see if any php gurus were interested in tackling the problem…

5

So I presume the problem is what I am seeing when I try to go to “Links” or “FAQ” – the way the background seems to overflow the border on the right.

I also notice that the formatting on the main page doesn’t always line up when the browser window is small – it looks fine when the browser window is maximized though.

I also just checked out the difference in the HTML code for the main page, versus the “Links” and “FAQ” pages. I think the problem relates to all the nested tables. The large middle area is being made up of tables that are nested at some points 4 levels deep (a table inside a table inside a table inside a table :wink: – now say that 10 times fast).

On these pages, I checked the location of the embedded images – the “spacer.gif” and the “right-bg.png” images – which I presume are forming the right boundary?

On the FAQ and Links pages, it looks like these images are placed inside the last cells of a nested table, rather than the outermost table for this area, as in the main page.

Here’s what I mean. This illustrates where the images have been placed in the main page version:



<table>
  <table>
     <table>
... etc ...
     </table>
  </table>

  right bg image inserted here
</table>

contrast this with the way that it’s coming out for the FAQ and Links pages:



<table>
  <table>
     <table>
... etc ...
     </table>

     right bg image inserted here
  </table>
</table>

I think the problem is that your code is trying to insert the right background image into the wrong table, one of the embedded tables. Then, the final cells of the OUTER table are still getting the “parchment” image for a background (hence the overflow to the right).

Now, that’s just from looking at the html. I won’t proclaim myself a PHP guru – it’s fairly new to me, too – but I did teach a web page course (in addition to the usual programming courses I teach) this summer, and it involved an intro to basic PHP. As it is syntactically a mixture of C/C++, Perl, and unix shell script, I feel pretty comfortable reading it. (C++ is the main language that I currently teach).

If you want, I can try to take a look at the PHP. But not tonight (since I have to teach a morning class and I’m already up too late! :))

6

I don’t claim for a moment that I know a dead dingo’s donger’s worth of HTML or any other language compared to your expertise Opal, but my 2c worth is: SIMPLICITY. Black on white, and not too many tricks.

7

This gave me an idea. BBC has “Changing Places” and TLC has “Trading Spaces”, how about “Designing Sights” where a pro comes in and helps Opal redesign someone else’s homepage, while…
[ul]:o [sup]That’s what happens after 1 AM. Good night[/sup][/ul]

8

Monstre: Yup. I see the same thing when I look at the code. Problem is, I can’t figure out which parts of the php code are writing those tables and stuff, to change them. cry

9

My recommendation is to go with a simple CSS enhanced XHTML layout. You don’t need PHP for a personal homepage.

10

Ha! My homepage is around 1000 pages of content, on all manner of topics. I need to manage it somehow.

11

Opal, for the layout, UrbanRanger’s suggestion is a good one. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allow you to apply the same styles and layouts to multiple pages (yes, even 1000 pages of content) without worrying about PHP.

I guess the question is what the rest of the pages are doing? If the PHP is just controlling the visual layout – it can probably be done with one set of external CSS rules more easily. If the site is doing anything interactive on the server (like communicating with a database, or other programs on the server side), then this is definitely where PHP can become an extremely valuable tool.

The whole “table inside a table inside a table…” thing to multiple levels (I counted 4 levels of nesting at some points) makes the tables overly complex, though. Probably more than necessary.

It seems that this is happening due to the need to have some table cells that are different sizes than others, but this is more easily done by using the “rowspan” and “colspan” attributes, to merge certain table cells into single cells. (For example, merging the last column of your table into one big cell, then filling it with the border picture – rather than making it a separate table inside).

I presume the PHP code is being automatically written by the postnuke program – not by you?

12

Yes, the PHP code is generating the html. If it wasn’t it would be a snap to fix. sigh

Anyway the reason I want to use this is that it’s much easier to control content, edit, add, etc this way rather than the other way. I may give up though, and do most of my content with CSS (I can use the same style.css file that the theme is using, makes it easier…) and some includes to keep the layout the same. In that case, I’d use postnuke for managing other things like news, polls, updates, menus etc.

13

I am not familiar with post-nuke, but do you have a file called “template” or a folder called “templates” ? They might be called something else, but along those lines?

Otherwise open up your index.php file and see what includes are listed at the top and bottom of every file, it should be something like include(“blahblah.php”); or possibly blahblah.inc or some such, or the include() could be a require() instead. One of those includes could well be the part that writes the main part of the html.

14

The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

And tables within tables within tables scare me.

15

All I can offer is sympathy. Planet Peschel is undergoing a redesign as we speak. I’m adding CSS to all the pages, which means I have to link the file to each, then get rid of all the <font> coding so that the style sheet can take over. Fortunately, Dreamweaver makes it pretty easy, but it’s tedious to go through each page, page after page after page.

I’m also uprooting old code that ran the menu selection in favor of a menu bar at the top of the page. The result will look a lot less funky and a lot more professional, but I had to spend a few days learning the basics of CSS and making many many mistakes.

I can see what you’re going to the trouble. I thought I had a large site (100+ book reviews, several months of journal entries plus essays), but yours blows mine right out of the water. What a tremendous amount of work.

16

Yes, what I’m creating is a template. It’s quite complicated and involves about 8 different files, one of which is an incomprehensible php monster that is what I’m struggling with :frowning:

it’s /templates/OpalCat/blahblah. I started with /templates/PostNukeBlue/blahblah and started modifying. It works great until you get into the modules. Wah!!

17

I’m considering just making a separate template (header, footer, css) for the major content files and keeping the postnuke as a way to manage the minor content and provide access to everything. The main downside to this is that postnuke provides some nifty features like allowing comments to pages, counting how many reads a given page has (easier than having to sift through parsed access logs) and the biggest downside: postnuke has an internal search feature. I use a search at the present but I like theirs better. I use xavatoria but I use an old version… sigh

If I do that, I will have to use the “replace > entire local site” feature of Dreamweaver to remove all font stuff and a bunch of existing include info, as well as body tag attributes… I hate using the “entire local site” thing, it scares the crap out of me ever since I used it on a smallersite once to edit the body tag, and didn’t realize that “empty contents of tag” didn’t mean remove all the attributes and ended up removing everything between <body> and </body> in every page! EEK! fortunately I was able to just download all the remote copies, no harm done, but still.

18

Speaking of parsed access logs… Does anyone know a lot about cron? As you can see, I used to have this run daily, but then nothing for ages, then I ran it manually on October 8… but I totally have forgotten how to set up a new cron job :X

http://fathom.org/opalcat/reports/log.html

if anyone knows, email me. Thanks.

19

No offence Opal, but ‘About Me’ websites are never a good idea.

they have a stigma of self-importance attached, weither that is meant or not.

Especially ones with pictures.

I quite like how my website is coming along.

I intend to put lots of pictures on my site (hypocrit) but none of them will be of me, or my family. they will all be scenic.

Now if only my foot would get better so I can get out and take some!

20

Heck, even putting the word ‘me’ or ‘my’ on it looks a bit sad. I am going to change it immediately.

forget I said anything Opal. it’s just me. I’m too insecure. I see other people’s personal webpages the same way I would see my own if I had one.