Web Design Help(multiple/long)

Factual Questions
1

Sorry for the vague title, I couldn’t name it “help on […]” because I have quite a few things (or it may turn out to be less).

First lets establish some facts:
I know XHTML to at least an above reasonable degree, as well as CSS. But I don’t nescessarily know all tags and properties off-hand. I do not know Javascript, but am definately willing to learn it if need be.

I can work with something like access if need be, I have at least a minor cursory knowlege of sql (but would probably need help) if I (for whatever reason) need a database for any of this (hopefully I don’t have to make the tables at home… never bothered to check if we have access).

I do not have access to the server. This may inhibit my abilities on some of this. Unfortunately my school district has some sort of wierd protocol where they don’t give kids direct access for uploading to the school website go figure. :rolleyes:

I don’t have access to a web design program at home (unless you count good 'ol notepad as one). I’m not willing to shell out money as of now for Dreamweaver CS2 (what I’m using at school) or CS3.

I’m using a slightly (and personally) modified version of the default “3col_leftnav” CSS Dreamweaver layout for all the pages.

This isn’t asking for homework or school help. The teacher knows little about web design (and computers in general) and its a journalism class. Basically as long as I’m doing SOMETHING I’m good. These questions are to:
[ol]
[li]Make my life easier.[/li][li]Help understand coding, design and such better.[/li][li]Feed my inner overachiever that makes me want to make everything I do pretty.[/li][/ol]

The website doesn’t pass WWWC standards tests, I’m working on that. It’s not bad though it’s mainly just a couple insufficiently closed tags and missing “required” parameters (I know at least one picture was missing an alt tag for example).

Now to my questions (maybe not all though after all those outlined facts I kinda got lost…)

My main question (plus specific details)
Like I said, it’s journalism, and as such I have to update pages most days as the editor’s articles come in (I only have to do articles when I feel like it and have time because I’m the web manager). As the only person that can do web pages, if I get behind I have no help. This can happen if OTHER people are late because someone was sick and I now have two articles in a day, SURPRISE! This worsens if someone suddenly decides I should put up an extra page of student poetry, freelance article, student art, the list goes on. Is there any way I can make this easier on myself?

As it stands (and by the way i’d love to show it to you, but as of now the current changed layout is local at the school because the tech admin wasn’t there and the teacher couldn’t remember how to upload though she does have access):

The “main” page is 3 tables, the two newest articles and a “feature.” On the lefthand side theres links to specific sections (ranging from world news to school news to entertainment), then below that links to articles related to the “feature.” And finally below that links related to the newest article. The righthand side has the newest headlines and links to them (currently all of the ones that got to be posted on the front page and not ninja posted in the section), including the last few (I’m thinking of keeping it to 5 links max) that got “bumped” off of the main page with age. The newest article also has a picture by the headline and preview text linked to the article, the others do not (and only the headline is linked).

The “section” pages are just like the main page except there is no feature article (but the related to feature link section remains). The related to newest section may be killed on this page because it’s pretty much going to be the same as the right side. There are simply a maximum of three tables with new articles and the headlines section the right is the newest headlines dealing with that subject.

The “article” pages are full articles (one table), left side is the exact same except related to newest article is replaced with “this article.” Right side has “other headlines by <editor>.”

This was all a setup for my question, is there a way to add things to multiple pages at once? As of now I have to do the whole “alright make a new article, now add it to the related page of all things relevent and the main page, put picture in, link it, put it in related…” you see where this is going. It’s a lot to do and it just increases the more articles I upload as it’s more and more pages to update the link and “related” sections of. Is there any way (I was thinking maybe adding some tags into teh header to designate a certain “section” could help) that I can “post” it. Go to the main page and on the internal “website” (even if this needs a password protected hidden CGI button), designate the section of the article, the editor, the picture (+ alt and title text), and the text and have it autoupload to the section?

I.E. World Peace is finally achieved rainbows appear everywhere and all is well. We feel like reporting this, it’s written by me (Jragon). It obviously falls under “World News.” I go into some form (possibly entering my password) Add a picture of a rainbow colored smiley face I drew in paint with the alt “smiley face” and the title “Happiness for all!” The title of the article is “World Peace Achieved.” And put in all the text and designate it “world news.” And say the filename will be “worldpeace” Hit submit and it goes into the world peace folder named “worldpeace.” The “world news page” now shows on top “World Peace Achieved” bumping off the third article about Osama Bin Laden burning toast. All world peace articles now have this related, all my articles have this on top as “articles written by Jragon” and etc. The main page does similar things with “related to newest” etc. Also let me designate it teh feature (it’s big news afterall) and also take upt eh feature slot.

Now this is probably infeasable, and is really a magical “do everything for me button” if I can do exactly what I described please walk me through it, but take my idea and work it down into the most basic “well, you can’t do THAT but you can take small aspects of that and…” even if the answer is “sorry, tough luck. Have fun copy+pasting!”

Now question 2 (minor):
I probably totally spaced on something, but is there a way to jsut make PICTURES have no link/visited link border? It looked horrible with padding and the purple “followed link” (or blue link) border between the picture. However, the text running into the picture isn’t the best thing either. I’d like to have some padding but no border so i don’t get the annoying “white space but not really” effect. For reference in the same table I have the headline linked so simply changing the general anchor properties isn’t going to work.

Mod note: I posted it here since it is a general series of question but if you feel it belongs better in say Cafe Society or think I’d get better responses there by all means.

2

Ah, with all due respect, your post needs a map just to navigate. Not a good sign.

This web site will help you quite a bit —> http://www.w3schools.com/ (So will the three main sites below, too.)

If you like/need a hard copy instruction, find one of those HTML For Dummies books. Seriously. Building and maintaining a web page / web site is not rocket science. It’s actually harder than rocket science.

If you are talking about Microsoft Access as a web database, forget it. It will not work. MS Access is a desktop database application. More importantly, you have to crawl before you can fly. In your case, build your web site as a static site where you have to upload all pages, images, files, etc., via FTP, preferably manually with WS_FTP or a similar program. Why? Get very good with very basic web management. It will serve you well. In other words, in my class you only get a pencil, paper and eraser to do your math problems. Calculators are banned. That’s because you have to know the basics before you use the tools that do the work for you.

You don’t need JavaScript just yet.

Find out the specifics of how web content is uploaded to the server (notwithstanding what I posted above). If you are vague, you will have problems.

You can get Dreamweaver CS3 as a 30-day free trial. Do it. It will help you. Also, look into a good freeware web tools such as Nvu. It pays to have many tools that will do the job. Notepad will work if so inclined but why use such a basic text editor? NoteTab and UltraEdit are quality text editors with built-in HTML code support. Both have free versions and free trials to the more comprehensive paid versions. IMHO, anyone who still codes in Notepad when these two text editors are available must enjoy wearing hairshirts and punishing themselves. :slight_smile:

The Dreamweaver CS3 template you have is full of too much baling wire and bubblegum. You can find cleaner code for practically an identical design, as well as some quality all CSS templates, with these links:

http://www.glish.com/css/

(I’ve used some of the MaxDesign templates over and over again. The basic designs are rock solid and it’s real easy to add in new features. One can easily make two visually different site designs from the same base template.)

These three sites, among others, are well-respected in the field. While you can go to some open source templates sites, forget those for now. Open source template sites may have hundreds of designs and look good, but it has been my experience the code is often subpar. More often than not when I’ve used a template from one of these sites it’s because I liked the design but the code under the hood sucked. I ended up rewriting it from scratch to achieve the mean, clean and clear code I prefer. Always think KISS Principle in code design.

Think accessibility and web standards from day one. If your teacher thinks/acts otherwise, he or she is way behind the times. Accessibility and web standards do not impede into quality designs nor functionality. On the contrary, they enhance quality code, design and customer service.

I’m sorry but the rest of your post escapes me. Someone else might help you here. I prefer the meat and potatos approach - a simple description of what you want to build a simple design. The bells and whistles can come later.

3

Thank you for the sites, and yes I probably should’ve organized my thoughts before I posted.

I have the layout, code, and content down, it’s pretty much standards complient (as I said it just needs some basic editing, the odd <br> replaced with a <br /> and adding alt text to pictures to meet perfect standards with “zero” errors). I brought up access because it was the only database program I thought of that the school possibly had access to (and remember I can’t personally screw with the server or update it without the school tech admin doing it), and didn’t know if it was possible to gerry-rig up a poor-man’s web database from that (if need be).

Also, accessability was in consideration from day one. :slight_smile: The old site before I got there was an absolute nightmare to navigate (and used the ugliest teal color but that’s besides the point). Had no CSS, the HTML was all but broken and… what can I say yay microsoft frontpage:rolleyes:! I redid it three times (well four, but MKIV is the local copy I mentioned) from scratch trying to find the best most navigable approach, eventually deciding on a three column layout. Also, I can pass the tests with a pretty good rate at w3schools (before I got the website MKIII up that was the first place I went to refresh my memory).

I really think I am ready for the bells and whistles portion (if oyu strongly disagree still please explain what I amy need to work on). Starting monday (we’re on vacation for rodeo… don’t ask) I’m going to finish getting everything up to standards (last I checked with w3’s checker there’s only like 6 errors max on each page that need fixing).

To simplify my original question:
Is there an easy way to update multiple pages at once? Something akin to hitting “post new thread” on a forum, where it makes in that case a new post appear and then on the index page automatically show the title/link of the last bumped post, except a tad more static and only for one user (+ a few more parameters). The reason I’m set on something similar to this is because I have an hour a day with 20+ and rising pages to update links and such on, eventually it’s going to be too overwhelming to manage, and I need a way to update efficiently.

And I know CS3 has a trial, I used it up already. I’ll probably use context (which I just recalled I have) or arachnophilia (which I believe is in the depths of my drive) or one of the programs you mentioned.

Thanks again and i hope this post clarified a little bit.

4

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5

:smack:

Well THAT was obvious, I can’t believe I never bothered to try that… thanks.

6

I’m only a little farther along than you, but it sounds like what you REALLY need is a content management system, like Joomla (I think Drupal is similar, but I haven’t worked with it).

I don’t know if they’d let you do it or not – I’m pretty sure it requires access to the server for setup, and someone would probably need to be able to access the server just in case something goes wrong. But once it’s installed, you can log in to an admin control panel from anywhere, and do pretty much anything you need to.

The cool part is that it does pretty much what you’re talking about. You make a new “content item,” which would be your article. Then you assign that to a category and a section (say you have sections: Academics, Sports, City; categories: Academics-faculty, Academics-students, Sports-boys’ basketball, Sports-softball, City-businesses, City-government; you get the idea).

Once you assign it, it’ll automatically show up on any pages you tell to show that category/section, and you can also toggle whether it should appear on the front page or not. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but it’s pretty customizable and very awesome. I set up a Joomla site as my personal Web site and I’m working on one for an organization.

Anyhow, like I said, I don’t know that it’ll work for you, but you should look into it.

7

Oh, yeah. Don’t use IE for viewing and testing the site. Otherwise you will need heavy and absorbent gauze pads to control the bleeding from your forehead caused by the brickwall repeatedly hitting it.

Use Firefox and use the Web Developer and HTML Validator toolbars. Some folks also use the Firebug toolbar. You really don’t need any more. The Web Developer toolbar is really full of useful tools.

Upon reading your posts, and as Garfield226 suggests, you sound like you want a CMS approach. Bear in mind this requires server backend support and your school may not be able to assist you hear. Even if you have that support and they allow you to use a CMS (Wordpress, Drupal, whatever), just remember that CMS means a whole other level of support and knowledge to do it well. If you just want a site to easily maintain, go for it. But if you want to really learn the craft, stay with static pages and manual work for a while.