Website Help!

[shamus1972]

Hi - after reading Balistic Bananas thread and seeing all the help you could give him, I was wondering if any of you could give me a few pointers with the site I'm designing. I've never built a website before so I'm trying to teach myself dreamweaver and redesign the Dorset TVRCC site. You can find my site at the following address: http://members.lycos.co.uk/tvrccdorset/
It is nowhere near finished yet (if a website can ever be finished) but there are a couple of things that I have been unable to do. Is there any way to have a text link without it being underlined and in blue? Also is there a way for a link to change 2 frames rather than one? When I click on "Home" for example, as well as changing the text frame (the right hand frame), is it also possible to change the top left frame as well?

Finally, when I view my page in dreamweaver all the links work fine, but when I check it online, only the top thumbnail links to anything, the others don't!

I would be grateful for any help/advice/feedback or suggestions of ways to improve my site! Thanks

[miniman]

Shamus,

First of all, do you really need to use frames to achieve what you want? Building a frameset site is more complex than a standard site because you have to ensure that all links reference the correct frame otherwise things start loading up all over the place. It is possible to trigger multiple events when you click a hyperlink (such as updating multiple frames) using Javascrpt.

You may be better off using Dreamweaver templates. You basically design the basic elements of the site, those that will appear on all pages, and save it as a template. You have to define "editable zones" within the template - this is the parts of the page that vary for each page in the site. Then for each new page, you attach it to the template. The advantage is that you can then update the template (for example to add a new link or change a logo) and then Dreamweaver will update all the other pages in the site for you.

You can change the appearance of a text link using a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) - I can send you an example if you want.

Your site is also heavy on graphics - such as the "leather" background. Nothing wrong with this - except that it makes the site slower to download.

Check out my site at www.minispecial.com

If there is anything there that you like, I will gladly send you the code.

[shamus1972]

Thanks for your advice miniman (your site looks great by the way!)

I used frames because I know even less about templates than I do about frames! I wanted the page to update fairly quickly once you click on the various links (after the initial long download of the page itself).

I have now removed the underlines from some of the links (thanks again, I don't think I would have worked it out on my own) and I'm ready for people to start visiting! I still have a couple of problems though - my site hasn't got a name - the window says "untitled" at the top -how do I change that? Also, how do I register with search engines?

[ninja_eli]

quote:

I used frames because I know even less about templates than I do about frames! I wanted the page to update fairly quickly once you click on the various links (after the initial long download of the page itself).

Try to avoid using frames, there are various ways to preload items for a page etc if thats what you are looking for but its not clear (to me anyway!) what you mean or are looking for.

quote:
I have now removed the underlines from some of the links (thanks again, I don't think I would have worked it out on my own) and I'm ready for people to start visiting!

I still have a couple of problems though - my site hasn't got a name - the window says "untitled" at the top -how do I change that?

using page properties is probably the easiest way. Just type in a name in the box labelled title!

quote:
Also, how do I register with search engines?

You need to contact each one, or get hold of an automated system but these don't always do a complete job. Ensure that your website has a proper name (i.e. mentioned already by you). Spiders will pick up on it.

Good Luck (there are guys here with much better advice as I haven't used Dreamweaver for a year and dont have it on this pc as reference).

[shamus1972]

Thanks Ninja - I must appear pretty stupid, but I've never done this before! I have now named all my pages and frames and I'll upload them once I stop getting ftp errors!

I am using frames because I just want part of the page to update when I click on a link - until this afternoon I didn't realise there was any other way! I quess I have a lot to learn!