CAD Web Design

Hi guys, I met with a potential client yesterday, and I could have a big ecommerce website on my hands with around 3,000 products. The company I work for usually purchase templates from templatemonster.com, edit them for the client in terms of colours, pictures etc and then apply to OSCommerce. Im just casually wondering, is this a practical thing for web designers to do or would I be better off designing our own template? Chris.

Does anybody use www.templatemonster.com for ecommerce templates? Plenty of designs on there at around $100 for Zencart, OSCommerce and more. Dont be put off by the price, especially if you're building a large ecommerce site where the returns will be good!

Hi guys, Im just preparing a list of local housing, business and industrial estates to target ahead of my antipated leaflet campaign for my web design company. Have any of you guys got tips on anybody else to target? Who to avoid, etc. I know aiming our services at other local businesses is the key objective here but im going to promote our business around a couple of new housing estates on the off-chance people may like a personal site or something along them lines. My main objective is to target bars, pubs and restuarants. My research has concluded that there's hardly any restuarant websites out there at the moment so im going to do my best to spread the gospel of Procom Webserve.

My honest opinion is that I perfer the current website, (at the moment). The dark does however work very well with white but I think it may well be a case of "why fix something that isn't broken?" I understand us web designers always have more ideas and are never happy with the final product, but my advice would be to finish off the design anyway and sell it as a template? Alterntively, you could design your current website in white and have an option which allows your visitors to switch themes between dark and light? Chris.

Hi all, I was looking for opinions on a new blog ive made for my company website Procom Webserve. Here's our website: http://www.procom-webserve.com And here is the new blog: http://webdesignbloghull.wordpress.com Any suggestions for type of articles to write about and generally if its a good idea? This is just one of our quick marketing ideas and wondered if anybody had any similar design blogs? Chris.

I could be wrong here, but dont you need to save template files with the extention .dwt?

Here are a list of websites that may be able to help you. They feature customisable calendars that are aimed at holiday home owners however I dont see why you couldn't use them for something else... http://www.myvrzone.com http://homeawayconnect.com http://holidaysitecentral.com

Simple, Use http://calendar.google.com Best of all, its free!

Cheers, By the end of this week im going to be an expect on forms when in the past I usually tend to avoid something unknown! Chris.

Hi guys, Ive just pretty much finished a website for one of our clients - http://www.removalsworldwide.com and we have various forms within the website for use of the vistors. Ive designed the process files so that the person filling out the contact and quote forms will recieve an automatic confirmation email from the company which looks something like this... As you can see the Confirmation email is working well. However it states that the sender is from mailserver@procom-webserve.com which has probably got something to do with our companies own dedicated server sending the response, but I need it to say that it's from Removalsworldwide or something along them lines. Here is my code that is processing the form... <? $title .= "Enquiry from Removals Worldwide website ------------------------------ Name: " . $_POST['name']. " Email Address: " . $_POST['email']. " Telephone Number: " . $_POST['telephone']. " Destination From: " . $_POST['from']. " Destination To: " . $_POST['to']. " Local Area: " . $_POST['area']. " Volume: " . $_POST['volume']. " "; $to = "chris-dicko@live.co.uk" ; $subject = 'Online Enquiry Removals Worldwide'; $mailHeaders = "From: Website Visitor"; $mailHeaders .= "<chris-dicko@live.co.uk>"; mail($to, $subject, $title, $mailHeaders); $name=$_POST['name']; $email=$_POST['email']; $from="noreply@removalsworldwide.com"; $autoreply="Hello $name. Thank you for your enquiry. We can confirm that we have recieved your full quotation and Removals Worldwide promise to read and respond to all our emails within 24 hours. This is an automated message. http://www.removalsworldwide.com"; $subject="Confirmation from Removals Worldwide"; mail($email, $subject, $autoreply, $from); header ("Location: thankyou.htm"); exit; ?> Does anybody know a way around this? Thanks in advance. Chris.

--------------------------------------------------------- EDIT: Sorry I didnt notice you didn't want a pop-up alert. --------------------------------------------------------- No problems, Add the following JavaScript on your form page just below the opening <head> tag. You'll need to change the field names near the top of the script to match with your form. Add the fields which you need to be required. <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- /*********************************************** * Required field(s) validation v1.10- By NavSurf * Visit Nav Surf at http://navsurf.com * Visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ for full source code ***********************************************/ function formCheck(formobj){ // Enter name of mandatory fields var fieldRequired = Array("name", "email" ,"contact", "movingfrom", "movingto", "button", "volume"); // Enter field description to appear in the dialog box var fieldDescription = Array("name", "email" ,"contact", "movingfrom", "movingto", "button", "volume"); // dialog message var alertMsg = "Please complete the following fields:\n"; var l_Msg = alertMsg.length; for (var i = 0; i < fieldRequired.length; i++){ var obj = formobj.elements[fieldRequired[i]]; if (obj){ switch(obj.type){ case "select-one": if (obj.selectedIndex == -1 || obj.options[obj.selectedIndex].text == ""){ alertMsg += " - " + fieldDescription[i] + "\n"; } break; case "select-multiple": if (obj.selectedIndex == -1){ alertMsg += " - " + fieldDescription[i] + "\n"; } break; case "text": case "textarea": if (obj.value == "" || obj.value == null){ alertMsg += " - " + fieldDescription[i] + "\n"; } break; default: } if (obj.type == undefined){ var blnchecked = false; for (var j = 0; j < obj.length; j++){ if (obj[j].checked){ blnchecked = true; } } if (!blnchecked){ alertMsg += " - " + fieldDescription[i] + "\n"; } } } } if (alertMsg.length == l_Msg){ return true; }else{ alert(alertMsg); return false; } } // --> </script> Then add this extra variable into the top of your form where you tell the form what action to take... onsubmit="return formCheck(this);" Example: <form id="form1" onsubmit="return formCheck(this);" name="form1" method="post" action="process2.php"> I hope this helps.

Hi guys, Another annoying form question which has been bugging me. I haven't really made any advanced forms before so would really appreciate the advice here. Ive made my client a simple contact form for their removals and storage website and one of the fields in the form she wants is a country selection box such as Australia, UK, USA etc. Ive easily added that feature into the contact form. However what she wants NOW is for another field box below the county box which automatically gives you a selection of towns for that selected country. Example, if you picked Australia, the box below would give you the option of Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane etc. How do I go about creating these? Thanks, Chris.

Ive found something called ImageMagick which may be able to help me if anybody knows anything more on it?

Bump.

Anybody?

No offence but dont we already have enough 'social networking' sites?

Hi all, Im wrapping up the final parts of my PHP file which runs my form on the latest website im developing. The form itself is working a gem, however the client has requested an automatic response email to be sent to the person who fills out the form. This I have working also. However ive got two queries for my auto-response script within the PHP file which is bugging me. 1) How do you add an image so it will show up on the Automatic-Response? 2) How can you prevent the Auto-response message sending to the recipients spam box? Thanks in advance for all your help. Chris.

Yes that's a good point. Unlike most CMS's where you can simply update your website from any computer in the world, anybody that wishes to run and edit a site via Contribute must HAVE Contribute on their PC to login, but in my case that was the plan anyway. Thanks for all the pointers guys.

Anybody?

Hi all, Ive been asked by my company to reproduce a website for client who is switching from a SQL database to a regular FTP uploaded site. No problem I said. However one of the features on this storage removal website is an 'instant quotation' feature as shown on this page... http://www.removalsworldwide.com/ Basically it looks like a form which I thought would be easy enough, but then the form sends a responce back to the visitor in the form of an email detailing prices that look like this... Anybody know if there's a code to use for something like this? Cheers.

Hi all, I've recently designed and built a website for one of my company's clients and they as it is only my 2nd official project as a contracted web designer, ive not really used Contruibute before. I've had a good look through the software and was hoping somebody could confirm that Contribute can still be used even though the entire website has been designed and finished in Dreamweaver? Our client want's the ability to update content using Contribute at their end and I just needed to know that this is still possible. Thanks, Chris.

Thanks, ive just discovered the wonders of Google once more and found Google Calendars, with a section to embed directly into your website. Easy.

Have a look at this dated, although functional calendar on this website: http://www.orlandotownhouse.net/availability.asp Anybody know how this has been done? Perhaps 12 seperate html pages, jan.htm, feb.htm, march.htm, etc or is it some kind of code? Would love to know if anybody has any pointers. Chris.

Ive got a slight query im sure somebody could easily clear up for me if that's ok. I know how the typical contact form works, the three files include the html page, the process.php file and usually a thank you page. I know how to make a simple contact form which would include a name, email, telephone and message box, but how would I go about editing the 'process' file if I were to alter the form code to add drop down boxes and other radio button items? At present here's my functioning code for a simple contact form. If I were to add extra fields to my form would I simply add a new line to the red code below like so or am I going wrong somewhere? I generally want to add some new fields to my form such as a couple of check boxes and drop down selection boxes. Does it matter what the form field type is as long as it is called from in the function file?

Sorry, I didnt fully read your post. Thanks for the help.