SteveMellor

We're using a thing called SendBlaster at the moment which is a godsend for me. I can create rich HTML emails and send blaster will extract all of the text from it to send as a plain text email along side it. It's got some nice features too. As for a 'subscribe' form I do mine in PHP so you make a basic form. Something like this: <form name="signup" action="#" method="post" > <div align="right">Email: <input name="email" type="text" class="boxes" style="width:170px;" /><br /> <input name="Submit" type="submit" value="Submit" class="boxes" style="width:60px;" /></div> </form> And then add this code to insert it in to your database (I've called the table 'signup'). <?php if(isset($_POST['email'])){ mysql_select_db($database, $connection); $query_add = "SELECT * FROM `signup` WHERE `email` = '".$_POST['email']."' "; $add = mysql_query($query_add, $connection); $row_add = mysql_fetch_assoc($add); $totalRows_add = mysql_num_rows($add); if($totalRows_tab == 0){ mysql_query("INSERT INTO `signup` ( `email` ) VALUE ( '".$_POST['email']."' ) ", $connection); echo mysql_error(); } ?> Of course you will need to connect to a MySQL database and set the relevant variables but that's all that required for doing it yourself.

Put the following code in your head tags <!--[if lt IE 7.]> <script defer type="text/javascript" src="pngfix.js"></script> <![endif]--> And put the attached file in the same directory as the page your working on. I think this is the right script. It takes a while to work (especially in 5.5) but it DOES work... if this is the right script pngfix.zip

Oh, very nice. Thanks for that. If anyone wants the direct link: Clicky

Well I uploaded the script that you sent and it is connected with the database (same link as before). The site still looks rather scarce though.

What you might find you can do is create your own login script (there are loads of tutorials on this) which queries your user database and sets the relevant server variables and cookies. You would have to make sure you remove any login and log out buttons from the scripts you have. I've used this method a few times when a client wanted to log in to a forum and a website from the main page of the site and it does work. It's not the most elegant solution but if you're new to the whole coding thing then it might be your best option.

You know, I don't think those changes have actually broken any copyright law to be honest. There is a 'modify without permission' clause within the copyright act but this applies to modifying content and distributing it which is not what you've done. I think you should ask your client to provide you with a copy of the contract they had with the previous designers because if there wasn't one then just the process of the client 'buying' the site can be deemed as transfer of copyright, especially if the site resides on the clients own servers and the inclusion of the copyright notice. If there is a specific contract, check what the company can do with the website since this is the only place where any copyrights would have been asserted. It should be noted that copyright always resides with the creator of the work unless otherwise stated though. I have a solution to the problem though. It might be an idea to suggest to your client that, to percent this problem happening again, you re-design the site for them. Give them a small discount and make sure you transfer the copyright to them in your contract. If you push it as "never having this problem again" then they might go for it, you would get a little more work from them and the previous designer would be scuppered.

Well, thanks for the replies everyone. It's good information to have. I don't use Flash a lot any more (partly for this reason) but for this site, the look and feel is more important than a google rank (people in the COH community visit us through links in out sigs). Once again, thanks. Good to know I'm not doing much wrong, lol.

Well actually it's just a fan site for a game that I play. I'm quite pleased with it though. The thing is, we used to be ranked top for "Mr Marvellous", "Miss Marvellous" and "Marvello Corps", now the other two I can understand if there are other people out there with "Mr Marvellous", "Miss Marvellous" in documents but the only sites that come up when you search for "marvello corps" are sites that link to us. Now, something you should know about my site. It uses Flashobject.js to re-write one of the DIV tags with the flash content so the index page looks like this: <html> <head> <title>Marvello Corps | Mr & Miss Marvellous | Marvellous Family | Mr Marvellous | Miss Marvellous | City of Heroes | City of Villains | Supergroup | COH | COV | SG | A City Of Heroes Fansite</title> <meta name="description" http-equiv="description" content="Marvello Corps, Mr and Miss Marvellous' Supergroup, set up in order to aid them in there family in there fight against crime. Mr Marvellous, Miss Marvellous and the rest of the Marvellous family are Paragon City's premiere hero family. Here, you can find out all about them. Marvello Corps is a City Of Heroes Supergroup Website."> <meta name="keywords" http-equiv="keywords" content="Marvellous, Mr Marvellous, Miss Marvellous, Marvellous Family, Mr & Miss, Hero, Paragon City, Marvello Corps, City Of Heroes, COH, Fan, Fansite, Fan Site, Superhero, Hero, Villain"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <script type="text/javascript" src="flashobject.js"></script> <style type="text/css"> <!-- body,td,th { color: #FFFFFF; } body { background-color: #3e4546; } div.altText{ font:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#CCCCCC; font-size:14px; text-align:left; position:absolute; left:100px; top:170px; width:690px; height:300px; overflow:auto; } a:link { color: #9999FF; text-decoration: none; } a:visited { text-decoration: none; color: #9999FF; } a:hover { text-decoration: none; color: #FFFF99; } a:active { text-decoration: none; color: #9999FF; } --> </style></head> <body> <div id="container" style="position:absolute; top:50%; left:50%"> <div style="position:relative; top:-285px; left: -450px"> <div style="position:absolute; width:900px; height:570px; top:0px; left: 0px;"> <div style="width:900px; height:570px;"> <div id="shield"> <div> <img src="marvbg.jpg" alt="Marvellous, Mr Marvellous, Miss Marvellous, Marvellous Family, Mr & Miss, Hero, Paragon City, Marvello Corps, City Of Heroes, COH, Fan, Fansite, Fan Site, Superhero, Hero, Villain"> </div> <div class="altText"> This is Marvello Corps, the Supergroup of Mr and Miss Marvellous.<br><br>Mr Marvellous is a billionaire posessed with super-powers and owner of Marvello Enterprises. His superiour fighting abilities enable him to servive in many awkward situations.<br><br> Miss Marvellous, his wife, is a powerfull hero able to control ice. She has extraudinairy ability with a Bow and her arsonal gives her even greater abilities.<br><br> Together with there children, Mr and Miss Marvellous fight crime in Paragon city. To aid them, they have a small band of heroes dedicated to the cause.<br><br> To find out more about the Marvellous Family and Marvello Corps you need the Flash player. <br><a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" target="_blank">You can install the plugin here.</a><br><br> Marvello Corps is a City of Heroes Website.<br><br> City of Heroes is the online world that's home to an entire universe of heroes, where you and thousands of other players take on the roles of super powered heroes - in a stunning, 3D graphical world.<br><br> Create Your Own Hero <br> Choose from hundreds of different powers and design your own unique costume. <br><br> Fight Evil! <br> Confront super villains, aliens, madmen, criminals, and other fearsome foes. Take on personalized missions and rid the city of several different evil organizations and hundreds of individual enemies. <br><br> Form Your Own Super-group of Heroes <br> Band together with other players to fight evil and become the premiere hero group in the city! <br><br> Explore the City <br> Explore the skyscrapers, slums, sewers and streets of Paragon City, a sprawling online metropolis that offers unlimited adventures and countless surprises. <br><br> Live the Story <br> Become an integral part of more than thirty different ongoing story arcs as the villain groups menace Paragon City and react to player victories and defeats. </div> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> // <![CDATA[ var fo = new FlashObject("loader.swf", "shield", "900", "570", "8", "#3e4546"); //fo.addVariable("flashVarText", "this is passed in via FlashVars"); // this is always optional, but this example uses the variable and displays this text inside the flash movie fo.write("shield"); // ]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html> The content in the <div class="altText"> tag is only displayed if the user doesn't have Flash. It's not there for SEO at all. It's purely there so you see something if you don't have the Flash plugin. I'm wondering if I've stumbled on a black hat technique which has blocked the site from coming up in results.

I have a website (www.marvellousweb.co.uk) which is just a personal site in Flash. Now is used to come up top when you typed in "Mr Marvellous" (on google.co.uk) but no longer does. It seams to have dissapeared on google (can't find it anywhere) now I've not done any SEO on this site at all and it is built in Flash. Where as it's not important to be ranked highly, I would like to know why this has happened so I can stop it happening on an important site. Does anyone have any ideas. PS I have a page rank of 3 already so it's myst be listed on there somewhere.

Well we have a site on page 3 for "web design cheltenham" (for my largest client, a design agency who uses freelancers). Since getting on to page three we have had eight or nine requests, 4 of which have translated in to new business. Having said that, the majority of work comes through word of mouth or backlinks on our sites.

During the full moon. Sorry... I had to.

Well it seams to work perfectly for me. I say seams to because I can't understand the language but appart form that, the website is coming up all right. Tell me, is http://www.mellorweb.co.uk/testing/ what you're expecting to see?

That's what happens when I post too early in the morning. INSERT then I'll leave it to your imagination what I am inserting and in to where

If elseif isset include.. probably use this more than anything else as it is the basis for my template system. I suppose various string functions as well. nl2br gets used a bit and I have an nl2brStrict function that is sometimes better. oh.. and date, although I still always have to look up how to format it.

Check your MSQL connection details for your server and make sure they are the same as the ones you're including in your PHP. Here's the thing. A PHP script that is working in one place won't just fail when transferred to another. There has to be a reason for it and often it's not the script. It'll be a miss typed password or not changing 'localhost' to the correct IP address (we've all done it). Also, check whether your server is running in 'safe mode' and if so, set up your local server to do the same. You'll be amazed at how many problems you'll solve if you develop in the same environment as it will eventually be deployed. I've not had a chance to check the code yet, it will have to wait until I am at work. Does the ZIP file contain a dump of your database as well and if not could you post that too? It would be a help because I could then get it running locally myself and see what's happening.

Don't worry about it. I found the answer and that was the important thing

Problem solved by adding clear:both to the bottomPic tag.

I would be wary about using a hack to make the standards compliant browser work. I don't mind hacking just to get IE to work though if there is another way around it. All of the CSS that's being effected is relative already. the code that's causing a problem is actually this... <div class="content"> <span class="heading">Useful Contacts<br/>Superintendent Registrar</span> <p>Choose a catagory from the left to see the links.</p> <div class="linkSubnav"> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=3" class="linkSubnav">Superintendent Registrar</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=6" class="linkSubnav">Florists</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=4" class="linkSubnav">Caterers</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=5" class="linkSubnav">Photographers</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=9" class="linkSubnav">Wedding Cakes</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=10" class="linkSubnav">Decorations and Ideas</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=11" class="linkSubnav">Wedding Stationery</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=12" class="linkSubnav">Chair Covers</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=13" class="linkSubnav">What to Wear</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=14" class="linkSubnav">Videographers</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=15" class="linkSubnav">Ice Cream and Chocolate</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=16" class="linkSubnav">Toastmasters</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=17" class="linkSubnav">Arriving in style</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=18" class="linkSubnav">Marquee Hire</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=19" class="linkSubnav">Music</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=20" class="linkSubnav">DJs</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=21" class="linkSubnav">Live Bands</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=22" class="linkSubnav">Wedding Websites</a><br /> <a href="links.php?p=3&i=23" class="linkSubnav">Gift Services</a><br /> </div> <div class="linkSublink"> <p> <span class="linkTitle">John Brassington</span><br /> tel: 01777 708 631<br /><a href="http://john.brassington@nottscc.gov.uk" target="_blank" class="linkLink">website</a> <br /> </p> </div> </div> <div class="bottomPics"> <img src="images/index/1.jpg" alt="Hodsock Priory" /> <img src="images/index/2.jpg" alt="Hodsock Priory" /> <img src="images/index/3.jpg" alt="Hodsock Priory" /> <img src="images/index/4.jpg" alt="Hodsock Priory" /> <img src="images/index/5.jpg" alt="Hodsock Priory" /> </div> And the css is...... div.linkSubnav{ position:relative; width:120px; height:auto; float:left; font-size:11px; padding:8px; background:url(../images/bg2.png); } div.linkSublink{ position:relative; float:left; top:0px; left:20px; width:auto; } div.content{ position:relative; top:0px; left:212px; width:400px; min-height:350px; z-index:3; } div.bottomPics{ position:relative; top:0px; left:58px; width:556px; z-index:5; } See I still think it's something to do with the float perhaps?

Dizi is right, the middle one is how it's meant to look. Thanks for looking (to both of you). I'm sure it's just something simple I've done wrong but I'm still not great with CSS. I'm getting there though.

Thank you very much. It's out of date now though I need to re-write it with some SEO in mind and do a brand new design too. I'm thinking, something green... we'll see

I have a site that I am working on at the moment. One of the pages is for links. You can see how the site is meant to look at http://www.hodsockpriory.com/new although some of the graphics are yet to be optimised and the flash file needs looking at again for file size, so be warned. The problem comes on the Links page under Links>Useful Contacts. What I have here is a div with two other divs inside that are floating left and positioned absolutely. If you have a look in it on IE 7 you are seeing it as I imagined (not tried earlier versions as yet). In Firefox, the images that appear at the bottom of the page (and are meant to look the same as on the homepage) appear bunched up. It's only on this line that it happens and it looks almost like the div tag with the picture in (that is sat below the content) has inherited some of the attributes of the earlier div. My first thought was that there was a missing closing </div> element somewhere but I can't seam to find one and, indeed, the page validates for both CSS and HTML. I'm stumped on this one. This is the first time that IE has rendered the page as I would have expected it to work and Firefox hasn't. Any help would be more than welcome. I look forward to all your replies as I'm sure that the issue can be resolved. To be honest, it's probably something simple that I've overlooked.

Hay there My name is Steve and I work as a freelance web designer. I'm (fairly) skilled in PHP and Actionscript 2 (can't get the hang of version 3 yet). I'm not a bad designer in my own right as well (if I do say so myself) and I have an interest in photography and making films.