lilyofthevalley

I've been swamped with work for a while, so this is my first time checking in here for what seems like ages.Overall, I like the site, despite the skinny when I am looking at it on my widescreen with 1440x990 res. I think I missed something that got changed later, as I'm not seeing any kind of sliding display for your portfolio. I'm only seeing three bannerish links to sites in a vertical list which open up to a freeze frame of those sites' home page. I would recommend that since you list the actually url for those sites, make it linkable. Maybe potential clients want to see the whole site without having to type it all in on their own...right?I love the color choices, although I do agree that the torn look on the footer does look a shade less sharp than your graphics overall. I think in part it's due to whatever image you overlaid on the green header, the texture there looks much higher res than the plan gray scale texture on the bottom. You might want to consider flipping and then grayscaling that bgd of the header, and then blending it to white if needed for your center text area to assist in a better look for the footer.Three nitpick things: In your about: "Let me put my innovation and many years experience to work for you." should say "...many years of experience..."And on the portfolio page: "...you will get prompt completion of the project...," I know what you're trying to say, but it also seems like your inbox is so empty that you've nothing else to do, or that you're going to drop everything for them. I would recommend saying "you will get timely completion of the project", although "your project" makes it more personal to the client. Oh heck, let's just restate the whole thing. It said: "When you hire me to get your project done you can be sure you will get prompt completion of the project, excellent customer service, and always, a high quality finished product." Try something like this: "When you hire me to meet your project needs, you can be sure of excellent customer service on your high quality product which will be finished in a timely fashion." Eh, that's still a bit awkward, but it's a bit more direct and personalized to the client.And on Bill LeDrew's page, don't say "done" say "built" or "created" as you did on the other pages. Those tabs are slick. I have to say that. Nicely done. The map is cool, but does it make a difference to people?One odd thing, you mostly talk as if you are a single entity, and then on the portfolio page, you go from in your web design still being an I, and then further down in graphic design & custom development talking we-speak. Not sure why you did that, as there is no mention anywhere of doing those types of projects with additonal parties, although you had mentioned on your main page that some work you have done is yours alone, and others in collaboration. The Quote tab didn't bother me. A lot of sites do the "ask for a quote" as a quote button. But I can see where that might be misleading to some.Nicely done overall.

When I look at my site in IE, it works fine. When I look at it in Netscape or Firefox, the hr, instead of being the nice gauge red line like it should be, it is a thin black line.Anyone have a clue as to why?Here's the CSS pertaining to the hr: hr {color: red} Here's the HTML: <hr />

Thanks, ste! I don't have time to read that in full at the moment, as I'm trying to wrap up some other things before I head to Vegas tomorrow, so I'll take a closer look at that when I get back Sunday.

I hate plagiarists. I hope y'all get them to remove that content soon. Google will also be upset if they find out, so a note to them might shut down the account where they are trying to make money off of W3Schools' content.

Ok, I've got a bit more time now. I also took a look at what you have up as your main at present as well, so I'll be talking about both a bit, since I'm not sure which version is the one you're still working on. Understand that I am well aware of the adage that you can't please everyone all the time. I'm simply expressing my artistic opinions here since you asked for a critique. Many of the other folks here may not agree with what I have to say in regards to your design--they may prefer a look that is more standardized.The main difference I see between the two main pages is you took my advice on transforming the logo, used a different font for your clan name, and you got rid of the XBOX div on your header. You also seem to have resolved the alignment of the background gray for your links, although I noticed some of your internal pages look like they still need tweaking, which if you were using an external style sheet, you shouldn't need to do per page. First, let me get to why I think this site design is not better than the old:In my mind, this site contains info on your clan, a group you belong to because it is fun. I do not get the impression, despite the notification about tourneys, that this is for a professional gaming clan. If I am incorrect in that assessment, please tell me. Although I think a professional gaming site can afford to take some risks in design as well, I especially think a fan or community site is the perfect place to take risks, which you did initially, but have now sadly run away from. What remains is an homage to the Patron Saint of Mediocrity. You lost the unique pizazz you were working with when trying to wrangle with your design demons.I liked the direction ste was pointing you in, but he should have left the yelllow stars overlaying the black background, not the white, nor, even worse to my sensibilities, eliminating them as a border altogether and staying black on black with white lettering. Part of what makes the sign design work is the way its elements are laid out: the use of contrast is maximized, and the end result is still perfectly readable and yet not hard on the eye. I can understand, due to the more square-like than rectangular shape of the logo, your hesitation to allow it to be a central element to your header, especially if you are using the same header for your forum, but I think it would look sharper to have instead blown up the logo and centralized it as your non forum header, making a second header for your forum to match the rectangular shape required for that format.Is this cleaner? Are some elements better organized and easier to read? Yes.This version is a lot easier on the eye. You've definitely paid more attention to your use of white space for organization and readability. But, it also appears that you are trying to work with a pre-made because of how some of the elements still do not fit perfectly (i.e. your links box and how squished the Tom Clancy's logo box appears in its link box).Suggestions as the design stands now:I don't know who your intended audience is for this site other than the members of your clan although it seems, due to your call for other clans to game with, that you do hope other people will be looking at your site that play this game. I am aware that you may be concious of SEO due to trying to reach those other players, which could lead to decisions such as wanting the text of your clan's name in your header, although that would really only help people search for your site if they are looking for your clan's name specifically, not the name of the game. You would be better suited on your main page to say the name of the game. So intead of saying "Welcome to the new clan site for 'RBD - The Rainbow Six Clan'. Here you will find information about the clan, it's members and it's activities. Feel free to look around, check out how we shape up and challenge us to a match." You might want to say something like "Welcome to Team RBD's The Rainbow Six clan site. Here you will find information about the clan, its members and its activities. Feel free to look around, check out how we shape up, and challenge us to a match." It would be a good idea to check out the main page for The Rainbox Six, and see if they require sites about their game to post their name in a particular way, such as with a TM. Sometimes they also require certain placement of their logo (or the size of it) as well. Also, it's better to italicize or <em> the name of the game for SEO because the quotes can affect the results on some results, and, of course, because it's an official title of the game.Also, there are probably general sites (wiki or forum) focused on this game out there. Most of them have a place to do recruiting or at least shout out about your clan. That is a perfect place to get traffic, as it is so darn specific to the purpose of your site. Usually, all they ask for is a link back on your site, which is easy to do. And, I believe that if the name of their site is already higher ranked than theirs, that will help you with SEO as well, for all the wrong reasons, but nevertheless do what they do.The first person who taught me about web dev told me that under construction sections and pages look bad. I agree with him. There are other ways to hint at what will be on the site later, but empty elements (such as Next/Latest Clan Match) detract, and actually make your clan look inactive. I think it would be better for you to invite other clans to do a match with you, and then, once the match is scheduled, then bring it up as a separate area, and, if you're really thinking, make sure you have the website of the clan to link to their name, or at least an e-mail addy of a member of that clan so you can notify them that you've posted the info--adding the link to your site, thus enticing them to visit your site, if only to see their clan name on your page. You can always save a copy of this page, and then when you have the pertinent info, it's easy to just change the page over. Some would call this a bit backwards dev, but it has saved me time many times over with my sites in the past. You can fill in any space left by jazzing up your call for matches by given the call a header such as "IS YOUR CLAN UP TO THE CHALLENGE?" or the like.Spell and grammar check your site. There are a few errors.Your redesign of the logo looks good with one exception: it's terribly hard to read TEAM RBD. If you copy the Tom Clancy case approach, it should say Team RBD, which will give you a little bit more room to up your font size for readability's sake on higher res screens.The text TEAM RBD in your header can still be a tad smaller. It looks too big, even with the white space padding you have given it. Also, none of the color within matches your burgundy.If you were willing to head back in the direction you started with, I would love to see how you take that design further, and then could further comment. But if you are more comfortable or content with this version, then...The gray behind your links is nice, but a color would be better there because now the page is quite neutral. If you are concerned about the pop colors (yellow and red), use the blue, but you'll probably want to knock it down to a hue more in sync with the burgundy as opposed to the royal blue of the logo, again because now your page has become very neutral. As far as how to advertise updates to your site...unless you are listing all the changes you make over time, only include the info pertinent at the time, and leave the obvious stuff out like "this website is live". Instead of: "As of 3/1/2007 most parts of the site are still under construction but we endeavour to make it fully operational as soon as possible.UPDATE!!! 6/1/2007 The website is now live with forum and about us pages finished. Other pages to be completed soon.SEE YOU IN VEGAS! ", use:"UPDATE!-6/1/2007-Finished sections: forum, about us. We are currently endeavoring to make the rest of our site fully operational as soon as possible."I would center: SEE YOU IN VEGAS! AHHHHHHH! NO! I just saw that you added the image behind the text links to fill in the white space-totally wrong direction to go in and way too busy in an element by itself! Worse, a page you say is finished, the about page, you now can't read the links because they gray highlight/background for each has disappeared or somehow got layered under the image.Do you have to say "see you in Vegas" on the main and the about us pages? One or the other should be sufficient.

Ok...please don't take this the wrong way, but having seen the new incarnation of your website, I now need to go make an offering to the web deities of status quo and beg them to please give you your soul back. I think I have a shiny new wireless keyboard around here that will do nicely.I have to go run off to an appointment, so I'll make more detailed comments on this in a bit, but for now, to give you a general idea of what I'm seeing:Is this cleaner? Yes.Are some elements better organized and easier to read? Yes.Does it look like you to took a premade css and tried to fit your info into it? Yes.Is it boring and I swear I've seen this site in a thousand other places? Yes.Is this site better than the old? Ask the bulldozer boys, but my vote is no. I'll write more in a few hours as to why.

boen_robot: The old adage, "The only constant is change," almost doubly applies where any type of developing is concerned, unless something gets declared dead or deprecated. As someone who only recently embraced a text editor other than notepad, and within the last two years finally tried to crawl forwards (as opposed to falling headfirst) into the world of webdev, I'm trying my darndest to work smarter, especially since websites are well beyond what some erroneously thought "just a side thing to help a business get more exposure". Trust me, I know I'll always be a n00b, but, really, that's not bad because as has been said, "The expert is one who knows more and more about less and less," and I know that's not going to help me in the long run. ste: Good note about the tags, but that one I do know. One thing I have started adding to my sites in the last year is main nav text links in my footers. I know that's considered SEO suicide on some levels, but it gives me a bit of peace of mind past whether my alt tags are getting read or not. I've been reading that because people are now abusing the alt tags, there's talk that the crawlers will stop reading them as well or at least have a better way of actually figuring out what's SEO spam and what's legitimate. (To that I say, HA! If they couldn't do it for meta, they can't do it for alt.) One of these days, the way things are delevoping based around tweaks of tweaks of tweaks to obtain sought after SEO results, the crawlers will stop looking at nav links--I'd put money on it. (I can see blogs & forums everywhere jumping on the wagon volunteering new workarounds.) But until then, I do play the game as best I can without leaving the sight-challenged or my snazzy sense of style behind.

Depending on exactly when you're going, you might hit their "dark dates", but otherwise, I highly recommend going to see Penn & Teller at the Rio if you like magic, comedy, or just a great show. I have never seen them do a bad show.General Show Info

real_illusions: I tried what you suggested, and no go. What happens is it pushes that div to the left, and it's also now lower than it used to be.I believe I tried variations very similar to that, and one of them may have been exactly that (I trialed and erred a lot *laugh*) without any success either.In my experience, every time I tried to fiddle with the absolute values, things went completely haywire.I did see some float related three column layouts, but either they were encumbersome in their need for tweaks, or they just didn't work for the same reason I've been having problems here.I will definitely keep looking, as you suggested, at other non absolute layouts, and see if I can find a better one. Thank you for responding.

I can see where you were headed, based on the color pallette of the sign. I think with some playing around, you can still make this work.What you need to do is think of your color usage in similar terms as that sign does. Your bright colors such as your red and your yellow should only be used for accents. Stick with your neutrals for your larger mass areas and try to be concious of how busy a page looks.By using that urban night sky as a background image at 100% opacity, you already introduce something that is quite a lot to get distracted by. You might want to consider centering your background image, and overlaying it on a solid black background if you don't want the tiling, since the edges are obvious. (I have a widescreen monitor set at 1440x900 if you're curious.) If you're handy with an image editor, you can use it to soften the edge of your tile so that it fades into the black. Or, you can also tone down the image by layering a percentage of black over it to dull it down, and thus be less distracting as your background, and a bit less obvious in its tiling.Your lettering "RBD -THE RAINBOX SIX CLAN" is hard on the eye because it's so squished and jammed up against the edges there, and instead of using your red there, which would yeild a greater contrast, you went with the burgundy, with fades away a bit with the thinner letters on such a dark background. I can only imagine how huge that looks at a smaller res setting--you can make that a shade smaller and it will still be quite readable. You have that sharp logo, why don't you think about blowing it up and altering it so instead of saying "Tom Clancy's" it says RBD, and fiddle with the VEGAS underneath to say CLAN (I know, there's one more circle than there are letters in CLAN, but play with it--you could always duplicate that 60's star above the sign in the leftover circle--put it on the far right circle for balance.) Then you wouldn't need the text lettering beside it.The red is reeeeally tough to look at in that large of an amount. On top of that, you're using the burgundy directly over it which doesn't contrast as well. It's more of a cool warm, and the red you're using is definitely hot! Consider using black for your content background. The yellow stars will stand out better, and will be easier on the eye. You might also want to consider putting a break in between your paragraphs to make the text in your white content window more readable like you do on your TEAM RBD page.The link buttons are a bit large. And if you keep them burgundy, use white lettering as it will be easier to read. If you can outline them in white if you change the red background to black, that will help them pop a bit more as well, but could also be overdoing it.If you do change the red to black, you could try changing the right column of information to white with black lettering, and possibly the red as the accent for your lines. Or, still using white as the background, you could make the title background color the burgundy, again, with white lettering. Try both, and see what you like better.The lime-ish green swirly on the forum doesn't quite seem to go with anything else you've done so far as your theme. You'd probably be better of with just black back there. But your palette choices there are easier on the eye in general since you stayed with some grayed neutrals.

Ok---just got it. Figures, right after I post it. You can't put a block element in an inline element like <a>.I created a new <h>, and it's working perfectly with a text-align:center, I just need to tweak something position wise due to the extra space now to fix the design overall.

Although it is doing what it's supposed to do, when I try to validate what's below (the CSS does validate), I get the following error:Line 16 column 74: document type does not allow element "img" here; missing one of "p", "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", "h6", "div", "address", "fieldset", "ins", "del" start-tag.Code: <img class="displayed" src="img/latestreads.gif" alt="latest reads" /> The CSS that corresponds to this: img.displayed {display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto} As you can see from the CSS, I have specifically defined img.displayed. Any thoughts on this?

Note: I tweaked a few things, and changed the code due to the tweaks. Still can't solve my issue, though, although the site does validate for Strict XHTML.Okey Dokey. I've managed to get most of the bare bones for my main page for what will be the overall basic design of this site down. This is XHTML with an external CSS.I cannot for the life of me get my top nav image based links in the center of my fluid, yet absolute, three column div to center for the life of me. From what I've been reading, CSS is sadly lacking when it comes to centering. I tried several workarounds, among which included the W3Schools example of creating a horizontal list--no go, and by trying to apply the img.displayed as block, but it didn't like that either. Most of the centering suggestions I found did not apply with multiple horizontal images on the same line within a three column design. Often they would skew my content center column by pushing it all the way towards the right, and partially overlapping my fixed right column in the process. The CSS validates as it is written--hooray--but it's not what I want. Any suggestions as to how I can center those top nav image links would be greatly appreciated.The page is here: ComicsGal.com.XHTML: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><html><head> <title>Comics Gal- a place where I talk about the comics I read</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"href="cgmainstyle.css" /> </head><body><!--top nav--><p class="center"><img src="img/latestreads.gif" alt="latest reads" /></p> <!-- links --> <div id="links"><a href="about.html"><img src="img/aboutb.jpg" alt="about" /></a><a href="athand.html"><img src="img/athandb.jpg" alt="at hand" /></a><a href="/cgreads"><img src="img/blogb.jpg" alt="blog" /></a><a href="contact.html"><img src="img/contactb.jpg" alt="contact" /></a><a href="links.html"><img src="img/linksb.jpg" alt="links" /></a></div> <!-- update --> <div id="updatepanel"> <img src="img/cgupdate.jpg" alt="last update 7 January 2007" /> </div> <!-- logo --> <div id="logopanel"> <img src="img/logo.jpg" alt="logo" /> </div> <!--top nav ends--><hr /><!--center body text--> <!-- Content here --> <!-- Right column here --> <div id="rightpanel"> <h3> ADVERTISING</h3> <p>This is where AdSense will live.</p> </div> <!-- Left navigation --> <div id="leftpanel"> <h2> PUBLISHERS</h2> <p> <a href="comicsgalreads/topcow.html"><img src="img/dc.jpg" alt="DC" /></a><br /> <a href="comicsgalreads/index.html"><img src="img/image.jpg" alt="image" /></a><br /> <a href="comicsgalreads/index.html"><img src="img/marvel.jpg" alt="MARVEL" /></a><br /> <a href="comicsgalreads/topcow.html"><img src="img/topcow.jpg" alt="TOP COW" /></a><br /> <a href="comicsgalreads/index.html"><img src="img/vertigo.jpg" alt="VERTIGO" /></a><br /> <a href="comicsgalreads/index.html"><img src="img/warnerbooks.jpg" alt="Warner Books" /></a><br /> <a href="comicsgalreads/index.html"><img src="img/wildstorm.jpg" alt="Wildstorm" /></a><br /> <a href="athand.html"><img src="img/more.jpg" alt="more to come" /></a></p> </div> <div id="content"> <h1>I offer a hearty welcome to all comic enthusiasts!</h1> <p>Chances are, if you've found this site, you like comics for one reason or another. Well, so do I. I've been reading comics for a long time, but not long enough ago that I was around during the Golden Age of comics.</p> <p>You'll notice that I'm reading all sorts of comics (and will probably add info on comic strips and web comics as well when time permits). I love variety, so my tastes run all over the gamut. I actually have a lot more comics than what I'm currently showing here, but the site is young, and more will be added as time permits. To get an idea of the comics I have at hand, but haven't had time to write about, check out the, what else but, at hand page.</p> <p>One of the reasons I started this site was to talk about the comics that I read. But even more than that, I would really like to hear what other people think about those comics as well. That's why I opted for a blog, where one can pipe in with their thoughts as well.</p> <p>I hope you find something you like within. If so, feel free to bookmark this page so you can come back and visit often!</p> </div><!--center body text--></body></html> CSS: body {margin:0;padding:0;background-color:#E9E2B4;} h1 {font-size:20pt; font-family:"comic sans MS", sans-serif; text-align:center} h2 {background-color: black; font-size:13pt; color: white; font-family:"comic sans MS", sans-serif} h3 {background-color: black; font-size:13pt; color: red; font-family:"comic sans MS", sans-serif; text-align: center} p {margin-left: 2.5px; font-family:"comic sans MS", sans-serif} p.center {margin-left:0px;text-align:center}hr {color: red;margin-top:10px}img {border:0}img.displayed {display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto}/* top nav divs*/ #logopanel {position:absolute; top: 0px; /* resize these bits to liking */ left: 0; width: 109px; /* works best with fixed width right - left divs*/} #updatepanel {position:absolute; top: 0px; /* resize these bits to liking */ right: 0; width: 103px; /* works best with fixed width right - left divs*/} #links {position:absolute; top: 55px; padding-left: 200px; /* 20px to play with */ padding-right: 120px; /* 20px to play with */}/* top nav divs end*/ /* main body divs*/ #leftpanel {position:absolute; top: 100px; /* resize these bits to liking */ left: 0; width: 200px; /* works best with fixed width right - left divs*/} #rightpanel {position:absolute; top: 100px; /* resize these bits to liking */ right: 0; width: 200px; /* works best with fixed width right - left divs*/} #content {position:absolute; top: 100px; padding-left: 200px; /* 20px to play with */ padding-right: 200px; /* 20px to play with */} /* main body divs end*/

The master: Yes, the semi colons did help, but apparently I also did not save the revised CSS after my main edit to it in the right folder (I separate my work on sites via the year, to keep track of different versions I've done over time and such.) So that much was a very human error that I only realized today, and have since fixed. The reason I had the "sans-serif" in there was due to the recommendation by the W3Schools, as a precautionary measure for computers that would be looking at the site that did not have the Comic Sans MS font on them, as adding the sans-serif as a secondary option is supposed to direct the browser to at least use something similar. I also realized that because of the hyphen, it's considered one word, and thus doesn't need the quotes around it.Jonas: I think we are in agreement on my train of thought, please forgive my lack of correct terminology. What I meant by references pulling the style from the css is things like <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"href="cgmainstyle2.css" /> and <p>. I am very glad I at least learned that part correctly.I do understand how to create class distinctions, but was trying at the time to keep my project as close to the W3Schools example as possible (which in this case only changed headers), in the hope of minimizing the need to weed through multiple changes to figure out which one was the culprit should something go wrong. I can understand why you mentiond it, not knowing that, and I still appreciate the tip. As I mentioned above, since I saved the cgmainstyle2.css to the wrong folder, the XHTML could not use it because it could not find it in the location I claimed it existed. (Didn't I mention I had a feeling it was something seemingly obvious?)Thank you both for your assistance. Now that I've got my folders squared away, this very basic page is working as it should, and validates. Now I can keep going, working on a three column presentation for the main body.

I have tried, using the W3Schools tutorial, to start building my first external CSS for an XHTML document.First, I took an example from the tutorial, and then I tried to edit it.What I was thinking, based on what I read, is that the point of an external CSS is to get all of the style elements out of the XHMTL, except for the references that will pull those elements from the CSS. (Am I even right on that level?) Also, I know that in XHTML "align" will not validate, hence it was a reinforcement towards my process of eliminating style elements.The problem is, once I take out the <style> statement, as seen below, now the XHTML document isn't showing the style elements at all.I feel like I am missing a seemingly obvious step here, but after puzzling over this for some time, I am honestly coming up empty handed, and feeling quite daft in the process.Here's my documentation: Original XHTML <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><html><head> <title>Comics Gal Original</title><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"href="cgmainstyle.css" /> <style type="text/css"> h1 {font-family: "comic sans MS Bold"} p {font-family: "comic sans MS"} p.sansserif {font-family: sans-serif}</style> </head><body><h1 align="center">Welcome!</h1><h2>This header is blue</h2><p>This is where the main content goes.</p> </body></html> Original CSS body {background-color: white}h1 {font-size: 18pt}h2 {color: blue}p {margin-left: 2.5px}* { margin: 0;padding: 0} Revised XHTML <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><html><head> <title>Comics Gal First Edit</title><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"href="cgmainstyle2.css" /> </head><body><h1 align="center">Welcome!</h1><h2>This header is blue</h2><p>This is where the main content goes.</p> </body></html> Revised CSS body {background-color: white font-family: "comic sans MS", "sans serif"}h1 {font-size: 18pt font-family: "comic sans MS", "sans serif"}h2 {background-color: black color: white font-family: "comic sans MS", "sans serif"}p {margin-left: 2.5px font-family: "comic sans MS", "sans serif"} Help?

Typically the point of having a links page is:1. When you exchange links to and from other sites, especially ones related to your site, those links have the potential to increase traffic to your site. (ie. if your site is about astronomy, any site that has a link to you from Star Trek fan sites to other astronomy or science fiction sites might have some surfers who will be interested in your site, and thus likely to click on your link from those sites you exchanged links with)2. Sometimes people use their links page to simply list other sites they like, be they related to the site they are linked from, or what have you (i.e. You have a home page. Your interests vary, but include things like sports, physics, web dev, and dogs. Therefore you might list sites that cover any of those interest areas.)3. Your link page may generate money (PPC: Pay Per Click). These days, it's not so common for one to make money on links on a links page, usually you have rotating banners, paid banner/ad placement, or something text based like AdSense posted on at least your main page/blog, if not all pages on your site.It used to be, before the proliferation of search engines and search sites like Google, that getting linked via link exchanges was a must-have in order to increase your chances of other people finding you, especially because link exchanges were typically free--so it was time spent only advertising. Otherwise, you were gaining surfers from paying for ads, word of mouth, or via typical advertising methods. Nowadays, that's not as much of an issue, but, in my opinion, it's still helpful to exchange links depending on what you want for your site.

Thanks for replying, everyone. I know my plans for 2007 are rather ambitious, which is why I'm seeking advice--I suppose it's both info seeking and reality checking in one. :)I'll keep working on the XHTLM/CSS for CG, and when I've got something worth looking at, I'll let you know. Depending on how long that takes, I'll make my decision as to whether I'll try to include php or not at this stage of development.jesh: Thanks for the benchmark for image size. That's very helpful.Ok...off to review li and positioning again--trying to learn to dev without tables.

Background Info: I am trying to advance beyond sloppy HTML. Last year, I finally started dabbling in php, but only altered the skin and header buttons/links in phpbb on my gaming community site. I also built my first few .htaccess pages last year. In the last month, I have been reading all about standards, XHTML, CSS, Java, etc. The W3Schools site has been a big help in this regard. I have 11 sites I need to clean up, and have three new sites I will be building sometime before summer.My Project: I want to learn XHTML & CSS by creating one of those new sites from scratch. I have already started on it. The site is about the comic books/trades I'm reading, along with other pertinent pages to a fan site. I am doing this so I can cement those skills with a small non-commerce site before attempting to convert my other sites, or building the other two sites that will be commerce based. I am planning on adding AdSense at some point to try it out since I've been reading so much about it. My Questions:1. Is it better to wrangle the next step by focusing on XHTML/CSS alone, or should I put in the extra time to learn more php so that as I build, it will be easier to make across site changes by creating a header/footer? I'm going to be using WordPress as my base for writing/cataloging the issues/trades I'll cover, but I will not be using WP as the base for the site overall. One of the main reasons I am leery of taking the extra time for php right away is that I am a bit anxious to clean up my other sites now that I know how bad they are, and I'm concerned that if I try to tackle too much too soon with this new site, I'm going to have a heck of a mess on my hands before long. However, I will kick myself if I wind up wasting time spent on, say, across the site link changes, by not investing the time now. (If it's pertinent, I have a dedicated server, although I'm a fledgling with Server Side Scripting.)2. In the past, I have made customized buttons. I have also, on one site linked in a bit, used background images (and never quite got them to behave.) With everything I am reading about images slowing down load time--should I not do that anymore for useability's sake? (e.g. the gaming community site I built.)Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Don't forget--it's 2007. Update your copyright on this site.There is a very clean and light look to your site--good design choices given the focus.

Hey, y'all. Lily from SoCal (USA) here.Since it's become evident that my fate is intertwined with computers & websites, I'm finally trying to make the leap from Notepad hack and slash html/etc. to the purported latest and greatest encouraged clean & balanced standard. I've never made a site from a WYSIWYG, but I have recently started playing around with more advanced text editors, Ultra Edit being the one I've liked best so far in trial, in the hope that somehow it will save me some time in the long run.I'll be the first to say I'm a forever n00b, but I'm also always trying to keep my head above the rising tide of technology.I learned the basics of html by looking at/editing what someone else did for me for my first site to get me started in 2001, and I've been slowly getting better over time. My goal for this year is to try to spend more time learning what's out there, remembering what I learn, so I can spend less time wishing the webfairy could solve my latest dilema.For the sake of trivia, my first computer was a TI994A. My parents got the TI for the family for Xmas that year, and I thought it was the greatest thing since spaghettio's. I also had exposure to Mac-in-the-box at summer camp, 8th grade and for a few years in the late nineties because it was free. In college, we had VAX. [Ohh...stop laughing. It was the first time I got on the net, and IRC was fun back then.] Computers and I have crossed paths many times; I did actually code in Fortran a long time ago, and I even took a class in C/C++. I also have had various college lab consultant/corporate help desk type jobs over the years (remember Lotus?). I'd forgotten a lot before I really came back to computers to stay in 2000, but it was ok, because most of what I forgot was obsolete by then anyway. I currently have 11 sites under my belt, and one I've helped out a bit with. From the research I did at the tail end of last year, I know they're all a mess, and I've a long year of clean up ahead of me. But before I start tidy-ing, I'm going to be building a new site implementing CSS, and in a perfect world, strict XHTML, so I can have XHTML under my belt better before trying to remember what needs to be changed or not with the rest of the lot. I also have two more sites to build sometime this year, so I'm really glad Santa bought me a new comfy desk chair for Xmas.So I imagine you'll be hearing a lot from me in bursts while I do my best to gain confidence and build better sites. Please be kind, but don't hold back either.