Now I need your help. All constructive criticism welcomed. I have been working on this site, it seems like, forever. I haven't finished with all of the content but I have 8 pages ready and decided to go ahead and publish it.

Go easy, it's my first time.

Guess it would help to post the url.
The site is at www.restored-memories.com
Thanks Paul for pointing this out.

I like it a lot. It's got a very sophisticated look that's easy on the eyes. I realize the site's under construction, but the gif is tacky, you might want to drop that and replace it with something simpler, like 'site under construction'. I don't know much about web design, but I surf the net enough to know what I do and don't like, and this is an example of the former, in that it's appropriate to the context, it's soothing, no garish flash, colours are muted and it's easy to figure out what the hell is going on.

Good stuff, congratulations
Mig

Hi Kevin,

Looks like you have been very busy - good results

I like the graphics and the consitancy between the pages.

Just a quick comment as I have not fully read the whole site but this is my immediate reaction

On your Contact us page you have put the following headers
Complaint, Problem, Suggestion, Praise
its a minor point but would it not read better if it said
Praise, Suggestion, Problem, Complaint

It would seem that the complaint being the first in the list is a little negative - think positive this should come last as no one will need it :)

You could also change your page titles to something that is included in your meta tags as the robots check this for placing your page in there list.

Will look at this more in the morning - hope this helps

I like it.....

It loaded very fast. I have a dial up. The format was easy to follow. Clear and great colors. Appearance was professional.

Just one thing bothered me .... having to adjust my screen so that I could read what was on the right sideof a page.

The only page that was perfect was the page with the "prices.'

You ought to be very proud of what you have done ......

Hi Kevin, it took me a few seconds to figure out how to get to your site 'cause there's no link in the body of your post, in case anyone else is having the same problem, you have to click on the WWW tab at the bottom of the post.
Very impressed with the site, layout, ease of navigation etc is very good.
On the main page you say "please fell free to browse" oops:)
I would eliminate the Home page and go straight to the Main page.
Your background image of the forest is nice and "looks" good but is not related to what you do, do you have a photo in need of restoration that you could substitute it with?

Hope this helps
Paul

Hey guys,

Mig you are right. When I placed that gif there I couldn't find the proper clipart so I let it put that one there. I have just corrected that. Thanks for your comment

Clare, you are right about the contacts page. I haven't spent much time on that page. I just accepted the defaults from the template. I'm not sure it even works. I just filled in a comment and can't find where it went. Thanks for the tips on meta tags. I need to learn more about them so I can take full advantage of this.

Goldcoin, I noticed what you are talking about and am going to see if I can fix that. I guess the graphics on the main page are not allowing the page to fully compress for the lower viewing resolutions. I have just tested it at 800 x 600 and saw what you mean. I also noticed the prices seem to wrap around at 800 x 600 so I have brought them closer to the center.

Thanks guys for the comments. If you notice any more let me know. It's hard to find problems on your own work so I need the input.

Hi Kevin,

I have just found your product pages - second viewing

The reason is you have placed your web site navigation bar down one side of the page which is consistant through out your site - this is good. I did not expect to see the changed navigation under the logo at the top so just plain did not see it. You could change the writing at the top to a larger font to catch peoples attention or move it under the main navigation buttons. Your most important details are here with the examples of your work people need to be able to find this. I can't find anything that points me to these navigation buttons.

Hope this helps :)

I will soon be putting up my new site so I will soon be in the same situation of will people like it? You have done a good job here I look forward to your comments on my little (baby) project.

Hi Paul, sorry about omitting the url in my first post. Thanks for your observations. Guess a spell checker isn't a catch-all fool proof system. I have mulled it over in my mind about eliminating the splash page but haven't decided yet. You suggestion is appreciated. No doubt the site will evolve from here. I am learning as I go and do appreciate you help.

Clare, I am taking a hard look at your suggestions. I have made attempts to modify the link bar on the right side. It is not intuitative or as easy to modify as the horizontal bar at the top of the page. I'll have to deconstruct this eliment to see if I can force it to incorporate the additional pages underneath the products page. It took me a while to figure out how to modify the horizontal bar but I am comfortable with it now. The link bar graphics do add to the decor of the page theme but aren't as easy to spot as another type of graphic would be. I'll work on that. I don't regret using the template approach because I have learned a lot and have published the page much faster than I would have if I had designed the pages from scratch. But now I may have to modify some of the key elements of the template to get the look and mechanics I need.

I've been working on this project for a couple of weeks. It seems like longer. I'm going to incorporate the Paypal shopping cart soon. I have been studying the instructions on their site about how this works. It seems that they will save me a lot of time and trouble by using their service rather than trying to re-invent the wheel on my own.

I appreciate all of your comments. Keep them comming.

Looks good. Your Main Page shows up a lot wider than all the other pages in my browser (IE6). Standard widths help.

Hi Doug. Yes I noticed that about the main page. It doesn't compress down as small as the other pages. I'm thinking it is the graphic that is stopping that. I am investigating how to fix it. I am going to lower my screen resolution so that I work in at least 1024x768. I hope that I can set the page to work at that level and have everyone served. I hope I don't have to optimize the page for 800x600. I just don't have a feel for what the average user's screen resolution is. Some books say to optimize for 800x600, some say 1024x768. What do you think?

I love what you have so far! Very clean and professional looking. A couple of quick things - The word "Genealogy" is pretty hard to read on the left hand side. Also, you might consider creating a more refined logo for "Restored Memories" just to set the name of your business off from the rest of the text.

ablrule.gif is what's spreading it out. It's 600 pixels wide by itself.

I like 800 pixels wide as a maximum. It doesn't really make much sense to measure vertically. RetouchPRO is 750 pixels wide, with a little extra for the menubar.

I'd go with 800 pixels wide...but you could always mess around with auto stretching tables to make the site size itself for various resolutions! :D

Hi Greg. Thanks for your comments. I haven't been happy with the sidebar graphic either. The capital G in that font is not very readable to start with. I will try and see if I can redesign those graphics without changing the whole decor of the site. The main thing I like about the current design is the color scheme. I'll need to find some graphic elements that compliment the current theme.

I'm still working on a real logo. I've tried several things and am not happy with anything yet. The logo I used on my business card doesn't look good on the Web page. So you could say I am logo challenged right now.

Kevin - you should post your business card logo...we might have some ideas for converting it to the web. I used to work in a place where I created a lot of logos for small companies and it can be difficult to create something that translates well to all media.

Thanks for researching that problem Doug. I deleted those horizontal lines and now the site should compress down to 800 easily. That is the reason I designed the site like this so that it would compress and expand to compliment all resolutions.

OK Greg I'll post the business card and see what you guys can come up with. Thanks.

I'd advise using an obviously antique photo for your card, or people will think that it's a picture of you (this happened to me). Of course, if it IS a picture of you...

Kevin, I found some difficulty in the navigation:
Main Page and Home Page make me think they should be the same thing.

On the Products page, you suddenly get extra menu items. Some kind of break between the "regular" items and the new ones could be useful in grouping them (you'll probably be stumped by FP on this one :(). What sometimes helps is to have the main menu across the top, and submenus on the side.

On the Restoration page, there a new menu items again, with no way to the Manipulation and Archive pages.

Expanding menus could be what you're looking for.

On the manipulation page, I'd change grey scale to black and white (the man on the street won't understand greyscale). In the same sentence, I'm not sure of the American spelling but in UK English, the last word is spelt "blurring" ;)

On the archiving page, it appears there should be a picture on the left of the paragraph (part of the paragraph is indented). In the first paragraph you say the following:
"We use only the highest quality Gold impregnated CD-ROM disks. The normal CD-ROM disks you see on sale for a low price use blue or green dye recording media and can be erased with exposure to sunlight. The CD-ROM disks we use are guaranteed to last in excess of 100 years, excluding physical damage of course."
The CD is not impregnated with gold, but rather has a gold reflective layer. Also, unless you have your discs (note the "c" used in spelling for optical media) checked regularly by someone like Media Sciences (http://www.mscience.com), you should be wary of claiming 100 years longevity. All discs suffer from degradation in sunlight, regardless of the dye used.

Hi Kevin,

I'm a little late on this thread (been busy). I think the site looks fantastic! One thing I noticed is when you said " Whether you visit us on the Web or at our place of business, please feel free to browse,". I think this gives you credibility, and gives the potential customer a better feeling about doing business with someone they don't know. Regarding the business card, I really like the looks of it, but I agree with Doug. I also thought it was a picture of you when it was loading. Super job! You've put a lot of work into it, and it shows.

Ed

Good morning.

Doug I think you are right about the business card. I had the same thoughts. I need to re-think the design on the business card. I don't think that most people would notice that one picture was restored and the other not. The pictures are too small to be effective. Those pictures are of my father-in-law and not me.

BigAl, you really have given me some good information. I appreciate the work you put into the responce. I'm not satisfied with the menus either and will give them a lot more thought. I am thinking of removing the splash page ( the Home page) and making the Main page the Home page. I just need to figure out how to do it. I am using Frontpage 2002 and I'm far from being an expert at this.

Ed, you aren't late at all. I hope this thread keeps going for a while longer. This has been invaluable help for me. Maybe I will get most of the bugs out of my site with everyones help. I thank you for the flowers Ed. There were a lot of other things I should have been doing while I was working on this project. But, I am glad I have spent the time learning how to do this myself.

It's hard to find your own mistakes. I appreciate everyone helping me get this site right.

Kevin, it looks like you've been busy on your site :)
I hope we don't come across as nickle and diming your site to death as you are obviously working hard at updating and improving it as you go and thanks for the opportunity to see your progress as it's a great learning experience for us as well.
The size of the images on your restoration pages are too small IMHO, consider resizing them to match the sizes you use on your manipulation page and by the way you did a great job on the Father and the Bride image.

Good luck
Paul

Just visited your site. Very professional looking, clean, easy to navigate, and fast loading.
My observations:
I'm not sure why there is a "Gallery" heading, when there are seperate links to the restoration heading/galleries.
Regarding restoration photos: Have you though about grouping the photos, so that when one clicks on an image, a side by side comparison is available? Also, as mentioned previously, the images are rather small.
Vikki

Hi Paul and Vikki.

Paul I appreciate all comments. Thanks for your comments on the work I did on that wedding picture. I have made many changes so far and I am sure I will make many more before I am satisfied. I have moved a working copy back offline so I can make some major changes. I am glad I did because removing the splash page and making the main page the new Home page didn't go well at first. But now I have it and all my link bars working like the should have. I have more work to do on the horizontal link bars, recently added, to make them more visible. I also did away with the pages I wont use, like the Gallery.

I agree that the pictures aren't large enough I will make adjustments to them before re-publishing the site. I like your idea Vikki about combine the pictures so they can be viewed side-by-side. I am going to test the site at 800x600 to see how they appear at that resolution.

Well now I am upset. I tested the site on 2 of my other computers and I find that the font I used in all my titles and logo, monotype corsiva, is not displaying. I guess this font is only available with Office XP. It displays just fine on my laptop, which also has Office XP with Frontpage 2002. Why would Microsoft do this. It allowed me to use a font that is not compatible with most computers and didn't warn me. Now I have more work to do.

Kevin -- I see the monotone Corsiva typeface, and I use Win98SE.

I really like the look of your site --- it is very attractive in color and line, but clean and readable and usable. Others have given good ideas about possible changes, but I just want to reiterate that the general over-all impression is one of a professional business website that exemplifies good taste and customer service. I really like how you included the image that could NOT be perfected as an example to show folks the limits of digital restoration.

Pat yourself on the back for all that you have accomplished and learned. Then, just keep up the good work -- there will always be reasons to make modifications, and this is great practice to learn how to make adjustments without changing the over-all scheme.

I heartily agree with the recommendation to change your contact page to list Suggestion and Praise before Problem and Complaint. In fact, I would avoid using the word "complaint" just because of the negative feelings it elicits. "Problem" should be a strong enough term and can cover any issues someone would have with either the website or with their restoration/retouch project.

Congrats on a great start! :)

Hi CJ, thanks for the kind words. If that font displays on your PC I wonder where it comes from, Office maybe? In any case I will have to change it to a font that is more common. It changes a lot for all the text to display as Arial. It sure looks better with the Monotype Corsiva font.

I have changed the contact page to your and Clare's recommendation. I have made changes to the Galleries. I'm not real happy with the way the Gallery works. Its too restrictive in the way comments are displayed. I may dump it and place the pictures on my own, but there are limitations to that too. Oh well it's all a part of the learning curve.

The navigation is much better now :) with a far easier system of finding what you want.

Another thing to think about....
When you click on one of your images it would be benifical to have a direct link back to your main site without having to hit the back button - maybe you can incorporate this when you place the images side by side. Also the image pages seem not to have the same interface as the main site. Just an idea but maybe you could use your page layout to view the images with them above and below as restored and before.

Your site is looking and becoming better and better by the day, you've done a good job - it far exceeds my first attempt at a web site and I have also learnt loads from the comment here, thanks for sharing

Clare

Well the monotype corsiva font doesn't come in Office XP. I just checked the other computers and they have Office installed. I wonder where it comes from?

Hi Clare, noticed your post just as I opened this new message. I have made several changes off-line that I haven't uploaded yet. As I said before I am not happy with the gallery. I don't seem to have control of how the viewing page looks. I'm either not looking in the right place or this is another limitation to the Gallery feature.

I have removed the horizontal lines, which were too wide and now all the pages can compress to whatever screen resolution the viewer uses, down to 800x600 at least. Don't know why these lines were a fixed width, the other graphics I used have the ability to compress or expand. At least the top bar graphics can adapt to screen size. I'll play with the lines to see if I can get that working too.

Yes, I have received a lot of good help here. This site is the best!

While searching for the origin of "monotype Corsiva", I found a good reminder here:Fonts and web design (http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/fonts.html)

"The only way to have a typeface display exactly as you intend it to display on a web page, you must put the typeface in a graphic image.

If you desire to force a typeface in the text of your web pages, we recommend that you use the most common typefaces already installed on computers. The most common serif typefaces are Times and Times New Roman. The most common sans serif typefaces are Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana."

So, you can still use your decorative monotype Corsiva type by making it a gif or jpg image for your logo at the top, and your copyright info at the bottom. Don't know if that's practical for headings, but at least you can make some use of it, and I would hate for your visitors to just see Arial.

I found this webpage:Where Monotype Corsiva comes from (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/fonttest.asp?FID=33&FNAME=Monotype%20Corsiva&FVER=2.30) It's found in these applications - products - Access 2000, Access 97 SR2, Excel 2000, FrontPage 2000, Greetings 99, Home Publishing 99, Office 2000 Premium, Office 4.3 Professional, Office 97 Small Business Edition SR2, Office 97 SR1a, Outlook 2000, PowerPoint 2000, Publisher 2000, Publisher 97, TrueType Font Pack, Word 2000

For all of us who are either working on developing our websites, or editing our websites, here's a site to help find possible errors

Dr. HTML (http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/drhtml.html)

You can check up to five pages for free each day.

On your Main Page, Dr. HTML found this minor error: Table 2, line #32 - TR -- "A close tag was found without a matching open. This is probably an extra tag that you should remove."

It gives you an idea of how different browsers will fare with reading the page also -- there are some HTML attributes that may not be readable on some browsers.

Hi Kevin,

you've obviously done a lot of work on this site already, and it shows, I like what you've done. just a couple suggestions:
you might want to change the <title> tag inside the <head> area of your HTML since right now it's just displaying the site URL or page name (New Page 1). if you want to change it, just type whatever you want to appear in the browser between <title></title> and put it anywhere inside the <head> tags.
also, are you able to create new email aliases at your domain? if you are, I'd recommend creating seperate addresses for the different types of inquiries (i.e. sales@restored-memories.com, support@restored-memories.com)
the only other thing I noticed (and it's probably because you're still creating it..) but the gallery page is just displaying some text and things (see attachment).
overall, it's looking good and easily navigatable.

- David :)

Thanks CJ. That's a good site to visit. I'll take advantage of that.

Thanks David, I've caught some of the page headings. Frontpage has some funny quirks. It automatically changes some of the page titles to match the file name and not others.

I hope to get the new and improved version up this evening. I keep running into other things that need changing. Now I have to solve the font proglem.

I am going to have to put the logo on the top right hand graphic. The text area on the left side of the top is the crush zone where the page is allowed to compress. If I put a graphic all the way accross the top the page will not be able to compress down for lower resolutions.

Kevin;

I like the page. To the point. But when I use IE 6 and go to the gallery page I see no pictures and the language is not one I read. Everything below the "contact us" heading is in the old language.
Maybe me, and I do seem to be the only one to have said this...Hum.

FYI this is what I get:

Ipsum lorem
vei illum sat dolor euis mod tincidunt vei auminiure dolor in esse. Ulta ceet dolore magna si napi. Wisi e nim admin im veniam, quis nostrud. In atsvulpate velt esse meleste at semper manet sola.

Hi Lacto. That page isn't being used. I have deleted it in the new and improved version. I hope to upload it tonight. That text is the giberish that the template installs when it creates the page.

OK, the Restored-Memories.com version 2.0 is online. I think most of the mechanical, gramatical, and general content is complete, of course you'll tell me if this is so or not.

The link bar along the top is not the way I want it to be but I couldn't find any better alternative, so for now I'll go with this. I will be studying and looking for a better answer.

I'm also not happy with the gallery examples I have. Microsoft after all these years still hasn't improved the way graphic and text interact. This will just take me more time to figure out.

Anyway, kick the tires and let me know what else needs attention. Thanks in advance.

hey kevin,

I'm still getting the "Ipsum lorem" thing when I go to the gallery page (I've tried clearing the cache and trying different browsers but still no success). also, if I go to the "Main page", I don't have any menu, so I have to go back to your main splash page to navigate to anywhere else. I know how frustrating it can be to try and debug a web site, hang in there!!

- David :)

I think you're onto a winning streak now Kevin. When a visitor doesn't have to think about the navigation, then you've got it right :thumbsup:

(Found another spelling mistake ;) on the Major Restoration page moire needs an i).

David, I don't have the problem that you're having. There is no link to the gallery that I can find in the new pages. Also, there's no longer a splash page - the index page and the home page are now the same (which I like). Are you maybe running thru a proxy server? Could be that the proxy server cache is still hanging on to the old pages??

whoops, my bad, it was my own problem (I only tried Opera and IE) when I went to the page in Netscape, I'm finally seeing the new page, and it's looking good, much improved. you can ignore my last post Kevin!

- David :)

Kevin

I like your site...and compliment you on your efforts, both in learning and producing a working site. I too am working on building my site and with the sugguestions you're getting, the work you're doing as well as other sites out there, I look forward to getting mine critiqued as well.

Anyhow, here are some thoughts...much different than the first time I looked at it, so here I go.

The "top" navigation bar area is a different height on the Products page than all your other pages, a minor inconsistency.

I (personally) would like to not see the top navigation links when on the main Products page, but then once you click on Restoration, have the 3 navigation links appear. Oh, line them up on the nav bar so that the left margin is above the white text area (make sense?) instead of the left margin of the page.

Remove top navigation links when not on Product/Restoration pages.

In the right Nav bar, make the Product "over" indicator selected anytime you are in either Product/Restoration, Product/Manipulation, or Product/Archive. Currently, it is "dark".

Maybe use Pop-up windows for your larger examples, that way there is just a Pop-up window to close and they clients/customers are still on the Examples pages??

I like someone's earlier reply about putting before/after pics side by side as examples...that works well in all the sites I've seen that are showing actual work done and/or examples.

Anyhow, just a couple of cents worth, but overall I like the look and feel of the site.

Congrats again.
:D

Hi guys, just got home from work. Thanks for the comments and David I'm glad you finally saw the new site. I'm having a similar problem now myself. I just made a change to the horizontal links bar and one link stayed the same even though the copy I pull into the editor shows it right. Oh well.

Thanks for the information BigAl. The spell checker looked right over that spelling of Moire', guess it's not as smart as I thought. Maybe More' is how you spell something. I just made another correction to the links bar accross the top. Jeffery made a suggestion that made sence. I had been looking at it and thinking something wasn't right. I hope this change is an improvement.

Thanks for your comments Jeffery. I have removed the restoration links from the products pages and added a products link bar that only appears on the three different products pages. I tried moving the horizontal bar to the same areas as the other links but it added to the confustion. I am studying the whole links bar situation to see if there is a better way to place them.

I am also looking for ideas on a better way of displaying the gallery of examples. I'm not too happy with what I have now and I wasn't satisfied with Frontpage's gallery function.

Tell me what you think of the new horizontal link bars on the products pages.

Hi Kevin,

Sorry to chime in late here. I was away this weekend when you posted and had to catch up on lots of stuff when I returned.

First, I want to comment on how "professional" your site looks. I love the layout you've put together! :D

I did catch a brief glimpse of the initial version you posted and I really like the change you made to remove the splash page and send people directly to your "home" page.

One thing that seems a little inconsistent to me is having your contact info at the bottom of your home page and having a separate "Contact Us" navigation link. If it were me, I'd move the contact information that you have on your first page and move it to your "Contact Us" page. I do like your "feel free to contact Kevin 24 hours per day via e-mail..." I would leave that there, but make the word "contact" a link to your contact page.

Also, you might want to consider adding some sort of "encryption" scheme for your e-mail addresses or you will be setting yourself up for a deluge of spam. (That has been my experience at least.) See this thread (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4920) for more info. About half-way down the first page of posts Leah posted some very helpful links!

I know that you've gotten a lot of feedback on your sub-menus already and that you've been working on them - and fighting with the lack of flexibility in Frontpage. That said, it did take me a couple of page loads before I realized that the Products sub-menus appeared across the top. (I used the links in the text of the main Products page for my navigation.) Once I did figure out that the sub-menu appeared horizontally above, I was frustrated that I couldn't get to either Manipulations or Archiving once I clicked on the "Basic Restoration" link. Once in the Restoration sub-menu, there's no way to get to Manipulations or Archiving without clicking on the main Products link in the rightside navigation bar. (At least, I couldn't find a way.) This is not good because someone might not think to look further than the "Advanced Restorations" link - esp. if they have a smaller browser window and didn't scroll down the main Products page to see that there was more than restorations. Does that make sense?

I'm interested in the comment you made about Paypal. Can you share a link for more info with me? I'm also in the process of putting my webpage together (and have been pulling my hair out trying to fix a defect in Javascript that wasn't actually a defect. ;) ) So, I'm also following this thread with interest and hope to get some feedback on my own site in the not-to-distant future. Unlike you, I wasn't smart enough to start from a template, so I've had a huge learning curve. I know more about JavaScript now than I ever thought I wanted to. ;)

Thanks for being brave enough to ask for feedback. This has been a great thread so far!

Jeanie

Forgot to mention... As for ideas about the gallery pages, I'm still working on that myself! I have lots of ideas, but haven't actually tried to implement anything. You might want to search the web for various sites with galleries and see how others have designed them. Then you'll get a feel for what works well for you and what doesn't - both in terms of navigation and implementation. I spent literally hours going through the websites of members here on RetouchPRO taking notes on what I liked and what I would do differently. It was worth the time I spent doing it though - I learned a lot about how much difference a good presentation of information/images can make!

Jeanie

Hi Jeanie, thanks for your observations. I'm trying to figure out how I can best organize the links. More experience would help me a lot. I have several degrees from the University Of Hard knocks. I hate signing up for classes there but I keep going back for more for some reason.

I agree with you about the contact information. I need to do more research on the contact form. It doesn't produce the information in a very usable format. I guess I need to learn more about it. The Microsoft book I bought "Frontpage 2002 Step By Step" discusses creating the contact page but doesn't even mention how you get the data back. I found a slight mention about it in another book. This is frustrating to say the least, so now do I buy yet another book to learn how to manipulate the data collected with this form.

The information about Paypal is discussed in great detail on their site. That is where I learned about it. It seems to be a much better alternative to developing your own relationship with the credit card companies. They offer all the information about setting up their shopping cart system and supply everything you need to get it up and running. The only fee comes when they collect a payment for you. I'd like to talk to someone using their system to see if it is all they claim. Here is the link http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/index-outside
There are no fees to open a business account with them.

I am looking into add-in tools to help me with the Gallery. I don't think that Frontpage 2002 will do what I want. I hope to design a gallery page with all the thumbnails set up the way I want them, with the ability to add my comments to the page they will see when they are actually viewing the expanded version of the pictures. Frontpage doesn't allow you access to modify the viewing page at all. Microsoft loves to provide business opportunities for companies that offer aftermarket products that provide services Microsoft software fails to provide, that's a mouth full. I don't want to have to learn any additional software program to complete this project but it looks like I just night have to.

Kevin, I stumbled across this (http://www.paypalsucks.com/forums/showforum.php?fid=6) or a similar forum a couple of months ago - when I was thinking of opening a paypay account for Christmas shopping. It opened my eyes.

I did a Google search just now for "paypal bad experience" and got thousands of hits.

I have no personal experience with them, but with that many people complaining, they can't all be making it up.

Margaret

I have several degrees from the University Of Hard knocks. I hate signing up for classes there but I keep going back for more for some reason. :D You too? I'm sure we've been in at least one class together! ;)

Before you buy another book on Frontpage, try doing a web search on "forms". (Maybe "Frontpage forms"?) I've found tons of info on the web when I have a specific problem I'm trying to solve/implement.

I'm not using Frontpage, but have used it in the past and have the "Running Microsoft Frontpage 2000" book from MS Press. I assume the contact page is a form. My book mentions an "Options for Saving Results of Form" dialog box. This is accessed by right-clicking anywhere on the form and selecting "Form Properties" from the pop-up menu, then clicking on "Options." If it were me, I'd have the results mailed to me, which you can set up by then clicking on the "E-mail Results" tab. It looks pretty straight forward from there. (I would check the "include field names" box.) Perhaps you've already found this and are having problems beyond this. If not, this might help a little.

Thanks for the link to Paypal. I'll take a look at that.

I know how frustrating it is to have to learn one application after another just to do something that "should" be simple! I guess that's why web designers have jobs! ;) If it were easy, they wouldn't be needed. (Same with photo restoration/retouching too!) Do you have any programming experience? I think you've probably mentioned this before, but I can't remember. I have to say that I'm really glad that I have a programming background. It has made it a lot easier to go in a tweak the HTML code to do exactly what I want - and to debug Javascripts, etc.

I took a look at your source code to get an idea for how your menus are designed. Did you create the gifs that make up your menu, or did Frontpage create them automatically from text that you typed in to a template? I'm thinking that you could modify the GIFs slightly to make them appear to "indent" a bit, then add more menu items to your menu on the right. Specifically, when you click on the Products menu item, it will bring you to the Products page and the menu on the right will include three indented items below Products: Restoration, Manipulation, Archiving. I think that you tried this and weren't able to get the sub-menu items to indent? What I'm suggesting is that you create the menu with Frontpage, then edit the GIFs that Frontpage uses in Photoshop to make them appear to indent. Not sure if I'm explaining this well enough, so I've attached an example for what I'm talking about. Since I don't know exactly what limitations you ran into before, I'm not sure if this will help or not. But, it's what I would try (and have done something similar before.)

Good luck. Hang in there - you've got a great base to work from!

Jeanie

Kevin, very good site. Good template choice.

I've got a few comments that I hope will help you.

1. To second David, you need to add unique titles to each of your pages. Beyond being useful when someone bookmarks a page within your site, it will also help you in search engine optimization. Giving each page a unique title such as "Photo manipulation--remove unwanted features or people!" (only an example!!) you're hitting valuable keywords for the unique content on that page.

2. Keywords--they're really not too much of a help or a draw-back in the grand scheme of things, but you can include them on each subpage of your site. Also, the way the coding is handling them is slightly bulky to say the least. I don't know how FP handles raw code manipulation, but right now it's plugging each keyword you have chosen into a unique line in your HTML. This isn't going to hurt you at all with your human audience, but it's basically just junk code that'll slow down spiders and robots. You can consolidate all of your keywords into one tag, like this:


<meta name="keywords" content="geneology Louisiana Lake Charles picture CD photo archive restoration restore photograph">

Your current keywords on your homepage look like this:

<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="geneology">
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="Louisiana">
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="Lake Charles">
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="picture CD">
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="photo archive">
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="restoration">
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="photo restore">
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="photograph restoration ">

By combining all of your keywords into one tag with no comma deliniation, you're essentially making all of your keywords one big interchangeable searchable phrase. For instance, the way I wrote it you're hitting keywords for "picture restoration", "photo restoration" and "photo restoration in Lake Charles" (just three examples) without gunking up the code.

3. Gallery pages--If you want to be able to manipulate your gallery pages a little more, you can write a basic HTML page in Notepad, and just save it to whatever file you're saving your site in on your computer. It would look something like this:

<html>
<title>INSERT TITLE HERE</title>
<body>
INSERT YOUR PHOTO OF CHOICE
<P>
NOW INSERT YOUR TEXT ABOUT THE PHOTO. "<P>" without the quotes will result in a blank line, while using "<BR>" will result in a line break with no space.
<P>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Be sure to save your file as .htm or .html and you've just built a basic, barebones html file.

Thanks for that additional link on Paypal Margaret. I know that some sellers on eBay refuse to work with Paypal, but I never knew why. This probably explains at least some of it.

Are there no easy answers any more?? :(

Jeanie

Margaret -- thanks for the link to PayPal criticisms (and referrals to criticism-pages re: AMEX, United, Microsoft, Allstate).

I have no direct experience with them other than successful payment for a number of EBay purchases. A non-profit org that I volunteer with has considered signing with them, but has not due to some confusion with just how it would work out -- so now if we talk about signing up with them, I'll have a place to investigate potential problems.

Themanda -- your Keyword advice sounds like a really good idea - thanks for sharing.

Thanks Margaret for the information on Paypal. That information troubles me enough to re-think the notion that I might use them. I went to the BBB online and looked at their records. The BBB kind of danced around as far as an opinion about Paypal. Other members were given a rating in the reports about their business dealings.

For instance according to the BBB over the last 36 months there were 1991 complaints submitted to the BBB about Paypal. I checked on a site I do business with on a regular basis, BH Photo, who had only 37 complaints in the last 36 months. The BBB gave a detailed breakdown on what the complaints were about and how they were resolved. The BBB gave them a rating of "satisfactory". They did none of this for Paypal and failed to mention how they rated Paypal.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It looks fishy for the BBB to give inconsistant reports but this is what I get from this. Now I am losing respect for the BBB.

If Paypal had 1991 complaints turned in to the BBB how many other customers had problems but didn't want to complain? That's a big step to file a complaint with the BBB. I think that statistics say that only 1 in 3 people complain about poor customer service. The other 2 just go away quietly.

Jeanie, thanks again for the info. I'll look into doing more information surfing. Programming is always something I have done because I have had to, not because I enjoy it. I have forgotten a lot more about programming than I can remember. I used to do a lot with clipper, Dbase, and basic. Back in the good old days?

Wow, in the time I took to draft this message there have been three additional posts.

Thanks themanda, that looks like something I need to do. I am meta tag challenged so that is good information for me. I'll take the advice on the page names ( I assume that this is in the property of the page and not the file name?). Gee I 'm going to have to print this thread so I can remember to touch on all the advice.

Thanks again guys, Hi CJ.

I'm going back and picking up on suggestions from all the previous posts. Jeanie thanks for reminding me about Leah's post on the encryption of the e-mail link. Thanks to you leah, the program worked great. I now have an encrypted e-mail link on my site. I will do more on the contacts form later.

I'm looking for a credit card service site. There are many to choose from with a wide range of cost . Haven't found a keeper yet but I'll keep fishing.

Kevin, Glad I could help a little.

Re: programming. It's kind of like riding a bike. Once you've done it, you don't really forget how. (You might not like it, but you don't forget! ;) )

I know what you mean about printing this thread so that you remember all of the suggestions. In fact, I think that I might print it myself so that when I'm finally ready for feedback, all of the helpful contributors to this thread don't have to repeat themselves! ;)

Jeanie

Kevin,

Don't forget to take a look at the automated Web Photo Gallery function in Photoshop (File>Automate>Web Photo Gallery). I have been able to take the HTML code produced there and insert it into my page quite easily. If Photoshop has a style you like, that might be the easiest way for you to create a gallery.

Jeanie

Hey, thanks for the tip on Photoshop. I never thought about that. I will definately give that a look tonight. Thanks

Kevin, I don't know what you want in a gallery, but, here's (http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/brocm/szilagyipics/) a slide show gallery that I'm working on. If I'm not mistaken, PS builds the thing with a front page that has thumbnails on it and then clicking on the thumbnail takes you to a separate page - maybe it's just me, but I don't like the jumping around it does when a new page is loading.

This slide show doesn't have t/n's on it, but they could easily be added instead of the drop-down list or in addition to it. Also, I intend to fix it so that some text about the picture being viewed is displayed under it or beside or something - just haven't gotten around to it - trade ya - you can have this part if I can have some of your improvements :) :)

I've tried other programs to make thumbnails but all fall short of what I want - Photoshop does a good job of it.

Let me know if you want to use this code and can't decipher the script - I don't think I commented it very well.

Take care, Margaret

btw: the photos are untouched, scanned copies of old photos that were xeroxed from copies that were made of the originals and then xeroxed again.....I make no apologies for the "quality" of the images. :oldman:

Hi Margaret, I just took a brief look at the Photoshop photo gallery. It looks like it will do exactly what I want. I don't know why I didn't think of looking at this.

Thanks for your information. I'll take a look at what I can do tonight and see if I can get the look I want. Brief exposure seems to indicate that I will. My site will change again.

Hi Kevin - I seem to recall that you are using Dreamweaver - you might be interested in this DW extension - the Bloom Gallery (http://333creativecentral.com/x10/bloom/) is very nice.

Take care, Margaret

Hi Margaret, no I'm using Frontpage 2002. I do like those gallery demos though.

I do need some help though maybe you or someone else can help me out on a problem I have now. How do you link out from a page that uses frames? The Photoshop gallery I created uses frames. I am trying to place a link back to the parent page but when I click on the link it displays the new page inside the frame my link was in instead of changing to the page I wanted it to.

The gallery Photoshop created looks real nice. The one I chose displays the thumbnails in a vertical frame on the left side of the page and the viewer is in the bigger right hand frame. I just need to link back to the parent page.

to make a link from a frame load into the entire browser window, you'll need to add the attribute <target="_top "> to your link if I recall correctly, so it would look like this
<a href="http://www.website.com/page.html" target="_top">Link Name</a>

- David :)

Thanks David, you's a life saver. That worked perfectly. I was kind of stumped there for a while. It's going to be a lot of work, for me anyway, to incorporate the Photoshop galleries into my site but I think it will be worth it. I really like the frames display.

No problem Kevin, glad to help! good to hear that the Photoshop gallery system is working well for you, I'll have to check it out, when I actually get a site up (it's gonna be a while still..) I'm planning on using a system like this (http://gallery.menalto.com/), but the problem with that kind of thing is that they can be a pretty big pain to install, you have to deal with various kinds of scripts, databases and libraries on the server, however, if you can get it to work, it's great for being very customizable etc.

- David :)

Hi David. The gallery in your link looks impressive. The Photoshop gallery function in version 7 generates a fairly nice looking gallery. I chose the vertical frame gallery and was able to choose a color theme that was close to the theme in my Web site. There is a lot of work afterward to each display frame to try and make it look like the other pages in my site but I think it will be worth it. One nice feature is not having to manually re-size the pictures in advance. Photoshop will automatically resize the pictures to what ever pizel size you specify.

I'm working with the site off-line right now and wont upload any changes until I get all the gallery additions complete.

David, I've run into a problem. I had no problem putting the <target="_top "> into a single link. That was simple to understand. Now I have included a link bar into the gallery so that it matches the theme of the site. The coding for this link bar is kind of cyrptic, or at least to me, and I am having trouble incorporating the addition to this code. When I highlight the link bar in Frontpage the following HTML code is highlighted in the HTML page.

This I assume is the head.htm file I use for the header.

<!--webbot bot="Include" U-Include="../../includes/head.htm" TAG="BODY" -->

Somehow this is the link bar?

<!--webbot bot="Navigation" S-Type="sequence" S-Orientation="horizontal" S-Rendering="graphics" B-Include-Home="FALSE" B-Include-Up="FALSE" U-Page="sid:1027" S-Theme="basics1 010" -->

I'm lost.

Kevin, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you're dealing with Frontpage jargon that is incomprehensible to human beings.

What you're dealing with is exactly why serious web developers use a program like Frontpage to lay out the page, and then use notepad to do their coding - that way only the stuff you actually write makes it into the html file.

Doesn't Frontpage have a wizard for creating a photo gallery?? You'd think they would because a photo gallery is something quite common.

:rolleyes:

Margaret

Hi Margaret, yes Frontpage has a gallery feature but it too is limited as to what you can do. The Photoshop gallery allows me to edit the picture viewing page not just the thumbnail page. The Frontpage gallery doesn't give you very much flexability. You cannot edit and modify the viewing page as easily as you can with the Photoshop generated gallery.

I was afraid that this would be the answer to my question. I sure would like to use the link bar in the gallery but if it is too cryptic to deal with then I guess I wil have to place a simple link to the parent page. It's ashame too, Frontpage has a property setting for frames for a simple link, I found out later, but that same property is not available for a link bar.

I'll keep looking to see if I overlooked something. I probably will outgrow Frontpage soon, or at least get tired of it's limitations. But, it has given me a good head start. If I were studying Web creation and had plans to become a Web designer I would try something more powerful. All I want to do is get my own site up like I want it to look.

Thanks margaret.

hey, if you outgrow FrontPage, I'd definitely recommend Adobe GoLive if you can afford it, I was lucky enough to get it for free when I got my adobe design collection, and I've been playing with it lately, and I really like it, there's a lot it can do. and I definitely agree with what Margaret was saying, if you want to have full control of the page, at some point you're pretty much going to be forced into learning HTML. the good news is that it's not a horrible thing to learn, and there's tons and tons of books out there for any skill level. the first book I got was called "Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours" published by Sams, which I'd say is a pretty easy book to learn from if you're just starting out with it, plus it's been around for a long time so it should be pretty cheap. sorry I can't be any help on your link issues, it's definitely a bunch of FrontPage garble, and I've never even used the program so I don't have a clue what it means..

- David :)

Well, I was going to anounce that the newest version of my Web site was online. I've been working for days on the revisions and think I have all the problems solved. The new gallery is going to be a nice addition. But, I lost half of my hard drive Raid controller tonight as I was working on some of the last revisions. I wouldn't be surprised if I lose the other half before too long as there is only one processor running both controllers.

One brite side is that I have a mirror image of my primary drive just sitting there turned off. I wont lose any data, just a lot of time and frustration.

Stay tuned the new version will be online soon, I hope.

:bawling: :bawling: :bawling: :bawling:

You have my sympathy, Margaret

OK, now I have finally finished the new version 3.0 of restored-memories.com. I have been fighting Frontpage for the last hour to get it to publish the site right. It only took 4 tries, I finally had to delete everything on the server and then publish to a blank directory. Even then it messed up the navigation structure and I had to edit it online to correct that.

Since I have made so many changes I wish that everyone take a good look at the site and let me know what I have done wrong or forgotten. I really appreciate the help I have gotten so far. I couldn't have done this without you guys.

The gallery was generated in Photoshop 7 and caused me a lot of problems. But, I think I have what I wanted. I need input as to whether I am going in the right direction. I don't even want to know how many hours I have invested in the site update. It was a lot of dead-ends and failed attempts.

Looking good Kevin!!

I went through it with a "fine-toothed comb" and here's what I found:

*take the "under construction" sign off - it's distracting and your site is in such good shape you don't need it any more :)

*it's good that you attribute the quote on the right hand side of the main pages, but I would make the author's name smaller than the quoted text - when I first saw it, I thought that was your name :(

*still on the home page, I wanted to click on the pictures on the left-hand side - they look so interesting :)

*On the Restorations page, some of the headings and paragraphs aren't evenly spaced out and the top heading doesn't seem to line up with the rest - it's only out a couple of pixels but I have to uphold my reputation as a nit-picker :)

*Now the Gallery page. First I have to tell you, I downloaded one of your pages a week ago and tried to figure out how to convert it from FrontPage to normal HTML and I gave up after my eyes started to bleed so I want you to know that I understand how much work you put into it - and you did an amazing job :bow: :bow: :bow:

I also know how much work it was to get the "Menu" to work on the Gallery page - but - it only has one item on it. Unless you're going to put more items on it, replace it with a nice button that fits with the rest of the page.

And this last item, I had a real problem opening the Gallery page in IE 5.2. If I have to guess I would say it's because IE and FrontPage are both Microsoft products and IE is anticipating what "should" be on the page instead of rendering what "IS" on the page.

What happens is that it mostly loads but without the scroll bars and if I link back to the home page, I get a nasty line up the left side of the page where the scroll bar would have been on the gallery page. I tried loading random unrelated pages (google, retouchpro etc.) but the nasty line was still there.

If I resize the gallery window as soon as it's done loading, I can get it to draw the scroll bars and everything runs smoothly from then on.

One more thing - also in IE, on the Home pages (and other pages with the same format) there is a tiny image blob that doesn't seem to be loading. I took a screen shot of it and circled what I mean. It doesn't show up on other browsers though.

Sorry to run on so long, but I really had to dig to find ANYTHING that you could fix....

Take care, Margaret

Thank you Margaret for taking the time to research this for me. Your right about the under construction signage I'll take it down. I'll fix the quotation also. What do you recommend that I consider on the collage on the left of the screen? Is it too much?

I'll try to get the text formatting lined up a little better. I have fought Frontpage a lot on this type of thing. It doesn't conform to MS Word nearly as much as Microsoft is willing to admit. It is hard to line up columns for instance because you cannot use the tab key in the edit mode. It's just little things like this that get frustrating.

Thanks for your comments about the gallery. It was a lot of trial and error and just everything imaginable stood in my way. On the Menu, did you mouse over the MENU and see the "pull down" menu items? That was a bear to write, and I hope it is working in all browsers. Frontpage refused to allow me to put in the -top> command to allow a link out from a page with frames using the "Link Bar" feature. I went to an add-in called "J-Bots" navigational component. It writes java script to generate DHTML code. Well let me tell you, it did the job but it was a nightmare to work with. If you were just talking about the menu bar only having one item, you'r right I may need to pull the bar back to make the menu look like a button.

I'm going to print out your comments so that I don't miss anything. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this.

I can't believe that Frontpage is having so many problems with IE! You'd think that Microsoft would generate code that would at least be compatible with their own browsers.

I hope your experiences with the gallery aren't typical with what others experience with it. I'd hate to have to abandon the gallery because of compatability problems. I can switch to a different style that doesn't use frames. I need to get other browsers on my systems so that I can test compatibility with the other browsers.

Thanks again.

You've done a lot of work since I last saw the site...Nice job! I had no problems with the gallery, although it took me a while to actually find the pop-out menu. It's a little slow to load but a nice feature. You might consider changing the font or color of the word "Menu" so that it's easier to find.

Frontpage sounds like a nightmare! I have been using Dreamweaver to create and maintain my brother's poetry e-zine ( www.sidereality.com ) and while the learning curve was rather steep, it's a wonderful program and generates pretty stable code.

Hi Greg, Thanks for your comments. I like what you have done with the SideReality.com. That looks real good. My menu problems in the Gallery have ended up with the compromise you see there now. I'm not at all happy with my experiences with frontpage. I don't think it was ever intended for anything more than a generic plain web site. I can't say I would recommend it to anyone. I don't know whether I am just tight and didn't want to waste the money I paid for it or just hard headed and don't like to get beat by a program. I should have given up a long time ago and switched to dreamweaver. I just wish I could get my money back on what I paid for Frontpage.

I have learned a lot though. Even if it was just on what doesn't work for Web publishing. I hope that is my last poor business decission for a while.

What do you recommend that I consider on the collage on the left of the screen? Is it too much?

I like the collage on the left - I just wish I could see enlargements of them - maybe put the enlarged images in the gallery?

I'm kind of glad I stuck with text editors in building my site - I'm more interested in learning the programming than I am in seeing a finished product. :o:

Considering what you were up against, you did a credible job of your site.

I hope the IE problem is peculiar to my computer. I'll do a shutdown and a cold boot in the morning to see if the problem is still there. I've had some weird problems with my computer so that might be it.

Take care, Margaret

I will plan on putting some of those pictures in later. The second picture from the top is just a picture of my family tree on my maternal Grandmothers side.

You know the irony of this situatioin I am in is that I chose the path I took because I didn't have time to learn anything new. Wonderful how my plan worked out don't you think?

I have an older NT machine at work that has IE 5 on it. I will try it out tomorrow.

Hope I'm not to late chiming in here. You've done a TON of work Kevin! :bigthmb: You're probably saying, "You don't know the half of it!" - but I think I do b/c I'm going through it myself. ;) The only thing I did differently was start out with Dreamweaver b/c my experience has always been that I want to do more than any template or "helper" has ever been able to give me, so I knew I'd have a steep learning curve from the start. It didn't make it any easier knowing that though. ;)

It's late and I haven't looked really closely at your site, but here are a couple of comments and I'll try to look more closely tomorrow.

* I really, really like the change you made to the left sidebar with the small pictures. FWIW, I didn't feel the need to click on them until I read Margaret's feedback - then I looked at them more closely and thought, "Yeah, I'd like to see that with more detail!" ;)

* I like the solution you came up with for the menu in your gallery. It's different than the rest of the site (obviously), but the whole layout of the gallery is different, so I think it works. I would suggest that you change the font to a simple Arial (or other sanserif font) to make it easier to read. A while ago I remember hearing that the fancier the font, the more difficult it is to read - and you want your menu items to be easy to read!

* Also with the menu - you might consider putting a small triangle graphic pointing down next to the word menu to indicate that it's a pulldown. That might help people realize it's meant to be a drop-down.

* Nit-picking with the gallery menu - is there a way to get the text centered vertically in the respective bars? The way I see them, the text is aligned with the top of each bar.

* It looks like you designed your gallery for a 1024 width screen resolution. Is that true? I say that b/c if I resize the window a little smaller, the horizontal scrollbar shows up under the large images (in the right frame) and if I make the window smaller yet (esp. on my husband's 800x600 display), there is a horizontal scrollbar for the left index frame as well. It's not really a problem as I'm still able to get the text within whatever window width I resize to. One slight oddity is that the bar that the menu link is in resizes with the window, but not the graphic at the top. So, if you scroll to the right, it looks like there is a chunk missing. That's a bit nitpicky though and might not be worth the time it would take to fix.

* I like the solution you came up with for the menus outside of the gallery. I think they work nicely and I found it easy to get around.

* One other thing I just discovered as I was playing with resizing... If I resize my window down to what I guestimate to be 640 pixels (trying to estimate how the site will look on an old 640x480 display), I'm not able to read the text in your first paragraph on the home page b/c it's covered up with the picture. Even though a horizontal scrollbar exists, the text is not readable b/c of the picture obscuring it. Since you're going to have a scrollbar anyway at that resolution (b/c of the image in your top bar), you might want to try to limit how small that center column gets? (I don't even know how to do that! But I'm not sure what else would work unless you were to put the image and text in separate table cells?)

I know you've spent more time on your site than you'd planned or wanted, but I think the time has been worth it!! You've got a really nice professional looking site and you should be proud of it! :D

Jeanie

P.S. It's possible that the little "blocky thing" that Margaret is seeing is a missing image? I had asked her to look at my site a while back and she saw something similar that I didn't see on my computer. I knew exactly what it was caused by - it just never appeared on my screen. And what she sees on your site is not visible on my version of IE6 nor my husband's version of IE5.5 (both Windows machines). I'm too tired right now to try viewing your site with other browsers - I'll try to do that in the morning.

I like the new design, nice work Kevin! I agree with the others, one of my first reactions was to try and click on the small images to see the full size example, it would be nice if you could create an image map linking to the bigger photos of that to replace what you have now.
Since Jeanie mentioned the problem of different resolutions, that reminded me of a program I've used for quite a while now called 1st page 2000 (http://www.evrsoft.com), it has a very nice feature I haven't seen in any other web design programs, you can preview your HTML file in various resolutions (640x480 - 1024x768). it's a good idea to design a site so that it works in multiple resolutions, and if that's not really possible, than it's probably smart to have a warning at the bottom of your pages stating something like *this page best viewed at a resolution of 800 x 600 or above*

- David :)

Hi Kevin, after a cold boot this morning, I still had the problem with the gallery page so I think it's a bug in IE.

I think what happens is that IE sees that it's a FrontPage produced page and sees the template and without reading the HTML to see what is actually on the page, it renders the template and only later when I force it by resizing the window will it draw the window properly.

Other browsers don't know about FrontPage (or don't care LOL) and render what the HTML is saying, thus producing the intended result.

This behavior could be peculiar to the Mac versions of IE.

My first instinct is to remove any reference to FP or the template from the meta tags, but that would destroy other formatting that you've worked so hard to achieve. Unfortunately, IE seems to be the big winner in the Mac browser wars for the time being so this might be worth pursuing. If you want me to, I'll take it up with the Mac folks at Microsoft.

Take care Margaret

Testing briefly in other browsers:

Netscape 7 - Looks good. The only thing that I notice different from IE6 is the color of the text in the menu on the gallery page. The text appears white when you first pull it down (in IE it's black). If you click on the link, then return to the gallery page, the link that you clicked on is now black (all others remain white - until you click on them.) Not really a problem as I can still read everything - just a difference in behavior.

Opera 7 - FWIW, this is my nemesis where browsers are concerned! :( I found it odd that the rollovers in your menu bar (on the right of all pages except the gallery) do not work. (I.e., the color of the boxes does not change when you rollover a link.) When you actually click on the link and go to another page, the color of the box changes to let you know where you are. It's just the rollover effect that doesn't work. I don't think this is a huge problem b/c it's obvious from other clues (pointing finger, link names in the status bar, alt text showing link) that these are meant to be links.

Still in Opera 7 - I found the above odd b/c your pulldown menu on the gallery page does work! The fancy effect is slightly different in that the boxes appear all at once and just the text scrolls out. Opera also displays the menu items in white until they are clicked on, then they turn to black once visited (like Netscape).

FWIW, I think these things are minor since they don't really affect the usability of your site - they're just comments about what's different in the different browsers. I can look at earlier Netscape versions if you want - it's just a little more setup b/c they're on my laptop (not my desktop) and I have to find a spare network cable.

Hope this helps,
Jeanie

Kevin

Nice work...long and hard to do. I'm like the rest, it's tough to make FrontPage work exactly the way you want beyond the basic web page itself.

Anyhow, I won't go over what others have said, but a couple of minor things I see.

The pics in the left margin...they don't have even spacing between them, you have the black lines "attaching" them, but the bottom pic is more closely spaced than the others. Oh, and the black line between that bottom one and the pic above...the black line extends over the bottom pic.

I've attached a screen shot of another "coding" error. You have a first letter in Bold, when you don't have that anywhere else on your site.

Otherwise...keep up the good work, you've got a great site and these minor things are just that...minor. It sure helps having multiple (dozens) of eyes helping you out.

Hi Kevin,

You have been working very hard and the results are fantastic :) The site is working very well on Opera, and the navigation is much better and far less confusing that it was. I would also like to beable to click on the left hand images, or at least see them in the gallery... sorry that sounds like an echo ;)

The only thing (oh no not another one ;) ) is might be worth looking at having the price page after the archival page. It seems to split the services that you provide in two, making the archival look like it was added later. Just my opinion, and boy have you got to dig to find anything wrong, you have done a good job.

The gallery pages with the link back to the main pages of your web site link in well, even though it is a change of design it works well and I found that it didn't produces any navigation problems.

Hope this helps

Clare :)

Jeanie posted while I was writing, so I thought I would add a bit...

My Opera 7 browser is changing colour on all the navigation buttons (the colour boxes) Which is pretty strange I will go and view the site in IE to check and see

Clare

Hi again,

After looking in IE the only inconsistancy that I can find is in the gallery menu all the text is white except the restoration button. In Opera all the buttons have black text. The role over colour remains blue in both browsers.

The only other thing (sorry just flicking through your site) is that the animation is not working in my copy of Opera7 on the archival page, only noticed when I viewed the site in IE.

Good Job :)

Clare

Clare - that is too wierd. Exactly what version of Opera are you running? Mine says:
Version: 7.01
Build: 2651
Platform: Win32
System: Windows XP

Jeanie

Version
7.0
Build
2577
Platform
Win32
System
Windows XP
_
This is my one - we obviously have a bit of a difference here, although yours seems to be a later version so should surely work better !!!! To strange....

Clare

I've got the latest Opera (7.02) and on the Gallery page, the text is all black, the rollovers are blue (background grey).

The Animation plays fine on the Archival page as well. Looks like more things are fixed in the latest Opera version.

I do notice in my Opera browser, the yellow bullet blocks on the various pages don't line up as well with the text as they do with IE v6.0, but it's a pretty minor detail.

One more thing...on your Home page...the "CONTACTS PAGE" header towards the bottom is that dark blue (since it is a link). You may want to go in and see about changing your Link color to one that more closely matches your theme color, the dark blue color kinda stands out.

Now I see why you might have been confused by my comment about the menu in the Gallery page. When I view the page in IE, and Safari, all I see is the word "Menu" and if I click on it, it drops down with the one choice "Home" - that's all. (In my version of Opera - which we already know is pretty lame - I don't see menu at all)

I hadn't tried Netscape (it's so slow :( ) but I wondered what menu you all were seeing so I tried Netscape now and finally I can see it.

I wish I could offer some insight into why that would be or some suggestions for fixing it, but it's a mystery to me.

As a side note, I was writing an HTML tutorial for my son the other day and used the <pre> tag inside a table cell. In Safari and IE, not only did it not maintain the PRE formatting, it also destroyed the size of the table cell - nothing I could find explained it. Browsers - it's a good thing most of them are free :bawling:

Margaret

Just downloaded Opera 7.02 and it did fix the problem with the menu rollovers. I do still see white text in the gallery menu for links that I haven't visited though. (And 7.02 does not fix the problems I'm having with my site. :bawling: )

Jeanie

How can we possibly create a cross browser interface when using a different 7,7.01,7.02 have such different results? I just don't see any way...:depressed :bawling:

Please tell me other wise

Clare

Originally posted by clare
How can we possibly create a cross browser interface when using a different 7,7.01,7.02 have such different results? I just don't see any way...:depressed :bawling:I don't see any way either - unless your site is a boring generic site, e.g. a site that's simple text & images with no tables or Javascript? :bawling:

Jeanie

yeah, it can seem almost impossible at times to have a site that's compatible with at least the couple most popular browsers (IE and Netscape for example) the only way I can see around the problem is using server side languages instead of javascripts or something like flash which shouldn't act any differently in different browsers unless the user doesn't have the plugin actually loaded.

- David :)

There has to be a joke somewhere in this browser mess, so I googled "browser jokes" and came up with this one (http://www.hehe.at/funworld/archive/jokes4.php?view=364) - it's an oldie but a goodie.

I also found this article (http://speedysnail.com/weeklink/2001_02_21.html) that takes a more serious look at the whole issue.

I'm taking David's advice - I'm going to learn Perl...

Take care, Margaret

Wow, I just found time at work to look at the replys. You guys are really helping me a lot. I have printed all the replys and am going over them now. Your comments are appreciated very much.

Jeannie, you aren't late at all. I've got a feeling that this thing will be going on for quite some time. I'd like to think I could link from those pics in the collage to the actual pictures. But, you know how Microsoft has problems with text and graphics mixing. I guess I could do it but it might harder than the gallery was. Also I wonder how that would look in all the different browsers.

I am already looking at changing the gallery again! But, I am not sure what format to use. I was thinking I could use a table format but I am hearing about the problems Jeannie and Clare are having with tables. I wonder if there is a way to create a nice looking Web site that will display the same on all the browsers?

David I went to the 1st Page 2000 site and tried to download the file. Cnet says it is no longer available and the link for the mirror goes to a German hosting site. I wonder what gives?

Margaret, I tested the site on an old NT machine I have that is running IE 5.0 and everything displays like it should, aside from the Monotype Cursiva font not displaying. I am concerned that the frames on the gallery page are giving some browsers problems. I'm not sure what direction to turn next.

Jeffery, thanks for you observations. I need to know things like that. I created that graphic on the fly and didn't notice that my spacing was off. Thats easy to fix, I'll put that on my list and also the text formatting error.

Clare, thanks for the flowers. It has been a lot of work, I just wish it has all been productive work. I spend too much time going down dead-end alleys and having to change directions. The arrangment of the Menu was an accident. The "link bars" in Frontpage are linked to the navigation tree. How-ever the pages line up in the navigation view is how the links are arranged on the link bar menu. The first time I tried to publish the site last night something went badly wrong in Frontpage and it trashed my navigation alignment. I made three failed attempts to publish the site from my PC to the Web site. It went from bad to worse. Finally I had to delete all the files on the Web server before I published the site to get it work. I still had some problems to work out and I guess I overlooked that one. The links were supposed to align just like you said. I've also had problems editing the site online. I had thought that I should edit an offline copy of the site and re-publish it back to the Web but now I'm not sure which way is best.

It looks like I may need to change the gallery again so I can eliminate the compatibility problems with frames. Problem is what can I go to that would be more compatible with all the browsers?

Kevin, I'd bet a good steak dinner that the problems I'm having in IE on the Mac are only peculiar to the Mac so I wouldn't worry about it. It is most likely the combination of Mac/IE/and FrontPage that is causing the strange behavior with a strong emphasis on the Mac/Microsoft combination.

Don't change your frame setup until we get an answer from Microsoft - I'm going to write to them write now.

Margaret
Photoshop. I like my steak rare!

I realize it's late in the day to be asking this, but since you have Front Page 2002, I'm wondering why you didn't use it to create your gallery??

I was looking for a place to complain about your/my problem and came across this (http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/19/index2a_page3.html?tw=authoring) article at WebMonkey.

Maybe you tried it and it didn't work for you?

margaret

I'd like to think I could link from those pics in the collage to the actual pictures. But, you know how Microsoft has problems with text and graphics mixing. I guess I could do it but it might harder than the gallery was. Also I wonder how that would look in all the different browsers.

You want to use an image map to create the links - no text is needed. Do a search on "image_map" in FrontPage and you should find all the info you need to make it work. I have done these in FP before and it was quite easy. To make things easy on yourself, you could just make it link to a simple pop-up window, perhaps with an explanation of the image if it makes sense. Or, just make the image appear in the center section of your layout so that the user will have access to all of the links if s/he wants to get back to the info. It should look the same in all browsers - it's standard HTML 4. No JavaScript or frames needed.

I am already looking at changing the gallery again! But, I am not sure what format to use. I was thinking I could use a table format but I am hearing about the problems Jeannie and Clare are having with tables. I wonder if there is a way to create a nice looking Web site that will display the same on all the browsers?

The problems I'm having with tables is the way earlier versions of Netscape don't render background images in individual cells correctly. It's an issue for me b/c of the way I've put my site together and expect pixels to line up where I want them. (I'm realizing now it's probably not the best design, but I'm too far along to change now. I'll have to wait for my next revision when I hope to use full CSS and get rid of tables.) I don't see anything in your gallery pages that would indicate a table format wouldn't work for you. I know that some sites have a "noframes" version of pages for browsers that don't support frames. You might want to consider something like that. Then again, as Margaret said, the problem with frames seems to be specific to IE on the Mac. So, don't spend any energy changing things until you get that figured out and decide if it's worth it!

It looks like I may need to change the gallery again so I can eliminate the compatibility problems with frames. Problem is what can I go to that would be more compatible with all the browsers?

I think it's next to impossible to design a site that's compatible with all browsers. That said, you might want to read the "serious" link that Margaret provided a couple of posts back. I'm finding it an interesting perspective - and I know that my site doesn't quite fit the view that this author has. However, I know I've purposefully made some design decisions that don't bode well for all browsers. I found a couple of sites with web-browsing stats (like the percentage of people using the various browsers, screen resolution sizes, etc.) and decided to design for the most popular ones. I know I'm not covering everybody perfectly, but hopefully the alternatives I'm providing for users are sufficient.

Don't get too discouraged. I know you probably just want to get this project over and done with, but it might help to look at it as a work in progress that you can improve slowly bit by bit. I think what you've got there now is a good, strong professional site - and almost everything we're mentioning is icing on the cake!

Jeanie

Margaret I have tried the FR gallery. The reason I didn't like it was that I couldn't put the comments I wanted to put about the images when viewed in the expanded form. The viewer page was a plain blank white page I think. I'll take another look to see if I overlooked something. I may have seen a blank web page and didn't know it, but I thought that I couldn't make any changes to the viewer pages

Thanks for the ideas Jeannie, I'll take a look at that and see what I can so. I have to edit that graphic anyway, to correct the spacing problem, and maybe try something.

I've made some of the minor changes to the site. I seemed to be able to update it OK this evening. That publishing problem last night got kind of frustrating.

You know this thread is getting to be a book! Almost 100 posts.

Hey, I have one more question. I have changed the name of all the other pages on my site in the "page properties", not the file name, to reflect what I want the search engines to see. Do I need to do this to the home page or does it need to stay as "www.restored-memories.com/index.htm" ? I am wondering why none of the search engines have picked me up and thought this may be a key point. I have submitted the site to four of the main sites through a link on Microsoft.com.

www.restored-memories.com/index.htm

The default page in any directory "must" be called "index.htm" or "index.html" or "home.htm" or "home.html" - home seems to have gone out of favor and I don't see it used much any more.

Most folks will just type "restored-memories.com" into the address bar so the server needs to know what to cough up.

Margaret

I'm not talking about the name of the page or file. I am referring to the name listed in the page properties, this lable is what internet explorer displays at the top line of the internet explorer window. Like this sites home page displays "RetouchPro - Microsoft Internet Explorer" at the top of the window when the home page is displayed.

By the way I looked again at FP gallerys. There is only one gallery type that allows you to put the picture description on the actual viewing page. I don't like that one because only 5 thumbnails are displayed at once, requiring the user to know that the arrows to each side of the thumbs have to be clicked on to cause the list to scroll let or right to see the rest of the thumbs. I thought that would be confusing, maybe not.

Sorry Kevin, I misunderstood. You're talking about the <title> and I notice that your's have www.restored-memories.com the title can be anything you want it to be. I don't know how to change it in FrontPage. I would just edit the html and change it there.

I need to shut this down and go do something else. I've been learning Perl today and it's making me cranky :mad: :D

Margaret

I took a better look at that one type of gallery in Frontpage that allows comments on the viewing page. It just might work good afterall. I think I will work up a gallery based on that format and see what it looks like. It would be better to have the entire site lok the same.

Also according to Microsoft it takes up to 4 weeks for Google to list your site after you submit it. So I may have 2 more weeks of silence. It'll gie me more time to get ready.

kevin - you can try this (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7622,00.asp) page for the download of that "1st page" program, it seemed to work fine for me.

- David :)

Hi Kevin,

I have just taken a look at your home page source code and found the following
-----
</head>
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="geneology Lake Charles Louisiana picture CD photo archive photo restoration photo restore photograph restoration Restored Memories">
------

The meta keywords should be in between the <head> and the </head> and each word should have a comma inbetween it. To back up the meta keyword you should also have a description tag. Here is a possibility of how it should read

-----
<title>Photograph Restoration at Restored-Memories.com</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="geneology, Lake Charles Louisiana, picture CD, photo, archive, photo restoration, photo restore, photograph, restoration, Restored Memories >
<meta name="description" content="Photographic Restoration at Restored-Memories.com>

The description will back up the wording in the meta keywords and the title to give you a better placement in the search engines.

Google took about a month to originally start linking to my old site,
although I did spend several days submitting the site to a whole bunch of search engines.

Hope this helps

Clare

Thanks David for the new link. I'm going to give that program a run and see how my site works at the different resolutions. It is not real fun changing the resolution on my PC several different times to see how the site is displayed. Also that looks like a good editor. I might just go ahead and get the book you mentioned and spend some quality time with HTML.

Thanks for the tips on the tags Clare. Looks like you have done the syntax corrections for me. I should be able to insert your work in to replace what I have. Like I told David I am going to dive right in and get up to speed on HTML. It looks like Frontpage doesn't necessarily always create clean code. I took CJ's advice and ran my home page through DR HTML 's site and it found a lot of errors.

I'm also going to work on the Frontpage version of the gallery tonight.

Thanks again guys.

CJ;

Just wanted you to know that I did read you comments made at my site. I haven't been able to figure out how this data should be presented to me yet. Right now I have to open results.htm in the _private subdirectory on the site. I have asked my host to see if he can determine how this data should be presented to me. So far he hasn't responded. Just editing that file will be a very poor way for me to get the results back. The file has no formatting and no delimitation, ie its just a bunch of words all bunched together in that file. I know I am missing something here.

Kevin,

Looking in my FrontPage book for what to do with form results (I assume your comments page is a form)...

1. Right-click anywhere on the form while in with WYSIWYG view and you should be able to select "Form Properties" from the pop-up menu.

2. To configure the Save Results component, click the Options button. One option is to e-mail the results to you, but you need to make sure that your web server has identified an SNMP mail server to the FrontPage Server Extensions. (Please don't ask me to explain that - I'm just copying it out of my book. ;) )

You can both save toa file AND send an e-mail with the results. If you want to continue to save to a file, click on the "Options" button and you'll be able to specify the format the form results are saved in, e.g. HTML, formatted text, text database using comma as separator, etc. (FWIW, the example that's shown in the book for HTML looks very readable.)

Hope this helps a little.

Jeanie

Thank you Jeannie, that is just what I needed to hear. I don't know why the book I have doesn't cover setting those properties. It's kind of funny that it goes to great discussions on how to create the page but doesn't cover what to do with the results. I have now set the page up properly thanks to you. Guess I didn't buy enough books.

Yeah! Glad that helped Kevin. :)

Have you tried looking at your library for technical books? I have found it really helps to try using a book before purchasing it. I have a bunch of books sitting on my desk right now that I know I will never buy either b/c they don't contain info that's helpful to what I want to do - or b/c they explain things in a way which is impossible for me to understand. OTOH, I have found a few gems which have made things seem really simple - and I've purchased those!

Jeanie

That's a good idea Jeannie. Don't know why I haven't thought about that. It sure sounds like a good idea, I have no idea what they have at our public library. I guess I need to find out. Sounds cheaper too.

Originally posted by clare
The meta keywords should be in between the <head> and the </head> and each word should have a comma inbetween it.

Actually, it's better to *not* comma deliniate your keywords, for what they are worth. By not separating them by commas, you're essentially making all of the available for different permutations of common keywords.

And it does take a while for the search engines to find you. When last I checked, Google hadn't even started to dance yet for this month, so the cycle could be even longer than a month there.

OK, here I go again. I took a hard look at the gallery situation and made a decission to try the Frontpage gallery. The style I chose is kind of a table layout, but not really a table. I decided to quit fighting Frontpage and conform to the rules that it likes to play by and I think we might get along better now.

I thought that it was important that I add a lot of descriptive text along with the photos in the view mode. But I guess if I do it right the pictures should be self-explainatory and no other comments needed. What do you think? I will admit that the photoshop gallery might have looked a little better but it was going to be a bear to administer. The Frontpage galley will be simple to modify and maintain.

I also corrected many small things, hopefully not making any more in the process. Well I am through making changes for tonight, everything is starting to blurr.

Hi Kevin,

I like the look of the new gallery. Unfortunately, with the thumbnail table three cells wide, it makes the page too wide even on my 1024x768 display. It looks like you have three examples for each of the Basic, Moderate and Major restorations, so perhaps that's why you chose that number. However, I think that if you are able to specify the number of cells across, I would change it to two. That should help with the page width problem a lot!

Also, I know you don't want to play outside of Frontpages rules, but if it were me (and take this for what it's worth, b/c I always get myself into trouble with my big ideas! ;) ), I would change the HTML code the FP generates for the HREF link. It looks like it's a direct link to your JPG files. You could change that to create your own HTML page to include the picture in - along with descriptive text - and then change the HREF to refer to the HTML file rather than the JPG image. Just a thought. You've had more headaches with FP than I, so it's up to you if you want to try that. If I were viewing your site for the first time and I didn't know much about restoration, I would want to know what you had to do to fix the image. But, I'm also an information junkie and perhaps I'm not "the norm."

Looking good! :)

Jeanie

Originally posted by themanda
Actually, it's better to *not* comma deliniate your keywords, for what they are worth. By not separating them by commas, you're essentially making all of the available for different permutations of common keywords.


Thanks Themanda,

Its all so much to learn, I was told to seperate the words with a comma, I will try it without - thanks for the advice. Sorry for the mis information Kevin

Clare

Thanks for the insite Jeannie. I had failed to consider the screen size factor. Nice thing is that I can just simply make changes to the proterties of the gallery and the changes will be imediate. With the Adobe gallery I had to make a lot of manual changes after regenerating a new gallery.

I really like your idea to modify the thumbnail operation. But, if I do that it will make updates more complicated. I'll look at it though.

Clare don't worry about the info. That change was easy to correct.

OK Jeannie I went home for lunch and in about 15 seconds I changed the format of the gallery. I can add a large description text entry to each one of these thumbnails and it will display the description right under the picture in the viewing window. My question about this format is are most visitors going to be able to recognize that they have to click on the arrows to make the thumbnails scroll to see the remaining thumbnails. It seems to me that this might be deal breaker but I want to know what you guys think. Adding the descriptions tonight will be an easy task. I just didn't have a lot of time at lunch.

Kevin,

I like it. If you're worried about people not knowing what the arrows mean, then just edit the graphic in Photoshop and add the text you want. E.g., see my attachment here. Then, just replace the FP generated arrow with your edited one. If you keep the name the same, you won't need to change any code. Do keep a separate copy of your edited one though b/c I have a feeling if you update the gallery, your edited one will be overwritten. :(

You need to decide what screen width you're targeting though. This version is still quite wide. If you look at line 41 in your gallery page code, you'll notice that your table with is set to 1119. That's pretty wide! What happens on my display is that I have to scroll to the right to see your navigation links. I think that's because your large gallery images are 700 px wide. (Can you specify that when you set up the gallery?)

To help you determine how wide your images can be without causing a horizontal scrollbar, you need to look at the fixed width of the other columns in the table that lays out your page design. Specifically

105 - left column that contains the thumbnail design we all like
19 - left border of vertical navigation bar
150 - navigation buttons
87 - right bar
-----
361 - total

So, if you want to design for a 800 px wide screen, and you take into account the vertical scroll bar in the browser window (about 25px, giving you 775 px to work with in your design), then

775-361=414 px (the maximum width for your gallery examples, less if you want some cellpadding (i.e., buffer) between the edges of your image and the surrounding page elements.)

For a 1024 px wide display, work with 999 and

999-361=638 px (the mazimum width for gallery ex. for 1024 px)

I know that really doesn't seem like much room. I'm running into the same problem with my site. The table design you had before is actually a little better in this regard b/c the image opened in a new window without the extra site design elements around it. That allowed the image to be larger without causing the horizontal scroll bar.

Sorry, I wish I had some easy answers for you!! :( I hope this makes some sense. I'm dealing with the same thing myself. (Though just in my head b/c I haven't actually tried to implement anything yet.)

Jeanie

Hey Jeannie, No problems on adjusting the picture size that is one of the properties that are dynamic. All those settings can be changed on the fly. I'll check it out when I get home.

That is one advantage to the Frontpage gallery. Maintanence is not going to be a problem. I will try to come up with an attractive way to let my visitors know that the thumbnails do scroll.

Doh - I knew I'd forget to attach that graphic!! :blush: OK, this time for sure! :)

Jeanie

Thanks Jeanie, that looks just like what I need. How come you keep letting me spell your name wrong. I just woke up and saw what I was doing.

Kevin

Great site!

In regards to the gallery problem of the menu not fitting on the screen at 800x600; If you want to keep the format of the before and after photos being next to each other - that means that your horizontal real estate is very precious. You might consider moving your menu to a horizontal strip under the header, unless you have plans for additional ways to use your "menu strip" in the future that this would mess up ...

You might consider a FAQ page with a link to contact page to add a suggested question. If you do a lot of web work from shipped / mailed originals you might state your policies and preferred methods / insurance, etc.

You might add a gaurantee policy to the price list if you have one.

I might have missed it, normal turn around times?

Roger

Originally posted by KevinBE
How come you keep letting me spell your name wrong. I just woke up and saw what I was doing. If I corrected everyone who spelled my name wrong, I'd spend an awful lot of time doing it. So, I just blame the wierd spelling on my mother and don't fault others for spelling it incorrectly. ;) (That said, I do prefer the correct spelling. :rolleyes: :) )

Jeanie

I knew only one other jeanie that I can recall, and she spelled her name with but one n as well. I remember because she used to spell it with what she called chinese pig latin - add "ong" after every consenant. So her name was jong-e-a-nong-i-e. Yeah, and mine is Pong-hong-i-long, so go figure.
:wavey:

Hi Roger, thanks for the kind words and comments. Yes I do have the option of moving the menu to horizontal just under the heading. I have resized the pictures to 650 width and may have to go lower to allow for th lower resolutions. I can go as low as 600 but any lower I will have to replace the horizontal line manually to do any good as it has a width of 600 pix.

I do have a lot more content to add. Thanks for your observations Roger. Those ideas will are good and will be definately considerated. I have a lot of blank spaces to fill and business decissions to make. So keep up the good work of identifying the information gaps on my site.

I think that the general mechanics of the site are near completion. I still haven't written some of the content. I still need to decide on how I will conduct eCommerce from the site. And the best method of getting the customers pictures in my hands.

Kevin -- glad that your "Contacts" page directed my comments to you, and hope your ISP will answer soon about how to receive them in an efficient manner.

This thread will be a big help to the rest of us as we develop our websites -- Thanks to all you folks who have provided helpful information! :)

Hi CJ, Jeanie told me what I needed to know. I had to right click on the form, not the page, and set the responce to e-mail me the responces in the form properties. It also is collecting all the comments in a file in case I miss an e-mail. I did test it that same day and it worked. I did another test this evening and I didn't get an e-mail. I will have to look at it again. I've been having problems with Frontpage publishing the site. I had a nightmare of a time when I tried to do that last major update. I've learned since then to do the pages individually and ftp them instead of using the "publish" feature. I'm learning too much about Frontpage!

You are right about the helpful posts to this thread. I don't think that I could have paid for better help. It has been invaluable to have the members here posts help to my questions. Thank you for your help also CJ.