Re: double darn -- did something wrong

My reply was posted in spite of me. [And probably because I tried to use the
"tab" key twice for formatting purposes.]
Quick responses, cont'd:
2) To sum up, I think these "assets" offer significant value to an
interested viewer. Here are the two URLs so you can check them out for more
specifics. Treatment visualizers =
http://www.juvederm.com/professionals/toolsdownload.aspx ; CareCredit =
http://www.carecredit.com/webtoolkit/cosmetic/gettingstarted2.html +
instructions =
http://www.carecredit.com/webtoolkit/cosmetic/pdf/gettingstartedpdf.pdf .

Business/traffic-wise reasons to include CareCredit assets are (and I
quote):

"CareCredit’s Web Site Tool Kit includes payment calculators, banners,
buttons, and sample website pages to help make it easy to include information
about financing on your practice web site. Promoting payment options on your
practice website not only remove cost concerns, but it also drives more
business to your practice.
Higher search engine rankings: by using this kit, your practice website will
naturally appear higher on sites like Google since CareCredit receives over
700,000 unique visitors a month."
Convinced? I am. But I'm gullible, too. <big grin>

On to "quick" response 3) Did not know about the darn Master Page. The
concept is great. The implementation of same needs polishing.

4) I will install the FireFox info as you outlined. Thanks for the warning
about default browser.
So I don't need to submit it to:
a.
http://www.geekestateblog.com/test-our-your-blog-or-website-in-50-different-browsers/
b. http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ ;
c.
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?service=websiteoptimizer; nor
d. http://www.addme.com/ ?
5) I so totally gave up on the 960 px format. Did as you suggested: 984.
6) I know the Pub truncates the length to fit.
7) I didn't know -- and still don't really have a feel for -- the size of
720 pxs. I have a feel for a 1,000 word essay -- not for a 720 pxs- length
chunk of info.
8) I've tried to use the guideline and ruler fxs in Pub'07. I remain
mystified about why the divisions don't show up evenly divided. By futzing,
I think I've managed to more-or-less hit the
"most-important-content-before-the-fold-line" rule. Although I've expended
at least 10 times the amount of time/energy doing so than if I could easily
manipulate the guidelines.
9) 'Content is King.' O, yes. However, what is too rudimentary and what is
too esoteric is up for interpretation. Hopefully I've come up with a syngery
of content that is valuable enough for viewers. Feedback welcome!
10) I still would like other useful functions. But first I will work on
what I've got.

Thank you very much. It may take a village to raise a child -- it also
takes a community for Karen to raise a website!

--
karen3b


"DavidF" wrote:

Karen3b,

Perhaps I did you a disservice when I gave you those resources, as you seem
to have gotten lost in the theory of web design, which is an open ended
subject. I looked up your post in November:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign/browse_thread/thread/aa4902dd501f9f69/1e7d1c73418dc62d?lnk=gst&q=webpagesthatsuck#1e7d1c73418dc62d

You were concerned in that post about keeping all the content of your pages
"above the fold" because that is what you had read somewhere. I
congratulated you on spending some time planning your site, and offered
those resources because you seemed interested in learning more about
webdesign theory. Unfortunately it sounds like you missed some of the more
important points I tried to make, and have spent your time overly concerned
with the theory.

The approach I take in this newsgroup is to first answer a poster's question
as best I can without judgment as to the merits of the question or the
motivation behind the question. Then I will sometimes add comments and
suggestions that are more judgmental and opinionated. In your case I
probably should have suggested that what was probably most important to
remember is that 'content is king'. I probably should have been more
emphatic and judgmental and said that yes, be sure to put your most
important information in the first few paragraphs, but don't worry about how
long a page is. If you get a viewer's attention in the first few paragraphs,
they will happily scroll down for more. It is not so important how long your
page is vs. how good the content is. Of course avoid being verbose as I tend
to be <grin>, but don't compulse about the length of your pages.

The other thing I should have stressed is my belief in the KISS principle.
Some of the 'best' sites I have seen are very simple in design. Some of the
worst are built by the 'professionals' where they incorporate all the newest
flash, bang and whiz to the point where the page takes 5 minutes to load,
and all the bells and whistles overwhelm the content of the site. Kind of
the forest for the trees sort of thing. That is why I like the
websitesthatsuck site. It reminded me to 'keep things simple stupid' as I
built my sites. It is also part of the reason I still use Publisher to build
my sites. It forces me to KISS.

That is my general advice to you now. Step back and put all that knowledge
you have obtained in perspective. You have figured out your content, how you
want to structure your site and navigate through it, so you are finished
with the hard part. The mechanics of putting it together with Publisher is
the easy part if you start off with KISS in mind. Get the basics built and
then add dynamic features *IF* they actually contribute the message you are
trying to communicate to the viewer. If they don't, leave them out. Just
because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. For example, I see
absolutely no reason to put a counter on a page. This contributes nothing to
the viewer's experience. You don't see it on any of the big, professional
sites do you? But this is a personal, biased opinion and to each there own.

I guess what I am trying to say in all of this is that there is no reason
you can't build your own site, and that perhaps your time would have been
better spent reading the posts to this newsgroup instead of reading and
studying webdesign theory. All the problems you are having, have been talked
about in probably the last month alone. So take a deep breath and let's deal
with some of the specific problems you are having.

Page size and length: If you insist upon a 960 pixel wide page, then so be
it. Or use the default 984 pixel width that Publisher offers in Pub 2007.
But *don't* worry about the length...leave it alone. This is an important
point you missed in the November discussion. Publisher 2007 will by design
automatically truncate the page after the last design element on the page
when you convert the publication to a web page. You will see this when you
do a web page preview that the page is only as long as your content. If your
content is a bit longer than 720 pixels then it will give you a page that is
a bit longer. If it is less then it will give you a shorter page. Once
again, focus on the content, not the final length of the page. If you don't
want the pages of your site to be much longer than 720 pixels, then either
change the content to fit that much space or when you get down that far on
the page, add a link to the next page for the rest of the content. Don't
create a future problem for yourself by designing your publication page
length only 720 pixels long. What if someday you decide that you really do
what to add more than 720 pixels worth of content? You would have to redo
your whole site.

If you started with one of the Publisher templates, create a new
publication. First open your current publication. Now go to File > New > Web
Sites. Now instead of choosing your template scroll to the bottom of the
that page to the blank sizes. I recommend since you want a wider page,
choose the 984 X 4608 blank pages. Create it. Now, if you really want a 960
pixel page, then in the left hand task column you will see under
'Publication Options' the option to change your page size. Click that button
and in the Page Setup dialog, you will see in the upper right side the width
and height. Put in 960 for the width, but leave the length alone.

Now that you have your blank page sized the way you want it, look again to
the task column under Publication Options and find 'Apply a template'. Click
it, and find your template. Select it, choose the navbar setup you want to
use, etc and click ok > Apply template to the current publication. Publisher
will scale all the template banners and such to fit your new custom width.
And now it is a matter of adding the same number of pages of your original
publication and copy and pasting your content from your old publication to
the new. If you had some specialized publisher template pages in your
original publication, once again go to the task column/bar and select 'Add
functionality...'. This will give you the option to add those specialized
template pages. It is important that you do not try to resize your current
publication as you will loose the ability to add that 'functionality', but I
won't get into that right now.

Now, had you read the posts in this group for the last few months you would
already know that you *should not* use a Master Page with a web publication!
Don't put anything on a Master page, and especially don't put the navbars.
They won't work correctly. So even if you have decide to try to repair your
current publication rather than create a new publication of the correct
size, drag all the content off the Master page into the gray scratch area
beside your page, switch back to the regular page view and drag the content
from the scratch area onto the main pages.

As to installing "assets", I am not 100% sure of what you mean, but I have
stated that if you want to add some other dynamic features be sure that you
really need them. Stat counters? Most web hosts already offer webstats and
you may not need to add others. Go to your host site and read what they
provide. Chances are they will be more than you can understand or need at
this point. Personally I would avoid the Google analytics at this point. A
number of people who post here on occasion have used them and highly
recommend them. However, when I view their sites the pages take an
abnormally long time to load because of what is happening in the background
to collect those stats. In my opinion the Google stats are less important
than a fast loading page, especially if your webhost already provides stats.
The important point here is to forget about installing "assets" that you
might not even need until you get the basic site up and running. You can
update it later.

Testing your site on various URLs: Once again, just keep it simple. Download
and install FireFox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ It is a
relatively small download and an easy installation, and as long as you
choose to opt out of making it your default browser, it should not create a
problem for you. Then when you want to test your site 'Publish to the Web'
and direct your web files to your local computer hard drive where you can
easily find them. I keep a test folder on my desktop for this purpose and
just publish to the folder. Then open that folder, find the index.htm file
or the other .htm files in the index_files folder, right click, open with,
FireFox. If you can get your site to look good and work well in both IE and
FF then it will also work in most other browsers. (You might want to read
one of the posts about the compatibility issues with IE8.)

Once again, remember to KISS. Forget about adding "assets" until you get the
basic page up and running and working correctly. Then you can go back and
add them if you really think they are necessary...or if you just wanna do
so. And if you have problems come back and we will help you. Just remember
that too many bells and whistles will just distract the viewer from the
content...

So this time I offered my opinion before answering your question. No, I do
not know anyone to refer you to. Just do it yourself...it really isn't
rocket science. You are making it more difficult than it need be. Good luck.

DavidF


"karen3b" <karen3b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:8CE16250-3155-490D-ACDF-5343CC9A339C@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
DavidF ~
You last gave me some resources with which to educate myself about how to
plan & design a website. I immersed myself in them & learned a lot.
(e.g.,
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/;http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/articles/80566.aspx;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HA100947601033.aspx;http://webdesignfromscratch.com/).
Excellent resources. Thanks again.

I now know lots more. I have all the content & the design done. I have
functional links within the webpage as well as to outside sites. I've
kept
text boxes from overlapping visuals/objects. Etc.

Hours later. No, months of days & hours later, I confess that the Master
Page has mastered me. [The final straw was when I lost the already-hot
horizontal navigation bar while I was trying to re-size the pages to 960 x
720.]

By now, I am also intimated by two profession-specific websites that
state
a webmaster should do the work necessary to install "assets" from their
websites. I haven't even tried.

Do you have referrals of folk that can finish my webpage in Pub 2007? I
already have a list, itemizing what needs to be added or tweaked. I even
have the urls listed for the assets, plus the urls for the download
instructions. Plus the urls for testing the website on different
browsers,
optimizing, and stat counters that also analyze traffic (all free, and
well-rated).

I really need the website up and running. I give up.
--
karen3b



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