Using forms on a Yahoo web site

Hi George Peirson,
I bought "How to Gurus" DVD training for Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and I have
been learning a lot from them. Thank you for you good job.
I have a question about forms. I didn't't find answer from Yahoo about
what kind of script I can use to my e-mail form. They said, "I am sorry but
Yahoo! Web Hosting does not provide assistance for advanced PHP, Perl
scripts." Perhaps I didn't't make my self clear to them, but I follow your
advise in the DVD to find how they deal with forms. I would like to know
if you can help me about this.
Thank you very much,
C.S.


Hi C.S., Yahoo uses their own system for such things as email forms.

Here is where I found it in our Yahoo website (could be slightly different
for you depending on the Yahoo service you purchased):

Go to your Web Hosting Control Panel
Click on the Create & Update tab
In the Add-Ons section you should see Visitor Feedback Tools.
One of the Visitor Feedback Tools is Email Forms
Use either their Sample Email Form 1 or Sample Email Form 2 to add a form to
your web page
You can then use one of their web tools, like PageBuilder, or you can
use Dreamweaver to modify the form by adding or deleting form fields.
If you use Dreamweaver you will need to set up Dreamweaver to access your
Yahoo account.
By using one of the Sample Forms you will get the correct coding to run the
form on your web site, then just edit the form as needed.
The form software is built into the Yahoo server, so you don't need to worry
about that.

George

Q. Do the so called "gurus" who advertise systems that can give you a guarnateed #1 Google position in 1-3 months really work, or are these just bs?

A.
It takes at least 6 months to even show up on Google, usually a year or more to get a good position using all of the tricks. I have never seen a site go to #1 in Google in 1-3 months. Their are some services who advertise fast listing, one to try is ineedhits.com.

As far as what works in my experience:

Most important is your email list, we get most of our email addresses from sales on eBay, Amazon, and our other outlets. With an email list you can do some direct marketing. But even with that our email campaigns are just bonus income, they never come close to the income we get from our regular sales outlets.

Articles are very successful on helping your Google position. But they need to be well written and you need to submit them all over the place. I write several articles a year and submit them to about 20 article distributing sites. The way these work is if the article is interesting enough people will put the article on their site and with the link back to your site at the end of the article it will create those needed back links.

What I have found more successful though is using internal links and making sure you use the correct alt tags in your document. Google seemed to like internal links as much as external links. But, I say seemed to since Google changed their algorithm at the beginning of the year and it is back to square one on figuring out what is going to work this year. Last year I had the #1 position for the search term Photoshop Tutorial Training, our web site home page was optimized for that. As soon as Google did their algorithm update (in the industry called the Google Dance as all the listings shift around) our page position dropped to #20 (bottom of second page). So it looks like the internal links and alt tags are no longer working this year.

Best tricks:

Make sure the code on your site is up to date with good quality content.
Use this service to optimize your site for Google: http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/ This is the best tool on the market for optimizing your site. What it does is deeply analyse your site compared to the top 5 positions on Google, then gives you a list of recommendations. Up to you to do the actual optimizing.

Write articles and submit them to these main sites:
iSnare.com
ArticleDashboard.com
Ezinearticles.com
GoArticles.com
You can find more by doing a Google search for Article Submission Service or similar search term.

Only optimize for one keyword or keyword set on a page. It is extremely difficult to optimize for more than one keyword set.

Take a very careful look at the sites that are at positions 1-5, whatever they are doing is working. This means carefully examining their content at the code level (Google robots look at the code, not at the page visually). (Use the tool listed above)

Keep in mind that everyone is trying for that #1 position, so it is a race that never ends, no way to guarantee that #1 position (unless you optimize for a keyword no one has thought of, but then again if no one thought of it no one would search for it either).

Don't try to go for #1 position on extreamly popular keywords, I would never try to get #1 position on the keyword "photoshop". Too much work competing against companies like Adobe who have who teams of people who do nothing else but work on their Google position.
Google likes sites that have been around for a while, so get your site up immediately to get the clock started. Sites that have been on Google for a few years will always get a boost in position.
Keep in mind that there are thousands of people trying to do the same thing you are doing, so you need to do it better. If everyone used the same info from the same marketing gurus and aimed at the same keyword, there would still only be one #1 spot on Google. So whatever you do you have to do it better than your competitors.

The more of an exclusive niche you can aim at the better your chances. For me it is much easier to get a good placement for "photoshop tutorial training" than it is to even get listed for "photoshop". And of course Google changes things every year. Last year we had the #1 position for this term, this January we are back to #20 (back to a new round of page optimization).

With all that said, who knows you may get lucky.

Hope all this helps.

On Using DIV tag layers

"What my instructor had me do for that graphic placement issue in DW was just create a new CSS rule and create a DIV tag called #wrapper. Then I just positioned the graphic where I wanted it."

Response:

Using a DIV tag (creating a floating layer) works fine. If you follow my previous email you will see that the layer will be positioned above the background image, so that any image you place into the layer will appear on top of the background image.

The CSS rule is so that you can easily update the layer formatting in the future and the #wrapper is just a label for the layer (DIV tag). You can call the layer anything you want, if you don't name the layer then Dreamweaver will simply apply a number to the layer. The label allows you to easily find the coding for the layer and also allows you to refer to the layer in your code (for instance if you want to make a button that will hide or show the layer you would need a label for it). Personally I would have picked a name that exactly matched the image contents, so if the layer contained my logo I would call it something like this: #_logo_layer (the _ symbol is just being used as a spacer to make the name easier to read, you can't use spaces in label names so the _ character is a good alternative, I could also have used - but I prefer the underscore like this _ ).

If you look at the coding for the DIV tag (near the top of your code) you will first see the wrapper section (following the name that you gave the DIV tag), you will also see the x and y positions (measured from the top left corner of the page), whether the layer is relative or absolute (if it floats or is locked into a specific position relative to the upper left corner of the page) and you will also see a number for z-index. The z-index is the stacking order of the layer on the page. The larger the number the higher up in the stack the layer will be (like a deck of cards). Most likely your layer is showing a z-index of either 0 or 1. As you create more layers on the page Dreamweaver will give them a new z-index position above the previous layer. So if your original layer was z-index=1 then the next layer will be z-index=2. If you need to rearrange the order that the layers are on the page simply adjust the z-index number. Again think of the layers like a deck of cards numbered 1 at the bottom of the deck, changing the number on the card will change its position in the deck.

George

Images and Background Images in Dreamweaver

"With my form project I am having difficulty placing a saved graphic created in PS into/on top of a background image I also altered in PS and saved for Web and Devices and used this graphic as a backgrond under my body DIV TAG(not a Pseudo-Tag)."

Here are some basic ideas on the background image. When you put a background image into a web page it is inserted in the opening body tag, everything else on the page comes after that tag. You can only have one image in the body tag, so you can't put a logo graphic on top of a background image in the body tag. What you need to do is to create a table or other container right after the opening body tag, put your graphic in that container and center that container on the page. That will give you the effect you are looking for by placing the graphic in front of the background image. If you use a table you can go even further as your table can also contain a background image and then have graphic placed into a cel in the table.

So, think of it as a stack of pictures on a table. The background image is the bottom of the stack, the table is then placed on top of the background image. If you put a background image into the table that image will be on top of the page background image as well since it is in the table. You can then put an image into a table cell and that image would be on top of the table background, which is on top of the page background. You can go even further by using layer elements (DIV tags), these float above the page. You can use as many DIV tags as you like and they will also stack (like a stack of cards) depending on the number you give the tag. This is all explained more thoroughly in our Dreamweaver CS3 training.

Can I add Video to a Web Page using Fireworks?

On adding video to a web page using Fireworks, you can't do that. Fireworks is designed to create graphics for web pages, it is not designed to create actual web pages. Fireworks assumes that you will be interfacing with Dreamweaver to create the actual web page, so you will need to place any multimedia using Dreamweaver.

But, you can use Fireworks to lay out the page so that it is ready to accept video in Dreamweaver. What you need to do to make sure that your layout is not affected is to put in a placeholder image using Fireworks that is the same size as the video you want to insert using Dreamweaver, that will create a properly sized place for the video to go. Then simply replace the placeholder image with the video in Dreamweaver. If you open the Fireworks Help file and do a search for Video you will get step by step instructions on putting in a placeholder image.

Fixing palette and menu locations in Dreamweaver 8

Hi George:

I did something to dreamweaver and lost the side panel and properties director.

These things came up automatically. Also, when I did this, I could not expand the page to the side to see the files, css etc. Nor, Can I expand the file downwards.

Could you please let me know how to make this correction.

Try this. Go to the Window menu,

Scroll down towards the bottom

You will see Workspace Layout

Clicking on that will open up a flyout menu

Click on Designer in the flyout menu, that is the default for Dreamweaver

That should put everything back to the normal setting.

George

Some thoughts on Computer Monitors

"Hi George,

I'm starting to look for a new computer monitor that will be used primarily for Photoshop editing etc. There are a number of 20" to 22" inch widescreen LCD monitors in the under $300.00 range - however, I'm not sure if widescreen systems are the best choice for digital editing. I noticed some of the specs describe 1680 x 1050 resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The small print in the specs also say if you use a resolution other than the recommended one, you may see degradation or other visual artifacts.

Any tips on what I should look for in a monitor or suggestions on specific models that you might have experience with would be greatly appreciated." ....

No specific recommendations, but I do have some general ones. First off, if you are looking for exacting color accuracy then you should be looking at a CRT and not an LCD. Most people don't need exact color match, but if you are working in the printing industry then this could be a consideration (designing magazine ads for instance). Any design work for the web or digital output (CDs, DVDs) really doesn't need the high color accuracy of a CRT, since you have no control over what monitor the image will be viewed on. Differences in viewing monitors will be much larger than any color inaccuracy in an LCD.

The more expensive the LCD, generally the better the color accuracy. I do all of my design work using a CRT, but I have an LCD as a second monitor on my system.

As far as screen resolution goes, it really doesn't matter. Basically the larger the resolution the smaller the images will appear on the screen, so with a large screen you can go for a large resolution. A smaller screen would require a smaller resolution so that the images (icons, text, etc.) would not get too small to be useful. Most CRTs can change resolution with no loss of quality. Most LCDs are limited to a small number of resolution settings and many are limited to one recommended setting. Changing resolutions on an LCD can cause a significant loss of quality, so you should stick with the recommended setting. A wide screen useful in a few cases: you can see a larger desktop on your computer (like taking a normal screen and stretching it out sideways to show more of the desktop). This would allow you to have more room on your screen to work with, which can be useful if you are creating wide images, like 2 page magazine spreads. Of course a wide screen will also show wide screen DVD movies more accurately, so if you plan on watching movies on your computer a widescreen LCD would be a good choice. Also if you are planning on editing video, then the same advantage applies. Most print design work is vertical so a wide screen would not be an advantage there. Basically with a wide screen you can have your program opened up normally and still have some space off to the side to show more stuff. But aside from that there is no real design advantage to having a wide screen.

As far as specific models, go with a well known name brand, my personal preference is for IBM and NEC but there are lots of other good name brands out there. Don't get a budget monitor, you will get what you pay for. There are many areas in the computer world where price and quality don't really matter, but Monitors are one of the few areas where it is worth spending a little more for better quality.

George