Web Design Software

[richyb66]

Ok time to get your anoraks on.

 

I'm looking for some recommendations for web design software. I've got my own dot com website that's basically a load of photos of the work I'm doing renovating my house, it's a load of thumbnails with captions and when you click on the thumbnail it opens up a bigger picture all pretty basic stuff.

 

Currently I use Yahoo pagebuilder, as Yahoo hosts the site, but it's all a bit slow uploading the pictures and especially compiling the pages (which seems to fall over regularly) so I'm looking for something that's a but quicker. I use ftp to upload the images so that side of things is probably as good as it's going to get but what I want is some software that allows me to create a page of say 20 thumbnails and then ideally create multiple copies of the page that I can then re-point to the other images and then just ftp the files to the server (hope that makes sense).

 

At the moment I've got about 700 photos I want to upload so I'm looking at a good few pages worth. I know I can use image hosting sites but I really want to host them myself so it's not full of free ad's or other stuff that's not relevant. The current site is at www.oldschoolannexe.com if you want to see the current format and you'll also see I've started to create some archive pages but it was all a bit slow and I started to get bored with doing it.

 

I don't mind buying the software if it's something that will do what I want more easily and I'm not short of bandwidth or disc space on the host server.

 

Anyone got any suggestions - all ideas welcome.

 

Thanks

 

Richard.

[Mat-Moo]

Rather than web deisgn software, you might want to look at the problem form another angle, what I mean is have picture showing software on the site that will show whatever you upload. E.G. http://www.zirkon.at/zirkon/scripts/yappa-...g_main_eng.html - Basically if your webhost supports php, you basically upload this script (you can customise the templates as well if you want), then simply upload pictures into logical folders structure which is how the site will show it. There are quite a few free scripts like this, so worth a look!

 

The beauty is once the site is up there is no more modifications, everything can be done online, inclduing uploading photos if you want (although I use my own Image Sizer/Batch sizer to resize/rotate and upload)

[Guest macca]

I used microsoft front page for the build site, just create a new page, insert the 20 photos, then tell each one to be a thumb nail. This automatically created the smaller thumb nail images. I create a link to the new page from the index and ftp the lot to the server.

 

simple as that.

[richyb66]

Righty-ho, I've used yappa-ng to reconfigure the image files and create a series of albums. Aside from a few teething problems like accidently deleting the image files for the icons, it seesm to work pretty much how I wanted. The only thing I can't seem to do is edit the text in the main body of the home page - I'd like to put my own welcome message and into on it - any ideas what to do?

 

Thanks for the suggestions - I knew the solution would be out there somewhere.

[Mat-Moo]

Copy the "install/news_eng.html" file in to the install folder of Yappa. You can then edit that to display whatever you want...

[richyb66]

Wadda you know - it worked!

 

Thanks.

[richyb66]

Or so I thought!!!! Front page looked like this www.oldschoolannexe.com/photos - so I deleted the images from the 4 pages of the album. This got rid of the images but also actually deleted the image files, however I could then see my news_eng.html on the front page - which was nice.

 

Simple solution I thought - just ftp the image files back to the server, which has promply returned 4 pages of unwanted images on my frontpage, Doh!

 

I've had a read through the MANUAL documentation but I'm none the wiser, I edited my news pags and re-submitted it but it hasn't had any effect. Am I missing something really obvious, or is it not that simple?

 

Having got a few albums loaded I seem to be almost there but not quite. Quite looking forward to having to post a request for help related to the Hood.

[richyb66]

Well after a load more fiddling and fannying around I've done a complete re-install of yappa-ng but I'm still stuck with no news page on the front page a still a load of icon thumbnails displayed instead. My albums work a treat and aside from the aforementioned problem it does exactly what I want.

 

I copied the news_eng.html file from the install folder to the main folder ( /photos - basically moved up one level) but it's not made any difference. I've re-run the setup utility and again no difference. I beginning to wonder if there's some other setting I'm missing here which makes it display the news file.

 

I also read in the manual the bit about modifying the file -

 

"You have to delete the complete HTML-header / starting HTML-tags: Beginning with the ,

inclusive !

Do the same at the end of the file and ."

 

but suprisingly this makes no difference either.

 

I'm reluctant to try another complete re-install just on the off chance it works when in all probability I'm just missing the obvious.

 

www.oldschoolannexe.com/photos shows what I'm currently getting - I don't want the "No Album" bit or the icon thumbnails - just a welcome message.

 

Currently finding some consolation the the problems getting the website how I want it pale into insignificance compared to what I have to deal with working on the house (or the hood for that matter)!

[richyb66]

Sorted now!

 

I knew it would be something obvious, I put my album data in an existing folder called images (well you would wouldn't you?) which was causing the problem. Moved them into their own unique folder and hey-presto it runs a treat.

[Mat-Moo]

Lol, sorry Rich was going to look at this and forgot for you You know you can add captions/almbum comments for each seperate one as well.