website cosmetics aide needed

[bengasman]

My website has suffered a bit of damage during the move from one host ( sitesell, horrible club )to the other ( United Hosing, so far so good ).

http://www.boiler-breakdown-repair-london.co.uk/index.html


Do you know any forums where I can ask some basic questions on web design? I want to add two pages over the bank holiday weekend, but I don't know how to create them as second tier pages under the index page.

I also need to find somebody who can tell me how to "repair" the visual damage caused by the host change over. The image file that contained the "buttons" on the side bar menu could not be found, and it looks a mess.

Should be easy enough to do ( I hope ) with a few pointers; gives me something to do during the quiet days.

Have a good weekend,

Ben

 

[WoodYouLike]

What program (on your pc) were you using to create the site in the first place?

 

[bengasman]

It was created by the "in-house" software of the host; Canadian company called Sitesell. They turned out to be a completely useless bunch of sales sharks. Every question I ever asked got answered by suggesting I should either buy a Sitesell course, or a Sitesell support service.

I tend to use Page breeze to alter things by editing ( and largely removing pointless crap ) existing stuff.

I have not decided what I will use for creating the rest. I have seen good results from the free MS program. Don't like Front Page, and Dreamweaver is too expensive for what it offers.

 

[WoodYouLike]

Then I suggest you use the MS program, download your existing site to this and take your time changing the lay-out.

Is not really difficult, specially if you work with tables. Do make a copy of everything first (trial and error, you know ) It's IMHO the best way to get to grips with a program.

 

[bengasman]

Yes, I was thinking along those lines, but it will take a lot of experimenting.
Hence my request for recommendations of forums like diynot, but then for webdesign as I expect to find a number of hurdles to overcome.

 

[WoodYouLike]

Got two for you:
statcounter forum
and
The Techie table on the Kasflow forum

 

[gralien]

The changes you want to make are pretty simple. Depending on how your site is made you could probably pretty much create a new page by copy and pasting an existing page and editing it to your needs.

The broken images are probably linking to the wrong place. The site is looking for them in a folder called /imgs/ Check that exists and that all the pictures are in there. It's possible when you moved from hosts you didn't move all the images over.

Best of luck and like already said, make a backup first. Personally I edit pages by hand coding but Dreamweaver is considered about the best graphical editor. You could probably download a trial of it for free.

 

[Monkeh]

This would be a good place to start for cleaning up your site: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=h...(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0

 

[bengasman]

The changes you want to make are pretty simple. Depending on how your site is made you could probably pretty much create a new page by copy and pasting an existing page and editing it to your needs.

That is the problem: it was made with an in-house editor from Sitesell (the previous host ) and I could not take it with me.
Like everything else, it is simple if you know how to do it; I don't.

The broken images are probably linking to the wrong place. The site is looking for them in a folder called /imgs/ Check that exists and that all the pictures are in there. It's possible when you moved from hosts you didn't move all the images over.

The images are on the previous server, I can't get them

Best of luck and like already said, make a backup first. Personally I edit pages by hand coding but Dreamweaver is considered about the best graphical editor. You could probably download a trial of it for free.

Dreamweaver is not bad, but not in the budget.
I am using Pagebreeze which works quite well. Also still trying to find out what the editor from MS is called; I've seen nice results from it and very odd for MS, it's free.

 

[Monkeh]

Also still trying to find out what the editor from MS is called; I've seen nice results from it and very odd for MS, it's free.

Notepad.

 

[bengasman]

Very funny.

 

[Monkeh]

Very funny.

No, really.

But if you want WYSIWYG, http://www.microsoft.com/express/Windows/

 

[WoodYouLike]

You can even make webpages in Word - using tables etc. That's how I learned it years ago before switching to FrontPage and then to Dreamweaver.
Other option, much simpler, is to make a web site on a blog platform - Typepad is IMHO the most simple one that contains loads of features.

 

[bengasman]

You can even make webpages in Word - using tables etc.

You can make a website in notepad: it is nothing more than a lot of ascii saved with a html suffix.

But the question is: how do I repair visual damage caused by changing to a different hosting system?

 

[Monkeh]

You can even make webpages in Word - using tables etc.

You can make a website in notepad: it is nothing more than a lot of ascii saved with a html suffix.

But the question is: how do I repair visual damage caused by changing to a different hosting system?

You'll need to find or make new images, or redesign the site not to need them.

And please, don't use ASCII.