Category Archives: Programming

New Host, and a new site.

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After a long time away from the Blog I have finally come back !!!

I have taken the plunge and gone for a reseller hosting package, this means that not only can I host Sarah’s Jewellery and lampworked Glass beads site www.sarahdownton.co.uk but I can now also host many other sites, as I seem to be getting into web design, I can now offer hosting as part of the design package.
Not only is Sarah’s site now all fully PHP and database driven, but also includes a blog (beadlog as Sarah likes to call it), which Sarah seems to be keeping more up to date than mine… Then again that’s not very hard is it.
I will shortly be taking over the hosting of the GBUK society web site.
I have great plans for this, including integrating the members forum, which is currently running on MSN, and perhaps adding member editable pages for them to put up their own pictures and information about themselves… There is so much that CAN be done, and yet so little time. (Hmmm.. That old chestnut, anybody got any spare time they can give me? )
Well I will try not to be away for so long next time…

Professional XHTML and CSS

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Well… had some time to recover from the course held by Eric Meyer on Professional CSS XHTML Techniques (It was a long day, up at 6:30 for a 9:00 start, finishing proper at 18:30, then talking in the bar for an hour or so, finally getting home at 21:30… Phew !!!)
It was certainly an interesting course, and it has definitely clarified several things for me… One of the things I was pleased about was the fact that, as I am pretty much self taught as far as CSS and XHTML are concerned, I have not got it all wrong. That’s got to be a good thing.
I will try to gather my thoughts for a more in-depth review… but then again if Peter is going to do that…. maybe I won’t bother !! Who knows…

Eric Meyer on Professional CSS XHTML Techniques

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Not posted for a while but I’m looking forward to going to Eric Meyer on Professional CSS XHTML Techniques – A One Day Workshop by Carson Workshops, focusing on CSS, XHTML and Accessibility
So I’d better go to bed as I have to be up at 6:30 tommorow morning, and I’m still here typing away…!!
I hope to get some nice nuggets out of this course, I hope so, as I need to do a presentation on what I’ve learnt at work when I return
I am going with Peter Westwood and I hope a good day will be had by all…!!
Well off to bed… night

SarahDownton.co.uk

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Right… a bit of an overhall on Sarah’s site tonight… new pictures for the “Spring Collection”, plus prety much every page was updated in some form or another.

I am looking into how I can make this all automatic. Hopefully we will shortly be moving over to a new host that supports PHP and mySQL so I can automate a lot of the boilerplate work, plus let Sarah add her own news items and pictures into a gallery (possibly Simple PHP Gallery) as they come up. Also thinking about maybe using word press so she can keep a blog on the site too… maybe I can even run the whole site off it… (I will have to see about that).

The best bit will be the automated gallery, as at the moment adding all the descriptions multiple times for the alt and title tags and the image title is a pain in the bum. Plus I have to create all the thumbnails by hand, and make sure all the thumbnails are linked to the correct images.

Ahhh well, now just got to work out a way to give her an admin interface that she can use easily, but is also powerfull enough to do what she wants.