[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

[Brian Bradley] “Can you recommend any good sites. Since I learn better by reading. Are the Orielly books good for beginners? “

not really because i don’t know how you learn. but seriously – type php and mysql into google and you’ll get back a million hits that teach you everything you want to know. you might respond better to some tutorials than others, but that’s hard for me to say.

as for the books – again, “beginner” is a loaded term. you referenced experience w/ action scripts. those can be insanely complex or very simple, so i can’t gauge your programming skills from what you’ve said here.

best recommendation – how to install both:

https://www.google.com/search?q=php+mysql+install

then start here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=php+mysql+tutorial

and if you aren’t finding yourself learning much, then take a look at the free preview of the o’reilly php/mysql book:

https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514013/preview.html

and see if that works for you…

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

it looks like your primary problem is that you have the divs that are parents to the menu absolutely positioned:

#apDiv1 {
position:absolute;
width:738px;
height:41px;
z-index:1;
left: 346px;
top: 276px;
clear: both;
float: none;
}

you can see the problem in action if, once you load the page, you resize your browser window horizontally. the content behind the menu centers itself as you go, but the menu stays fixed (due to the absolute positioning)…

no guaranteed fix, but i’d remove the position:absolute attribute (or make it position:relative – same thing) and then remove the top and left px position bits. that will get it back to living in the page beneath it, and then you can start to see what adjustments need to happen at that point…

hope that helps!

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

[April Hill] “1. Are there any resources (websites, tutorials, etc.) that you’d recommend I check out before embarking on this undertaking? “

hard to say w/o knowing your level of experience w/ photoshop and dreamweaver. total training is very good, but it might be too basic? wrt design tutorials – think of web design like video editing. you can learn every control, shortcut, tool, etc. in fcp, but if you don’t have the skill to do video editing, the knowledge is not very useful. web design isn’t much different. it’s something that you just have to practice at to get good at.

[April Hill] “2. My plan is use Photoshop and Dreamweaver again. Any red-flags for that plan, or other suggestions? “

if you aren’t comfortable getting into actual html, css and js scripting, then nope. that’s what you should use.

[April Hill] “3. I love the ‘handcrafted’ website look (brown paper, post-its, staples, scotch tape, push pins, corkboards, handwriting, doodles, etc.), and wondering if there are any websites you like that demonstrate this look, or websites that have handcrafted freebies? “

i’ve seen a lot over the years but i can’t recall any currently that do that look. see answer to #5 though for a resource. as for “handcrafted freebees” – try doing it yourself with a scanner – you can get great results by scanning a paper clip, a post-it note, etc – or try istockphoto.com for reasonably priced clip art.

[April Hill] “4. I used the slice method the first time around and have heard from some that that’s not the most efficient way of creating web pages. Recommendations for other paths to take? “

somebody else might have to take this one – i don’t use dreamweaver for design…. :-/

[April Hill] “5. Websites you like that display a range of website designs, just to get ideas from? “

a few:

https://www.coolhomepages.com/
https://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
https://www.csselite.com/
https://www.unmatchedstyle.com/

hope that helps…

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

an easy way for you to test this would be to create a simple php script that just created an empty file in a directory – then, use sleep() (https://us.php.net/sleep) and set it for a few seconds and then write another file – so like 1.txt, 2.txt, etc. – however many and however long you want to run the loop…

then call it via ajax in another page and leave that second page – you answer will come if you see the loop you set up finish and keep writing files even if you aren’t on the calling ajax page any longer…

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

not sure i follow – if their logo is on a bg image on their site and you crop it down, then you should be ok, but if the picture of the logo is copyrighted by somebody then it’s probably not.

(although the cropping thing is a bit messy and for the sake of your site, i’d try to get cleaner logos – asking a restaurant site’s webmaster for the biz logo because you want to give them free promotion on your site will probably not have too much resistance)

you don’t owe them anything resembling a link, however if you are listing local businesses, it would be more complete to give links to their sites so that visitors to your site get more out of it.

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

if their logo is online and in electronic format, you can use it with a reference to their business, and their contact info (address, phone, etc) is public domain info…

they might object if you took a picture of a logo on their storefront and tried to post it because of potential image quality issues, but even that wouldn’t be a legal issue so much as the restaurant themselves not liking the quality of the picture…

an example – on my company’s site, we have a press section that lists places that have done articles about us – we put the logo of the source along with the link, and that is completely within our rights to do so. the source, however, might not like it if we scanned a magazine cover or something and put that there instead…

hope that helps!

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello….

well – from the looks of it that is a very robust player so it would be relatively simple to set it up to use dynamic playlists if you have the knowledge on how to do so, but ya – if you are limited to a wysiwyg editor and that’s as far as you’ve gone in web development, you’ll likely find it to be quite a challenge, i’m afraid… :-/

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

well – the concept is that you (somewhere) have your playlists stored. so a simple example – let’s say you have 3 playlists:

– playlist 1: songs a, b and c
– playlist 2: songs d, e and f
– playlist 3: songs g, h and i

so you could make 3 pages (one for each playlist), or you could use a scripting language like php, asp or the likes and make one page that took a parameter and told it which playlist to play – so like:

mysite.com/player.php?pl=1

and then player.php would get the required playlist (from a source – see below) and put it as parameters in the media player and the media player would play those songs.

the missing info here is:

1. does your media player that you reference take parameters that you can render in the tag for it to tell it what to play? i assume it does somehow

2. how would you store your playlists – you can go fancy and use a database like mysql, or you could use flat text files with csv-esque data strings that your scripting language could read, or you could just make a page with an array of variables in php (or your preferred scripting language) that could be read – so like

$myPlaylists = array();
$myPlaylists[“1”][] = “song a”;
$myPlaylists[“1”][] = “song b”;
$myPlaylists[“1”][] = “song c”;

the above is basic php scripting, but it is something you’d have to get into a bit to pull this off, i’m afraid. i don’t know your level of experience in web programming, so i can’t say how feasible this would be for you…

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

a lot of information missing, but almost any media player will take parameters as to what to play, so it’s just a case of building a dynamic page that figures out what playlist to play (db or other variables somewhere) and then renders those as params to the media player…

sitruc

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

first bit of knowledge to pass along – java and javascript are 2 entirely different things:

https://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/javascript/article.php/3470971

as for your slide show, there are a lot of options – if you use flickr, this is a good one:

https://www.flickrshow.com/

or otherwise, search our archives (this topic comes up often) or you can browse through these:

https://www.google.com/search?q=javascript+slideshow

modifying any one of them to suit your needs would require knowledge of javascript, even with dreamweaver, i believe…

sitruc