Hosting Services

Here are some links to the hosting services that class members are using. Remember, there are many many options, go with what you need along with recommendations from happy customers. See the previous post for links and more detailed information concerning hosting companies.

Doteasy
Blue Host
Pair
Lunarpages

Embedding and PLaying MPs Audio Files

Here are some ideas:

Build A Simple MP3 Player
Odeo Player
Add Voice to Your Site
Embedding Sound - A Primer

Where Can I Put My Pages????

Hosting Companies
The questions you need to ask before you decide on a hosting company are 1/ What are your needs? 2/ How much do you want to pay?
Each "plan" has a range of options, including scripting options, databases, photoblogs, slideshows, easy, visual, methods of updating and managing your site, and more. Some plans are free, but usually contain limitations (such as registration of domain name with the company)


Sending Completed Pages to the Server (FTP)

Anchor Tags / Links

What is a Link?
Links are links because they are wrapped inside anchor tags. These can be text or images. The links can go to other pages in your website, or to outside or external pages (other web sites).

Link Styles (Using CSS):
If you do not set a specific style for your links, the links will appear as the browser's default link settings. You can override this by setting your link styles using the Page Properties panel in Dreamweaver - which then applies to ALL links on your page, or by using style sheets, which you can apply to different types of links on each page.

Creating Links in Dreamweaver

• Create the pages you wish to link to, and make sure they are saved to your website folder.
• On your web page, highlight the text you want to link to another page.
• In the Properties Inspector fill in the Link box with the URL you want to point to. You can either point to links on your current site or put full URLs into the box to point to pages on other sites. Use the browse icon to find the local file in your website folder that you want to link to.
  

Swap Images or Image Rollovers

Rollovers are when you mouseover an image and it changes to another image. They are often used in navigation, and are easy to put together in Dreamweaver. Before you begin, you need to create 2 states of your image, the OFF state (before the user mouses over it) and the ON state, when the user mouses over the image (before clicking the link).
If you create your rollovers in Photoshop using 2 layers you can easily line up the images to be certain they will not shift when the user moves form one state to the next.
I will demonstrate how to do this in class, and I have also provided several links that give instructions and examples for different techniques. These examples all use Dreamweaver.

How To:
Make Disjointed Rollovers
Create Rollover Images
Dreamweaver Behaviours

Wednesday July 25th - Image Processing

Today's demonstration will explain how images can be processed in Photoshop and how they should be saved for the web. The file formats used in web pages are JPEG and GIF.

We will be using Photoshop to process our images and use the Save For Web command to save the image files as a jpg or a gif. Important considerations are file size (both file weight and the file dimensions), and sharpness, especially when reducing images from very large sizes. File resolution should be set to 72 pixels per inch when working, which is the monitor display. That also insures you are working at a 1:1 or 100% image display and the size will be the same when it is displayed in your browser.

Please take a look at the links I have provided for further examples and more detailed explanations.

Hosting Your Site & Domain Names

Internet Service Provider (ISP)
ISP's give you a means of connecting to the internet (dsl, cable or dialup service) with your computer. Depending upon your needs, they offer a range of services at a range of prices. In addition, ISP's may offer services such as web hosting domain name purchases.
For a complete definition see the Wikipedia entry.


Internet Hosting Service
This service runs web servers that host web sites. A common kind of hosting is web hosting. Most hosting providers offer a combined variety of services. Web hosting services also offer e-mail hosting service, for example. DNS hosting service is usually bundled with domain name registration
For a complete definition see the Wikipedia entry.