Help me with my web site.

Aug 27, 2002
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I'm starting a local side business and need help with the legal jargon on my web site and make sure everything here will cover me from any copy right violations. The link to my web site is in my sig. also any html suggestions are welcome, I haven't written any HTML in over 6 years, and have forgotten an awful lot.

(keep in mind I'm serving this web site from a server at my house, so my pages data size has to be as small as possible to keep my internet pipe from being hammered to hard)
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
14,993
1
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Flashing text, not to mention flashing bright yellow text on a white background (edit: oops, didn't wait for the bg to load... your flashing text is still ugly, however), is worse than anything else (except maybe seizure-inducing Macromedia Flash ads and recurring popups and unders).

I don't really understand what you mean by legal notice. I usually put something brief, like "Copyright (c) 2004 jliechty" or if you're feeling eloquent, something longer like "All text and images on this site, unless otherwise noted, are copyright (c) 2004 Your Name. Reproduction without written permission prohibited" (or some other legalese-sounding nonsense like that). As was pointed out in a thread earlier, the copyright's yours the moment you create it, but it's harder to enforce if you don't have it registered. I've never bothered to register a website, but if I were into commercial photography and was going to put a gallery on my site, I would be certain that I registered the images therein.

Oh, now that the background loaded and I can see your text, I understand a bit more about the legal notice... Why not look at what some photo labs use for their legal notices (don't rip them off directly, of course, but use them for ideas). For an example, try going to the Services page here and clicking on the Disclaimer at the bottom.
 

FleshLight

Diamond Member
Mar 18, 2004
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<body bgcolor="#204967"> instead of <body background="somecolor.gif">...Loads much faster :)
 
Aug 27, 2002
10,043
2
0
Originally posted by: FleshLight
<body bgcolor="#204967"> instead of <body background="somecolor.gif">...Loads much faster :)

did that.....did it seem to help with the page loading?

didn't notice the blinking text, it doesn't show up on any of my browsers, took blink off anyway for those that it works on since it seems to be ugly.

what I meant by legal jargon help, was not about copyrighting the page itself, but making sure everything had in my legal notices at the bottom would cover my butt as far as legal disclaimers. Thanks for the link to the other site that does this too, I didn't even think to search the web and see what others doing the same thing had for disclaimers :Q (shoulda been the first thing I did)

Think I should put the legal jargon on a seperate page and link to it?
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
14,993
1
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Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
Originally posted by: FleshLight
<body bgcolor="#204967"> instead of <body background="somecolor.gif">...Loads much faster :)
did that.....did it seem to help with the page loading?
Yes, definitely. As you learn more HTML and some CSS, you will be able to make your page cleaner and better organized - something I definitely recommend doing when you have the time.
Think I should put the legal jargon on a seperate page and link to it?
It depends. If are doing basically your whole site on a single page, then no; but, if you are going to put other things in pages under your main page, then the legal disclaimer (please call it that - "jargon" or "legalese" doesn't sound very good) would work well on a subpage also.
 

Iron Woode

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 10, 1999
31,277
12,791
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Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
I'm starting a local side business and need help with the legal jargon on my web site and make sure everything here will cover me from any copy right violations. The link to my web site is in my sig. also any html suggestions are welcome, I haven't written any HTML in over 6 years, and have forgotten an awful lot.

(keep in mind I'm serving this web site from a server at my house, so my pages data size has to be as small as possible to keep my internet pipe from being hammered to hard)
Your site is too cluttered. It needs order.

I think some experimenting with tables (nested) would work wonders.

The easy thing to do is look for some free web templates and modd as necessary.
 
Aug 27, 2002
10,043
2
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Yes, definitely. As you learn more HTML and some CSS, you will be able to make your page cleaner and better organized - something I definitely recommend doing when you have the time.
That's my plan, I simply wanted the legal notices information for now, but keep any/all ideas for cleaning up the look of the page coming, (I don't even know what CSS is) I did this page as I thought of the information that needed to be there came to me, I plan on organizing it better as I learn (or re-learn) html.

Thanks for the tip in changing it to disclaimer from jargon, I hate anything to do with lawyers talk, much of it is in greek to me, but if you can't make sure your legal stuff is there one could get into pain in the @ss law suits.
Your site is too cluttered. It needs order.

I think some experimenting with tables (nested) would work wonders.
worked on that a little, will keep at it later this weekend.
The easy thing to do is look for some free web templates and modd as necessary.
I tried using the front page templates when I started this, they had way too much code in it for me to sift through and modify. (considering I have to re-learn the html to figure out what some of it meant made it even worse)
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
14,993
1
0
Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
(I don't even know what CSS is)
CSS == Cascading Style Sheets

It's an easy way to format a page (or a group of pages at once). You make a file called the "style sheet" (e.g. styles.css), put your style information in it, then link every one of the pages in your site to it. Presto, consistent color (and optionally positioning, if you so choose) from one page to the next. Changing a formatting option on all pages is as easy as making one change in the file. Once you learn it (and it's pretty simple, IMHO), you'll love it (except for the browser incompatibilities, especially in the positioning and some of the other advanced stuff).

Here's a sample so you can see it's not something really complex or awkward:
body { background-color: #222299; // This is a comment, C++ style
color: #FFFFFF; }

p { text-indent: 1.5em; } // the em is a relative scale unit that works well for sizing things related to text

a { background-color: #222299;
color: #FFFFFF; }

a:hover { background-color: #229922; // links can change colors and stuff on mouseover w/o javascript
color: #FFFFFF; }
See, it's not that bad. A style basically works like this, ignoring the weird stuff and special cases: you have the selector, which typically includes the HTML element that you want it to point to, and possibly a class or ID which you'll learn about later when you read websites with info on CSS, then some curly brackets to define what goes with that selector. Inside there you put your properties with colons after them, followed by the values, followed by a semicolon at the end of the line. The syntax looks confusing at first, but if you've done any programming at all you'll pick it up right away (and even if you've not done any programming, it will make sense before long).

Have fun, and here's a page to get you started. :)
 

Twista

Diamond Member
Jun 19, 2003
9,646
1
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(keep in mind I'm serving this web site from a server at my house, so my pages data size has to be as small as possible to keep my internet pipe from being hammered to hard)
Mistake #1, you posted on anandtech.
 
Aug 27, 2002
10,043
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thanks J, I've been using the w3schools site to get re-aquanted with this, the last time I ran any code was in college and it's changed a little since then. (if I remember right we where still using 3.2 back then.) the only programing I had was basic and borland C++ for beginers (I'm a pc and robotics field engineer I never use this stuff)
edit: laughs at Twista :laugh: I know, I figured wouldn't be a whole lot of people here interested in my little site.
 

WannaFly

Platinum Member
Jan 14, 2003
2,811
1
0
Originally posted by: FleshLight
<body bgcolor="#204967"> instead of <body background="somecolor.gif">...Loads much faster :)
bad advice....#2049678 isnt a websafe color, therefor for that specific color it would be better as a gif/jpg
 
Aug 27, 2002
10,043
2
0
Originally posted by: WannaFly
Originally posted by: FleshLight
<body bgcolor="#204967"> instead of <body background="somecolor.gif">...Loads much faster :)
bad advice....#2049678 isnt a websafe color, therefor for that specific color it would be better as a gif/jpg
eh? why isn't it websafe? it let me select it from the frontpage grid.
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
14,993
1
0
Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
Originally posted by: WannaFly
Originally posted by: FleshLight
<body bgcolor="#204967"> instead of <body background="somecolor.gif">...Loads much faster :)
bad advice....#2049678 isnt a websafe color, therefor for that specific color it would be better as a gif/jpg
eh? why isn't it websafe? it let me select it from the frontpage grid.
He's thinking of back in the day when you had to worry about people with 256 color screens. When I design sites nowadays, I make sure that all major areas of color (text and solid backgrounds, basically) are websafe, but button backgrounds, logos, titles, etc. I don't worry about. Times have moved on, if you're still running 256 colors then you need to upgrade to a new computer with something newer than Netscape 4.x ;)

However, I still think it's wise not to make any fixed-width sites that won't fit in an 800px browser (AnandTech is a major offender), because a lot of us who use 1280x960 or 1600x1200 never maximize our browsers.
 

Iron Woode

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 10, 1999
31,277
12,791
136
Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
Yes, definitely. As you learn more HTML and some CSS, you will be able to make your page cleaner and better organized - something I definitely recommend doing when you have the time.
That's my plan, I simply wanted the legal notices information for now, but keep any/all ideas for cleaning up the look of the page coming, (I don't even know what CSS is) I did this page as I thought of the information that needed to be there came to me, I plan on organizing it better as I learn (or re-learn) html.

Thanks for the tip in changing it to disclaimer from jargon, I hate anything to do with lawyers talk, much of it is in greek to me, but if you can't make sure your legal stuff is there one could get into pain in the @ss law suits.
Your site is too cluttered. It needs order.

I think some experimenting with tables (nested) would work wonders.
worked on that a little, will keep at it later this weekend.
The easy thing to do is look for some free web templates and modd as necessary.
I tried using the front page templates when I started this, they had way too much code in it for me to sift through and modify. (considering I have to re-learn the html to figure out what some of it meant made it even worse)
Ugh! Front Page is not good.

I use DreamWeaver MX, but I realize that may be out of your price league. There are ways around that you know. ;)

Any way, the free templates websites I talked about are:

http://www.freelayouts.com/

http://www.4layouts.com/index.php
 
Aug 27, 2002
10,043
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I got the SBS 2003 platinum package, front page is what came with it, the last time I did any html was with the p.o.s. navigator 3.0 gold tools. Thanks for the links, I like to do things myself (for the learning process), but I'll check them out anyway, after I figure out enough to be satisfied with myself I may opt to use a template anyway.