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Lee

12-10-2006, 02:12 AM

I have been taking a long objective look at my web site (http://www.oldairplanepictures.com)and I don't like it.

Several people have looked at it and the only comment was that the pictures were too small to show much detail. I think the rest of the people were just being nice.

Here is what I see: The header I made looks very unprofessional and the home page looks cluttered and way too busy. I also feel the home page is too wordy (I don't know if that is a word). I used a shopping cart program to make the site and it looks like a catalog with thumnails and places to click for more details.

My solution is to make a new web site. I have been working on it for a few weeks and it is far from being complete. If you want to take a look to see what I have done so far here is the link to the test site (http://testsite2.adattic.com).

Once all the 250+ photographs have been added along with descriptions the site will be finished. I know that people and search engines like web sites that are constantly changing. This is what I was thinking, that I would do, was add some sort of a Blog so I could highlight one of the photographs each week or so and people could respond to the photograph with their thoughts and stories. I know absoulitely nothing about blogs so I was wondering if any of the blogs in Fantastico was better for this than another? Also, over a period of time the home page is going to get really, really long. How do bloggers handle this?

Any comments on my new web site would be really appreciated.

Thanks,

Lee

classixuk

12-10-2006, 03:48 AM

Hi Lee,

I took a look at your old and new website and here's some suggestions:

Your old website
The first thing I noticed is that the site uses frames. That's a bad idea if you ever want the content to be properly indexed by the search engines. Frames were all the rage in web design a few years back, but you very rarely see them used nowadays for the reason I have already given.

I'm not sure which software you are using to make your website but a lot of the HTML code is already deprecated (marked for deletion), and so it's a good thing you're changing your site now. Take this for example:
<p><font size="2">I want to mention here the extreme help I had in identifying the aircraft by their BuNos, from <a href="http://home.att.net/%7Ejbaugher/">Joseph F. Baugher's home page</a>.  He has compiled the lists of Bureau Numbers and Serial Numbers for the aircraft of the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Army Air Corps, and Air Force.</font></p>
You should be defining the font sizes in your CSS sheet, and then styling your fonts via CSS. Most modern WYSIWYG webpage builders will automatically code up a CSS file for you as you design your site if you don't want to learn the hard code.

Your site offers some unique content, and your collection of photographs is enormous. I really think you ought to expand the site to include a forum discussing the planes, ships etc. I think it would do well.

There is a lot of text to read on your old site, and as a rule you should make your "sentences into paragraphs" when writing for the web, and section each block of 5 paragraphs with a subheader. Always talk to the visitor, and never speak in the past tense. Website visitors want to know what's happening now, not yesterday.

Let me give you an example of the first paragraph from your site:
Your current version

Historical Navy Airplane Pictures

Collection of over 320 Vintage Navy photographs taken before WWII many airplane pictures, airplane crash pictures, US Navy Aircraft Carriers. The photos include pictures of the early Biplane Fighters from Aircraft Carriers, and military aircraft such as PBY, Torpedo Bombers, Fighters planes also Amphibious Aircraft launched from Battleships and Light Cruisers. US Navy War Ships such as Submarines, Aircraft Carriers, Battleships, Cruisers and Destroyers. Views of Naval Air Stations at North Island San Diego, Pensacola, Anaconda and Coco Solo, C.Z. There are also pictures of private planes and commercial airliners plus a great assortment of other photographs.

My version of the same paragraph

Welcome to OldAirPlanePictures.com

This website is your one-stop resource for pictures, photos and information about pre-WW2 aircraft and carriers.

You will find over 300 vintage navy photographs in our galleries, most of which are exclusive to this website.

From the early Biplane Fighters to Torpedo bombers, Amphibious Aircraft to Cruisers and Destroyers. We have exactly what you're searching for.

Use the menu on the left to begin searching our image galleries or click here to read up about your favourite vintage aircraft!

--------

Do you see what I mean about turning your sentences into paragraphs?

The new site
To be honest with you, I don't like it very much. It's boring. The photographs are amazing, but the site doesn't do it any justice. You say that it took a few weeks to get this far and I think that you're still doing things the old fashioned way.
Go into your Fantastico and install something like Wordpress or even better, Joomla. Spend the next 2 days learning how to use one of those programs (they're quite simple to use) and you will never hard code a website again. They have lots of templates available, and both support coppermine which is what you should use for your image gallery.

Google for Joomla or Wordpress to find out more. I believe that both have working demos on their site.

Good luck!

mindspazz

12-10-2006, 05:19 PM

The software you use to build your html for your gallery is very old. Really you should look into using PHP and MySQL. You can build a much nicer and easier to maintain site that way. You can also make it much easier to add to your site with the script. If you really have no idea how or where to start with something like that then look into a CMS script. This type of site would work great with a lot of the CMS scripts out there today. More of them also have some kind of gallery add-on and many are free.

-MindSpazz

classixuk

12-11-2006, 01:22 AM

How are you getting on Lee? Let us know.

Lee

12-11-2006, 01:59 AM

Hi Classixuk and Midspazz

I have taken what you said seriously. I am going to scrap everything, except my picture files, and start over.

I haven't gotten very far today. With Church and Christmas Shopping and taking the wife out to dinner, I just sat down at the computer about an hour ago.

A couple of years ago I was playing with a CMS program called Drupal. I have forgotten everything about the program, but I was looking on the hard drive and I still have it there in an XAMPP folder. As I recall, when I was playing with the program, my host wasn't too keen in having me put it on his servers and I think that is why I lost interest.

To be honest, since then all I have used is the klunky out dated shopping cart program from Australia. I sell pages from magazines on my web site and spend most of my time scanning and loading pages to sell. Even with frames, I get a lot of search engines spidering my site, I guess because it has been there so long, almost 7 years.

When I was given the photograph collection this summer, I enjoyed them so much I wanted to share them. I could put them on the net quickly with my existing program and that is what I did. Like I said I don't like how the site turned out, soooo I am going to learn about CMS to do the photographs justice.

I also want a really great site to put up the other collection of photographs that are really rare. I have 40 photographs taken in Little America during Admiral Byrd's second Antarctic expedition. Having looked all over the internet and none of the pictures are anywhere to be found. Even the web sites dedicated to Admiral Byrd and Antarctica don't have them. There fore I am going to take some time from my main web site and learn these other programs. I briefly looked at the Coppermine forum. They are not really keen with using their site in conjuction with a CMS site. They say theirs was designed to be a stand alone program.

I am going to look into Joomla and see what they have in the way of tutorials. I want something that I can work on at home on my local machine and then upload by FTP. That way if anything happens like my last host, they didn't pay their bills and their servers were wiped clean. I then came to Cirtex and all I had to do was upload the web site from my local computer and I was back in business. I guess some of the others were not as lucky.

Do you think Joomla is the best CMS for my project or is there one that looks nice with a better learning curve?

I better close and start looking at other CMS programs.

Lee Sherry
Puyallup, Washington (33 miles south of Seattle)

theory

12-11-2006, 02:29 AM

Try this CMS, I like it alot.

http://php-fusion.co.uk/

classixuk

12-11-2006, 02:58 AM

Hi Lee,
I'm glad to hear that you took the news so well and are doing something positive about it.
I think by the look of your old website you're using shop-factory right? I used that years ago too.

I tried Drupal a couple of years ago and while I remember it being very good, it was like learning to use Linux just so you can write a letter in Lotus SmartSuite, if you know what I mean.

If you're new to CMS I would say take Joomla for a whirl. It really isn't all that complicated and the learning curve to get a basic, functional website online is about 2 hours (seriously). When I say basic, I actually mean quite advanced.
There is a good support community available for it and lots of extensions that are very easy to install (an 95% of those are free too).

I just had a look at their website and there are over 50 extensions listed under Galleries available for Joomla so I don't think you'd be stuck for choice!

If you upgrade from the basic to the standard plan with Cirtex you will be able to host more than one domain on your webspace, so you could run 2 or 3 Joomla installations and run 2 or 3 seperate domains. One for your airplanes, one for your shop etc.

Joomla has a very good shopping cart extension called Virtuemart which is free. Don't let that put you off though, it's 10 times better than ShopFactory. Here's a couple of shopping sites I found on the net that use Joomla and Virtuemart:
http://www.dwuk.com/
http://www.edeli.co.uk/

Also, for an idea of how your airplane site could look (i.e. a gallery site) have a look at these sites that use Joomla:
http://expose.modus.ie/expose-demo/2.html
http://www.joomladesigns.co.uk/gallery/

My site ( http://www.hairdressingworld.com )is now ran using Joomla as a CMS. It frees up my time to do things like interact with my visitors, watch TV and enjoy my life. Nowadays, when I spend 3 hours doing webdesign I can get a whole section of my site done instead of just a page. I know Dreamweaver inside out and I still use it for FTPing to my webspace or checking code etc. but it's become pretty much redundant since I moved over to a CMS.

Best of luck, and let us know how you get on.

Regards,
Chris Parker
Liverpool, Merseyside, UK (about 280 miles North West of London)

Lee

12-12-2006, 05:57 AM

Hi Everyone,

Thanks Theory, I went to the php-fusion site today and spent an hour or so snooping around their web site and forum. I also spent some time checking out joomla.

Chris, I even checked out your site. Although I am not a hair dresser, I am a heating and cooling technician for the local school district, I really enjoyed your bit on McDonalds. There are many companies here in the States that could use your shop as a roll model.

As I have been brousing the different forums and looking at different galleries, I don't understand some of the termonalogy.

I thought that if you had say a Joomla site and wanted a Gallery all you did was put a link to the gallery to show your pictures. I don't understand them talking about bridge programs, etc. Are they trying to get their template on Joomla to also be on the Gallery?

I noticed that in Joomla and possibly in php-fusion also but I didn't actually see it, that you can add meta tags for SEO. Do you set up meta tags for each entry you have or do you only get to set meta tags for the web site as a whole. Also do most galleries have a place to enter meta tags or do search engines spider the galleries tooking for titles and descriptions of the pictures?

I looked at the two galleries that you gave me links to. The first one is really nice but in IE I keep getting a screen wanting me to add Adobe Flash Player. The other gallery for Joomla Designs in IE has one layer on top of the other at the top and makes it not look very professional. I still keep going back to Coppermine and looking at their web sites. At some point I would also like to sell the pictures using Digibug or Shutterfly, so I need a program that will work with these services.

I found a tutorial for Joomla at seems really elementry and that is what I need so maybe I will start playing with it tomorrow. I guess I need to learn the back end before I find a template.

Chris, do you think that I should get Joomla or another CMS set up and on line before I get the Gallery? Or should I wait and get both of them on line at the same time. Should I feature a photo on the home page before it is added to the gallery? That way people would come back to see what the next photograph will be. Of course there would not be much to look at in the Gallery for a while. Maybe that is not such a good idea.

With over 350 photographs, should I break them down into small individual galleries instead of having one huge gallery like my sample gallery (which I have deleted from my web site) I will be playing around on that space trying to learn CMS.

I was just thinking that when I get home at midnight here, it is daytime over in Great Britain so you see my posts in real time. It is 1:50 am right now and I am going to close and crawl between the sheets. I like to get up between 8 and 9 am. That way I have a little time to play on the computer before I go to work, in between going to the store, bringing in wood for the fireplace, playing with the dog, shipping orders from my web site, and on and on and on.

We have a Volcano in our back yard so they have put up evacuation signs around town. If the Volcano was erupting and you came to this sign (http://www.adattic.com/Pictures/Mt.Rainier3.jpg), what would you do?

Regards,

Lee Sherry

classixuk

12-13-2006, 03:01 AM

Hi Lee,
Sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday but I was all over the place. I've quoted your post and my replies are in red. ;)

Hi Everyone,

Chris, I even checked out your site. Although I am not a hair dresser, I am a heating and cooling technician for the local school district, I really enjoyed your bit on McDonalds. There are many companies here in the States that could use your shop as a roll model.

Thanks very much for the compliment.

As I have been brousing the different forums and looking at different galleries, I don't understand some of the termonalogy.

I thought that if you had say a Joomla site and wanted a Gallery all you did was put a link to the gallery to show your pictures. I don't understand them talking about bridge programs, etc. Are they trying to get their template on Joomla to also be on the Gallery?

You had it right in the beginning Lee. Extensions made for Joomla (or any CMS) usually just need to be installed through the back end, a menu link created to them and bob's yer uncle. The bridges you have been reading about are required when you want to run an independent software (such as Coppermine, SMF, Vbulletin etc.) and you want that program to share the same database as your CMS. You would do this to make your job easier when updating and maintaining your website. A bridge between a CMS and a third party software also means you would be able to use data or functions from that software in other pages of your site very easily (e.g. displaying your 5 most recently added photos on your homepage with a guest comment facility for instance. On my site, I have a comments button for each article I write. That comments button displays how many comments have been made, and also takes you directly to an automatically created forum post every time a new article is posted. That type of thing would not be possible without a bridge (unless I used the standard forum that comes with the CMS).

I noticed that in Joomla and possibly in php-fusion also but I didn't actually see it, that you can add meta tags for SEO. Do you set up meta tags for each entry you have or do you only get to set meta tags for the web site as a whole. Also do most galleries have a place to enter meta tags or do search engines spider the galleries tooking for titles and descriptions of the pictures?

You can set side wide meta tags in Joomla (sorry, but I don't know about other CMS's) and then set individual meta tags for each article. These get combined with the site wide meta tags when the page is viewed. As far as I am aware, most of the galleries will offer a place for you to add meta tags.

Chris, do you think that I should get Joomla or another CMS set up and on line before I get the Gallery?

Yes. Search engines spider words, not images. You need to start building keyword rich pages as soon as you can. It will also give you good practice at whichever CMS you are using, and you will discover some good extensions, tips and techniques so by the time you add your gallery you will know exactly how to make the rest of the content fit around your pictures.

Should I feature a photo on the home page before it is added to the gallery? That way people would come back to see what the next photograph will be. Of course there would not be much to look at in the Gallery for a while. Maybe that is not such a good idea.

It's a great idea. The thing is, somebody might visit your site 5 times in one day, so seeing as your pictures are so special I would look into using a random image extension that shows a different image each time a visitor visits the site. :)

With over 350 photographs, should I break them down into small individual galleries instead of having one huge gallery like my sample gallery (which I have deleted from my web site) I will be playing around on that space trying to learn CMS.

I would say one gallery, but sub-divided on the main gallery page into different sections (with a thumbnail depicting each section). You know, something simple like single prop. dual prop. bi-planes etc. If you use entirely separate galleries instead of sections it will make navigation difficult for your users.

We have a Volcano in our back yard so they have put up evacuation signs around town. If the Volcano was erupting and you came to this sign (http://www.adattic.com/Pictures/Mt.Rainier3.jpg), what would you do?

LOL. My site moderator also lives in the shadow of that beast. She posted some beautiful pictures of the clouds forming like a UFO around the top of the mountain. I asked her what she'd do if it erupted and she said get to higher ground. So I don't know what I'd do if I saw that sign, but apparently my moderator would run up hill towards the pyroclastic flow coming down the hill towards her! :eek: :confused:

Lee

12-15-2006, 08:07 PM

classixuk

12-16-2006, 08:23 AM

Hi Chris,

We had a big blow here is Washington last night, as I am sure your moderator told you.

I was at work and my wife turned off the computer, but not in time. :-(

I have a cmoss check error and it can't find my hard drive.

I am on the computer at work so I just wanted to let you know that if you don't hear from me for a while, you will know what happened.

Take care,

Lee in Washington State

Hi Lee,
My moderator was lucky in that she still has electricity. She has a lot of people staying over at her house, and she is also using the salon to provide hot soups etc. and let people sit in the warmth. She told me that it's -30 out at night and that the power might be out for another 3 or 4 days.

Here's hoping you and your family have heating, warmth and electricity real soon.
Look after yourselves and wrap up warm.

Chris.

Lee

12-17-2006, 10:42 PM

classixuk

12-18-2006, 05:44 AM

Hi Chris,

All is well now. Power is back on, plenty of wood for the fireplace and my son fixed my computer.

My son said that my computer was confused and didn't know what to do. He said the battery in the computer was bad and when we had the long power failure it lost the CMOS. We bought a new battery and he reset the CMOS. He also set up my two 75Gig hard drives in RAID configuration so they mirror each other. That way if one goes bad I won't loose any information. I also have an external hard drive that I am supposed to back up my hard drive to once a week, but I have not been doing that consistantly.

Where does your moderator live? It sounds like she either lives in Orting, Sumner, possibly Auburn or here in Puyallup. Where is the Salon, my wife may have visited it.

Thursday and Friday I was on Black Watch. Thursday we were driving around to all the schools to see which ones had lost power. The worst part of the storm didn't hit until after I got off work. Friday morning out of 33 schools in the district, only three had power, so school was canceled. Friday evening we had to drive around and see which ones had power. The 14 schools that I was assigned to still had no power when I got off shift at 11:30 pm. It was fun trying to get to a lot of the schools with some of the roads closed and trees leaning on the power lines. I passed one crew with 8 trucks and they were trying to get a tree off the power lines about 60 feet in the air. I am glad I didn't have their job.

I downloaded the Joomla Starter Kit Wednesday and everything worked fine until I tried to access Joomla. I then kept getting the following error.

Warning: main(C:/JoomlaStarterKit/htdocs/joomla/includes/version.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C"\Joomla Starter Kit\htdocs\joomla\includes\joomla.php on line 77

Fatal error: main() [function.require] Failed opening required
'C:/JoomlaStarterKit/htdocs/joomla/includes/version.php' (includes_path='.;C:\Joomla Starter Kit\phpo\pear\') in C:\Joomla Starter Kit\htdocs\joomla\includes\joomla.php on line 77

I did everything I could think of. I searched this error on google and found several people that were getting the same thing but there was no fix listed.

I spend most of 4 hours trying to get it resolved. I finally discovered what the problem was. When I downloaded the Joomla Starter Kit I was told to put it in a folder. I named the folder "Joomla Starter Kit".

If you look at this error closely

Warning: main(C:/JoomlaStarterKit/htdocs/joomla/includes/version.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C"\Joomla Starter Kit\htdocs\joomla\includes\joomla.php on line 77

It is looking for C:/JoomlaStarterKit/htdocs/joomla/includes/version.php
It was looking in C:\Joomla Starter Kit\htdocs\joomla\includes\joomla.php

The problem is clear. It is looking for a folder named "JoomlaStarterKit" not a folder named "Joomla Starter Kit" When I took out the spaces in the folder name it started working OK.

I was pulling out my hair on that one. Not being a programmer or even knowing how to do programming I was really at a disadvantage. Oh well, it is working now and I can get back to building my web site.

I have a little question though. The Joomla on my machine is run in a Windows envirement but it will be run in a Linux envirement on my server. Will that make any difference?

Tomorrow, December 18 is my Birthday. I will be 64 but I don't feel old. I can climb those ladders and walk on the roofs along with the young guys. Crawling in the attics on my stomach under duct work can be a challenge though. ;-)

Talk to you later,

Lee Sherry
Puyallup, Washington

Hi Lee, glad to hear that everything is returning back to normal for you guys now.

I don't know the name of the town my Moderator lives (I have forgotten) but I remember her telling me that the Ezra Mansion in the center of town. Her salon is called JD's & Co. :)

So you decided to have a look at Joomla then eh? I must admit, I didn't bother using the Joomlastarter kit with my site, I just published and went live more or less straight away. I'll tell you how I did this becuase it will give you a better idea of how things work with Joomla and avoid any problems you might experience with path settings when you are ready to go live.
In the root folder of your server, make sure the front page of your site (your old one, that is) is named index.html. Even though the front page of your Joomla site requires index.php, the server will automatically offer up index.html as the front page of your site first. When you are ready to go live with your Joomla site, simply rename your index.html from your old site to something like old_index_for_html_site.html. That way, you can always re-activate the old site if you'd like.
Of course, if your old site also uses index.php as the front page, then you should make a copy of it on your server named use_this_index.php. After installing Joomla, rename the index.php Joomla creates to joomla_index.php and then reanme use_this_index.php to simply index.php. When you want to work on your Joomla site, navigate to www.yourdomain.com/joomla_index.php.
When you are ready to launch, just make sure you have only one index.php in the root of your server.

Developing locally on your machine could cause problems with Joomla or certain extensions because you might find when you upload your site that certain modules in apache/php or SQL have not been installed or enabled by Cirtex on their servers. Finding out exactly which ones will be troublesome, whereas installing each component one at a time at least gives you the opportunity to see when the Joomla installation stopped working and act accordingly.
If you are going with the standard Joomla installation and not planning on adding many 3rd party components then you might be OK to just just upload your files, export/create your database and update your configuration.php file with the correct paths when you are ready to migrate to cirtex. As for you working on Windows, that shouldn't be a problem as you will have installed Xaamp to run and test your Joomla installation.
Remember though, if you run into template difficulties etc. on your local machine you'd best have a wide use of adjectives to hand becuase you will not be able to provide a URL when asking for help. :top:

Your son sounds very talented and very knowledgeable. He's set up a system for you that I'm sure even John from Cirtex wouldn't mind owning in his living room. ;)

Anyway, best of luck with the site. When you migrate it to your server you'll have to let us know so we can have a look!

Oh, and by the way...http://www.suburbanbaptist.org/Public/Photos/Church/SpecialPics/happy-birthday-cake.jpg

AudioIntrigue

12-19-2006, 10:54 PM

Hi Lee I am new here but I may have something of help to say. As mentioned before your current site is living in the HTML golden days and it is very good that you want to change. I also see you are looking into a CMS but I tell you to think it over. Joomla is a very nice system and has a lot of features (kind of a pita to administer) but over all is very nice looking. What you need to say is do you need that much overhead for what you want to accomplish.

I'm currently working on my site and originally started looking at CMSs and the more I tested and looked at the more I said to myself "I don't need all of this" and then started thinking of what I wanted out of my site. I didn't want anything too flashy or image heavy on everypage. I also wanted to keep it clean so that the content is easily viewable and attractive at the same time. Finally I wanted to ensure that is met all current coding "standards" as far as xhtml.

This is why I went with the design I have now ( http://www.audiointrigue.com ). Fistly it loads fast. There is only one image and there are no tables it's a total CSS layout that uses both valid XHTML and CSS. It's not some amazing feet of graphical design but it's easy to follow and doesn't overbear the future content with flashy graphics and such... that's not why people come to my site. Finally it's easy for me to work with and modify. I can change the entire color scheme easily with one small CSS file.

I'm not saying what's right for me is right for you but if you would like to look at the source code for my site and the CSS file I will gladly share them with you or you can do a view source on my site and see the HTML markup (which still needs some orginization and comments) and compare the size to the source of a basic joomla page. I definately would recomend cutting load time where ever possible if you are going to have an image intensive site. Also you may want to go through your images and compress them as much as possible without loosing quality and crop them to just the relevent parts of the pictures so that the size of the image isn't wasted on empty background.

Like I said don't take what I say as law since web development isn't written in stone and everyone has there own opinions and styles. I do however maybe this post will give you some motivation to keep in mind things taken for granted anymore like load time and simplicity. If you want a simple test get on a machine running a dial up connection and load my site and a fully loaded joomla site and see which one your looking at first.

I wish you the best of luck with your site and will be checking back in to see your progress so keep us updated.

Lee

12-26-2006, 03:26 AM

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Thank you for your input Audiointrigue, I will look at the program.

Chris that is a good Idea to build the site on the server and then change it over. I am having a little trouble with it though. The server firewall keeps blocking my ISP because of too much use on my web site. Each time it is blocked I will just have to send in a request to the help desk to unblock it. Yesterday it got blocked and the help desk finally figured out why and unblocked my isp this afternoon.

Guess what? Your moderator's shop is just across town from where I live. I live by the Fair Grounds.

Lee

Lee

12-30-2006, 03:42 AM

Hi everyone,

I have been spending quite a bit of time at the computer working on my web site. I am going with Joomla, because there are so many totorials and free templates around.

I am still working on the front page but I thought I would share with everyone what I have done so far. I am a little concerned because I have an older version of Netscape and the web site doesn't show up properly on it. It looks OK on IE though. I don't have Fire Fox loaded on my machine so I can't check it.

Here is the link for everyone to check out.

http://www.adattic.com/testsite2/Joomla/

I am still learning and eventually I will find out how to make the slide show only on the front page.

The template I am using is "The Path Less Traveled 2" There are a couple of other templates that I also like.

I just wanted to check in, have to go.

Have a Happy New Year if I don't get back for a couple of days.

Lee

bzsolt

02-19-2007, 02:51 PM

Hi,

I see you have GREAT pictures. I looked at your old and your new site and see the developement. :) But don't see how I could browse the images.
The bg color of the site is not my favorite... May do this site b/w since the photos are b/w too.
I would like to tell you sg very important: Do never ever stretch a photo as you / the software di with this pic on first page: http://testsite2.adattic.com/Joomla/images/stories/album2/BF2C-1_13ss.jpg

Whish you luck!

Lee

02-19-2007, 07:08 PM

Hi bzsolt,

Thank you for the input and pointing out the enlongated picture. What you see on my new Joomla site is still under construction. I appreciate your comment on the back ground color. All of the photographs were navy photos and I was trying to get as close a background color as I could to the navy grey. I will see if I can change it to Black and White, that may make it too dark.

I have several issues I am struggling with.

First, I have to figure out how to move Joomla from /testsite2/Joomla to the folder oldairplanepictures/ and get it to work.

Second, I have the actual Gallery2, where the actual photos are, on another hosts site and need to get it moved over

Third, I have to figure out how to set up the Gallery2 to Joomla bridge so a person won't have to log in twice.

Fourth, I have to get Gallery2 set up with Digibug, just in case anyone wants a copy of any of the photographs.

After all this is done, then I still have at least another 100+ photographs to scan and put into the gallery.

I sure wish it was as simple as one, two, three, but I have to learn what I am doing because after this web site is up and running, I have two more web sites in the works.

One will be for photographs that were taken at the Antarctic in 1933-35 during Admiral Byrd's expidition, this consists of about 40 photographs. These will be new photographs to the internet. I have searched all over using several search engines and can not find any of these photos.

Another web site will be of Movie Stars from the 1940's. I have a collection that belonged to Della Gatenbury, who was a hair stylist at Warner Bros. in the mid to late 1940's. Many of these photographs were taken of the stars to show the hair styles created for the different movies.

Again I want to thank you for the input,

Lee

Lee

02-20-2007, 03:56 AM

I just finished rescanning all the photos in the slide show on my main Joomla page so they would show up without being stretched by the program.

Lee

bzsolt

02-20-2007, 05:05 AM

Where do you have these photos from?

and: I am not sure you need joomla... check out: photopost.com

Lee

02-21-2007, 02:38 PM

I checked out the photopost.com site. It looks like a nice alternative but I have already spent a lot of time with Gallery2.

Like I said, I am building the Gallery2 album at another place. If you would like to see what I have done so far, here is the link (http://oldairplanepictures.bitsofaviationhistory.com/main.php).

Use login name "Lee711" and password "guest" without quotations.

I guess I could use Gallery2 as a stand alone but I like the looks of Joomla with the slide show.

You asked where I got the photographs. My friend's grand father was a navy photographer before WWII and this was his personal photograph collection. I can't imagine someone flying in an old biplane and leaning out over the side with a big camera taking pictures.

http://www.adattic.com/Pictures/Aerial_Photograph-2.jpg

Clare

02-22-2007, 04:23 PM

Hi. Wanted to let you know the new site is looking great! Much nicer and cleaner/smoother than the 1st time. I know you are not finished, but like someone else said it may be a good idea to consider adding a forum or some other info to keep visitors attention.
And I'm learning about CMSs too. I looked into all the ones offered in Fantastico and decided XOOPS was the one for me, but I almost went with Joomla. They do seem pretty good. Alot of support out there also if you need it at the joomla website. Excellent pictures. Are you selling the pictures? Or copies of them?

Lee

02-22-2007, 05:14 PM

Hi Clare,

Did you look at both my Joomla and Gallery2 sites? I still have to bring them together and bridge them so they will look like one web site.

Having a Forum is one reason I want to go with Joomla and not just have Gallery2 as my main site.

If you look at the Gallery2 site you will see that I have the photos linked to Digibug so my visitors can purchase copies if they wish. I am still having a little trouble with the digibug though. When the link to digibug is clicked, it takes you to the digibug site but it does not show the thumbnail of the picture. That is a bug I have to get worked out before I go live.

I am curious, why did you decide on XOOPS over Joomla?

When I was given the collection, the intention of my friend was for me to break it up and sell each picture on ebay. I have been selling on ebay since 1998 and have a 100% positive feedback and my friend thought that I would do a good job selling them. When I saw the collection, I just couldn't bring myself to break it up. I felt it had such a historical value that it needed to go on the internet and be shared with everyone. I talked it over with my friend and he agreed.

As I noted in a previous post, included in the collection are 40 photographs of Admiral Byrd's second Antarctic expedition. Mr. Doughty, the original owner of these photographs, when he was going through Naval Aerial Photography School had an instructor who was the Official Navy photographer on Admiral Byrd's expedition. He must have gotten copies of these photographs from him.

Here is an example of the Antarctic photos.

http://www.bitsofaviationhistory.com/Pictures/admbyrd-3.jpg

This is Admiral Byrd on the left with some of the expedition members looking at a map of Antarctia. They are at Little America when this picture was taken. I have used several search engines and can not find any of these pictures on the internet.

The third collection of photographs I have are from the estate of Della Gatenby. She worked for years at Warner Bros. studios as a hair stylist. These photographs are of the movie stars showing different hair styles.

Here is one of Arlene Dahl from the movie "My Wild Irish Rose".

http://www.bitsofaviationhistory.com/Pictures/alexis_smith3.jpg

Many of the actors and actresses jotted down short notes to Della on the photograph and signed them.

I showed these photos to the owner of my local hair salon and she wants copies to put up on her walls.

These are all collections that I feel should not be broken up, but be made available to interested people on the internet.

Clare

02-27-2007, 04:40 PM

I saw both sites, but I wasn't able to see much of the Gallery site because it looks like it requires a login. Your content seems good.
I chose Xoops over Joomla because while I was trying to create my site with Joomla I realized it was hard to find version matching software and addons (or modules, I forget what they call them) and there is even a newer version of Joomla coming out soon which may not even be compatible with anything I wanted to use. Xoops has the similar framework in that you download different components or modules, each with its own function. I find that XOOPS is easier to configure and has more configuration options also. The components are frequently updated and the people who make them even provide support for them. XOOPS seems to have a really big support community. So thats why. I'm sure your site could be done in either, its a matter of preference I think. If you want to see mine, its here: www.pickyourstore.com. My site is a reviews forum basically to rate/review stores. Its not picking up very quickly though!

Lee

02-27-2007, 04:49 PM

Hi Clare,

If you want to check out my gallery go to http://www.bitsofaviationhistory.com/oldairplanepictures/

Log in as visitor with password visitor

Lee

Andan

03-01-2007, 08:05 PM

Here's my suggestions:

1) make your banner so it blends more evenly with the rest of your site. It looks like you just pasted two images side by side.
- On top of that, that top div layer is scrollable (in Opera), which means you have too much space underneath it.

2) You have black and white. The two are opposites and is creating a clashing contrast effect for your site. You should use colors that blend in well with each other. So if you want to keep the top layer and your nav "buttons" black, then make the rest of the left side black/gray as well. Same goes for the page background.

3) The content within the frame/iframe is way too wide. Constrain it to the width of the frame minus about 14px (to allow for the scrollbar).

Lee

03-03-2007, 03:25 PM

Hi Anden,

Thank you for the critique. From your comments, I presume you were looking at the web site I am going to replace.

I am in the process of building my web site using two programs. The main page will be Joomla so I can have a forum or other way for vistiors to do some input. To see this Joomla (http://testsite2.adattic.com/Joomla) site click on the link. I have a slide show, showing select photographs on this site. I would appreciate some input on how it looks in Opera.

Then my photograph collection will be in the program Gallery2.2. I have built it on another server and I am in the process of upgrading it and mooving it over. If you could also go to my Gallery (http://oldairplanepictures.bitsofaviationhistory.com) site with user name "visitor" and password "visitor" and give me some input on what you think of it. Clare thought it would look better with a dark background so I have it dark.

Thank you for your input,

Lee

Sarah

03-05-2007, 02:53 AM

I can't see much of anything right now on the Gallery site with that login. The Joomla site is looking very nice.

The one thing I would say is that the font on the header image of both is looking maybe a little pixellated? Is it supposed to be that way to look like aged ink writing? I wonder if there is any Photoshop filter that would make it a little more authentic. :)

Lee

03-05-2007, 03:15 PM

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for the input. I will look into photoshop to see if I can do anything with the header.

I logged in to the gallery site as visitor and I see what you are saying.

Try using login as visitor1 with password visitor and see if it works better.

Thanks,

Lee

Sarah

03-06-2007, 03:23 AM

I still don't have much of anything. All I can do is upload watermarks, apparently.

Lee

03-19-2007, 02:58 AM

Hi Everyone,

I am still working on my web site. I have moved almost all the photographs over from my other host's site.

I am still fighting issues, like setting up the bridge from Gallery2 to Joomla.

In the mean time I have a link to Gallery2 on the home page of my web site.

I still have to move over the header for the Gallery site so it will look a little like the home page.

Check it out and see what you think (http://www.oldairplanepictures.com).

Lee

fortify

04-02-2007, 05:46 PM

I think you should change the font. Thats it

Andan

04-03-2007, 12:18 AM

Well the font size is fine. You need to make the blue font more readable. As it is right now, most people will have trouble reading the blue text on blue background. For those of us into web dev, we frown on unreadable text. So perhaps you can make the text and link text white or some other color that will contrast the blue background but also make it more legible?