Pages not displaying correctly.

[Extravaganza]

I am working on a website for a customer and after many many hours of work had a page almost totally created. Then all of a sudden the red shape on the back and the white shape behind my text changed colors and setting them back to the original color doesn't change them back.

You can see what I'm talking about at http://www.bi****firework.com/Products and http://www.bigboxfirework.com/Products2.

I had saved the page many times as there were almost 200 pages and thought the file might have degraded so completely recreated it and nothing changed.

Please help.

Thanks,

Shasta

[Vasili]

Re: Pages not displaying correctly.

RE: www.BigBoxFirework.com and www.BigBoxFirework.com/Products.html

If BlueVoda is getting "twitchy" on you, most likely this is a System Resources issue (RAM is insufficient) on your system, due to a number of possibilities, including too many pages open in Blue Voda at one time, BlueVoda running for a long time without saving a page undergoing updates or formatting (means be good about saving pages "in progress"), pages with very large file size open simultaneously, running multiple scripts on the same page, programs running in the background, or possibly even too many items in your page you are attempting to apply a Style or configuration to.

With regard to what you are experiencing, however, I believe that is caused by very large page file sizes and the longer time required to publish them, in addition to the quality of your connection during this longer session that together influences the final publish quality in your pages online.

You have designed your pages with many more items that is considered normal, causing them to be incredibly long (forcing Visitors to scroll downward a lot since you did not provide any bookmarks at the top of the page) and with many images that should be "optimized" further to relieve the bulk of the page file itself. If you do not have a good photo editor of your own, you should download PixResizer free from VodaHost and simply open your images in it and resave it to reduce the image file sizes.

* You would be better off breaking your inventory down into smaller selections, by category, and sub-category if needed, and to provide an organized secondary Menu (a Text menu in the left margin?), or simply as sub-categories in your Menubar for Visitors to drill in precisely according to their interest. As it is now, you are using Simple Button menu, and should in fact change it to either a Drop-Down or Sliding Menubar to allow these "sub-links" to show to Visitors: for instance, how are you planning to allow Visitors to even get to your "Products2" page now???
Not only will this be easier to publish properly without losing many of the STYLE configurations of your page, but if each smaller selection included some well-composed text as item description it would help your efforts to "optimize" your pages while at the same time appearing more Visitor-friendly. Smaller pages with a more precisely organized inventory (categories, sub-categories, etc.) also makes it much easier to update the pages individually, adding or deleting products without massive disruption of the entire page layouts.

Search Engines and Visitors alike prefer more pages with better specific page relevance than fewer pages with diffused relevance, and expect a more refined navigational scheme to make that easy.

About your pages and links:

1. Re-save your "Products" and "Products2" pages as "products" and "products2" and then re-publish them individually.
* Be sure that in the BlueVoda Publish Dialog you change the IP address from your account to "their" account, along with the proper User Name and Password.

2. Your links will not function due to being improperly formatted. For example:
http://www.bigboxfirework.com/Products2 >> should be >> http://www.bigboxfirework.com/products2.html
* Do not use capitals in page names, and always add the ".html" extension when creating links.

3. Use BlueFTP to remove the previously incorrectly named and published pages (Products, Products2) to avoid any page conflicts.


I would suggest you re-think the core of the site design to include more "product selection specific" pages (a page for "Parachutes" and a page for "Candles" and a page for "Mortars" etc.) and a proper Navigational scheme to facilitate page-to-page transition (use either a Drop-Down or a Sliding Menu, with each of the sub-category pages showing as individually linked options).

Remember to apply at least the minumum effort to properly create and "optimize" your pages with Page Titles and simple METADATA (Keywords, Page Description, etc.), all of which is done via PAGE PROPERTIES.

[Extravaganza]

Re: Pages not displaying correctly.

I would really like to take your suggestions for the product page but hate the look of the pull down and slider menus. Is there a way to make them look like the menus I already have?

I used the pixresizer and it added a black background to many of my images and seemed to make their quality worse not better. Any clue what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,

Shasta

[Vasili]

Re: Pages not displaying correctly.

I would really like to take your suggestions for the product page but hate the look of the pull down and slider menus. Is there a way to make them look like the menus I already have?

Sure! Once you have inserted a Menubar and open it to PROPERTIES (double-click on it), click on the STYLE Tab and near the top under ITEM you will see the option to use a BACKGROUND IMAGE just under BACKGROUND COLOR. You can "browse" for any image you want it to look like, including those files from within Blue Voda itself (there is a folder of "button" images).
When it comes to "spacing" the buttons properly (making them horizonatally longer), keep in mind that although in the Menubar Properties you can adjust the padding and specify the labels to be "Centered" it is still possible to add a couple of spaces before and after you type in the label itself, which will add to the actual size of the buttons themselves: susbtituting a "space" with a dash here for illustrative purposes only, you can see that by adding a "buffer" in your labels you can effectively add to the spacing desired > "---Menubar Button Label---" This really helps to properly 'balance' the label text in the button face. It may take a few times experimenting on the proper amount of "space" to enter for things to present properly, but it is a technique that will work for you.

I used the pixresizer and it added a black background to many of my images and seemed to make their quality worse not better. Any clue what I'm doing wrong?

I have no idea .... you will need to see if your presets need to be adjusted, for it is not a normal thing to automatically add a border to an image in PixResizer otherwise.

If you simply open your images in PixResizer and then Save them (possibly with a more "optimized" title at the same time), the file size will automatically be reduced, which is the goal of doing so altogether: reducing the image file sizes helps keep the overall page file smaller, making for faster loads of images and pages both.