Okay - I've added a new feature on my site where I'll be putting up random wallpapers and ones that I will eventually make (of my own and not "borrowed") and put up. These that are here are just some ones that I like. The star wars ones I made myself from movie screenshots I did on my comp. I plan to do lots more and make some collages, but that'll wait until I have time. :)

Go here for the media page and click on the "Wallpaper" tab in the middle. There's only ONE page of walls so far, but the buttons are still there. (I hope the positioning is ok).

I just wanted to post it because I JUST did this last night and haven't really been crazy about going through every single pic to be sure it works. I'm sure they all do, but people here always find the little things. :) (thanks)

So, my next project will involve updating the picture pages (which I need to improve) and adding the audio section, but that'll probably not happen until later this fall. I want to add some recordings of me playin' my horn. I just have to practice and get good enough to make those recordings. ;)

Anyway, I know there's probably some people here that might be interested in some of the wallpapers I will add to my site. Just know that these here were not made by me (except the SW ones) and I plan to take a lot of my pictures from my trips and places I've been and put together some pretty darn good desktop pictures. So feel free to come back and check for updates as I will be adding about 30-35 per week as I go through all the pictures I want to use and create those wallpapers.

I'm one of those people who's a little obsessed with changing my desktop often. So, I kinda got into the swing of just creating them on my own. Just need a little Photoshop to help me along the way and I'm all set. Plus I thought it would be fun to make some of my own personal designs. (to come later). :)

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

Mr. Hester!

It's always nice to see what you've been up to. (It's obvious you took the Green Pill! LOL)

Great, as usual.

And on you go.....

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Choice Pro SEO
Choice Pro Webs

:) haha... yeah, I actually hadn't been back here in almost a month or two, mostly because of vacation and work. I teach during the school year so when July hit, I was outta here and basically didn't go on the net for about... a month, if you can believe that. :)

I'm all about adding and fixing up the multimedia on the site. I'm hoping to get some feedback on the layouts and whether the pulldown boxes work for everyone, etc. I just kinda did that on a "guess" it would be better than listing ALL the links under the pics. (was going for a "cleaner" look). ??

Anyway, thanks for the comments! always appreciated. :)

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

I like them. Just for the fyi.. the Next button goes no where.. i was hoping for more pics :) I like it, clean and nice wallpapers. You wouldn't have one from the arena with all those lightsabers going? hehe..

I will be checking this site more and more.
Stratis

__________________
Thanks,
Stratis

www.holleyjohnson.net
mailto: stratis.constas@holleyjohnson.net

:)

yeah... just one page for now. I only did that so I could come see what some people thought... you know the drill. Then I was gonna go ahead and tweak if needed, and add more this weekend... about 5 or 6 more pages to start. :)

Plus, I wasn't sure if people were going to ask for/suggest more resolution sizes. I know there are about 5 or 6 more resolutions I've seen that I didn't include here. Because this is for YOU guys... I got all these pictures and wanna share. :) so, if there's a resolution I don't have that you need, go ahead and let me know. :) (that goes for anyone reading).

Oh yeah, you can bet there'll be many more star wars pics. I'm not a HUGE dork, but I love the movies. There really aren't many other movies that are as "visual" as star wars. I love it.

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

George, as always your creativity impresses.
Good job !!

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Bill
www.blueearthtea.com
www.ftaaconsulting.com
www.iaval.com
www.theemeraldbay.com

Hello,
your design work is very good, you have so many good things to see on your page didn't now where to start, your page /walls_s2.html doesn't work.

Your site is tooooooo cool, really liked the whole thing, design, layout etc. I am going back to have another look. Good stuff!

Hey thanks... yeah, I mentioned this in a previous post, but I only did 1 single page per wallpaper type, just because I wanted to get some feedback first before I went ahead and added the rest of the pics. It woulda just been a hassle had I gone ahead and published all the pages and then had to change them all. you know. :)

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

Great site, really couldn't fault it.

How did you create the scrolling box on the right? The one with the 'Website News' ?

also

How did you make your forum appear within your sites template?

Keep up the good work.

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Ash Whitehair

Okay... the scroll boxes I used are on BV and are called "Inline Frames" ... some people refer to them as iframes.

It's in the BV window with the HTML, Script, Java, etc.

All I did was create that window in the space I wanted it and I went ahead and set the window size to something like 500px. Then I created a separate html page: (news.html) that was only 500px wide and wrote the text there.

After publishing the news.html page, I then went to the home page and double-click the iframe and put the URL pointing to the "Website News" page I created: http://www...../news.html, and that's it!

I hope that makes sense. I am not that good at explaining things sometimes. :)

This one was pretty tricky at first because I think there's an extra step I had to take in there, but it is the exact same thing I did with my "Website News" on the front page... (but I can't remember). I just created an iframe and set the URL to direct link to my forum page (.../forum.html). You probably didn't notice, but I did the same with my guestbook and some picture pages.

Whatever the case, you can do this with ANY site. If you have an inline frame and put a URL to a site with html, you should be good to go.

If you're not sure, try it out for fun and you'll see. I found it VERY useful for my site and everyone seems to dig it. I messed with a lot of different ideas before I published my site and thankfully this feature came in handy several times for me. :)

Thanks for the compliments.

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

Hey George

I Love your site!!!!

Very user friendly and the use of neutral colours is great.

I have'nt seen a Forum outside Blue Voda like yours yet, but now I'm really considering placing one on my site now.

I'm bet your an extremely talented musician but your also an extremely talented web designer!!!

Good work

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Phil Cartledge (Aussie Phil)

Discover A Simple Approach To Online Business That Locks In Your Success.

Hello, everyone...Im new here

Hey Caisen

Welcome to Vodaland

Look forward to seeing your site.

Phil.C from Oz

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Phil Cartledge (Aussie Phil)

Discover A Simple Approach To Online Business That Locks In Your Success.

If you are looking at visual movies...hmm.. Whenever I am looking at wallpapers, I usually only see small/med/large So, 3 versions maybe just enough. You can go for more resolutions if you really want too, but I think it would be more for your benefit.. :)

good job!
Stratis

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Thanks,
Stratis

www.holleyjohnson.net
mailto: stratis.constas@holleyjohnson.net

man, that is a nice site!

Thanks Hester for the tips.

Regards.

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Ash Whitehair

great site, Hester. It shows that you've put a lot of work into it.

:) I really appreciate it.

For some reason either my internet is broke or there's some weird stuff going on out there in cyberspace... I'm actually in the process of updating and redoing my site, but I have to sit an wait until the servers are back to normal.

I'm glad you can access my site though. When I try to view it from here, I get a "page timed out" screen. I can't even view your page right now... gah! :(


Thanks for the comment!! I hope to have my new site up in the near future.

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

Oh man, that's gotta suck. I too am having problems with my server, but there was a notice of Voda doing maintenance today, which is the ONLY reason I am not tripping.

So, if you are on Voda8, that may be why. Just be a little patient...I know, you probably can't wait for us to see all the changes, but good things come to those who wait. Ummm

Haha... nah, I'm cool. It's just... strangely ironic. I decided last week to make site changes, so I cleared my entire weekend schedule to get it all put together. As soon as I got home from work on Monday night I went to publish some pages... I got one to work (my demo front page, which I wanted to change as soon as I saw it)... all of a sudden... broken!! haha!

So... it's like I did all that work and now it doesn't work. hurry up and wait. ;)

No biggie though... it just took me a while to figure out the problem.

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

Well, just use this "wait" time in a constructive manner by making those little tweaks here and there that tend to be left undone until someone points them out and you're like, DUh!

Honestly though, (shhhh....I really like the old site) while the new design is outstanding...the old one has grown on me.

BUT, do what you gotta do.

I am confuse, which one is new, which one is old?
Everything looks soo GREAT!!!
Alas

hehehe... well, here's the scoop. I didn't wanna make a big hoot out of it yet, but since you mentioned it...

The older site will remain. I spent too much time on the little graphics and stuff and will keep it as my "personal" site.

However, with the growth of my freelance work in drill design, I found it best to create something new and separate for my "business".

I have not yet gone through the trouble and set up a new domain... nor will I do that until much later on. But that's the plan. The "new" site will have very little personal information about me, besides my resume and design samples, etc. The "old" site, as I said, will remain but be converted into a more "personal" site that'll showcase more pictures and some other fun stuff I've had on there before, but took down due to conflicts I had with putting that stuff on the same site that is trying to advertise my business stuff.

Did that all make sense?? :)

I really do appreciate the fact that you like the other page so much. (I promise I won't get rid of it that easily). ;) What you see on this "demo" front page is NOTHING like what it'll be yet. The bars and tabs or whatever are close to what they will be, but it's still in the building stages. You might like it... who knows. :)

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

That does make sense.

You have a lot of goodies on the current site! I checked out your drill demos. Wow. I can tell you now, my drill team in HS was nothing close to that good. Maybe we could have used your help lol!

About your redesign, don't get me wrong...it's quite nice and I will be checking it out when you are done, so keep us posted.

Did you see the announcement about out server? Go here

Hi Hester, any luck publishing yet?

Great Site! What program are you using to create your site?

www.wilsonpaves.com
www.vincentvonfrankenberg.com

nah! :( I haven't really tried since that server change post said that I shouldn't try to do anything until Saturday afternoon.

But for the heck of it I just tried it and no luck.

Right now I'm just sitting on it until it's back up.

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

Hey Danielle,

I wasn't sure if you were asking me... mostly because my site doesn't seem to be working at the moment.

I used the BlueVoda software to create and publish the pages. Most, if not all, of the graphics are made using little dabs of 'this' and 'that' with Photoshop.

I hope that answered your question. :)

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

i have some work to do on my site, also, but i can wait (huge procrastinator, I am). I'm just using this time to chit chat and basically learn a little here and there.

Hester,

I was talking to you. :) I clicked on the "here" link from your original post and it went to one of your sites....maybe an old one???? Wow! Love it! I used Bluevoda to create and publish mine but PhotoShop must be the program that makes your so wonderful. Can't seem to find any templetes that look as nice as yours in BlueVoda but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Would you suggest photoshop and if so which one? Can you give me some direction, please?

Danielle

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Danielle

:)

Okay... well first of all, I had used a pre-made template that I liked that Voda had in one of their freebie packs. I modified it a bit with photoshop just to get the size/spacing right for what I needed.

I started with THIS free template that I got from VodaHost... I liked the layout where the buttons would go... and decided to make it work that way.

I tweaked it a bit with photoshop to make THIS version...

And after a few months and me deciding to add some color to the site, I re-did the whole thing, changed the buttons up and used more photoshop tricks that I learned along the way. I changed it to THIS....

The changeover was kinda like THIS...

I was mentioning before how I'm in the process of redoing it again... but the "blue" site will stay on as my personal site... will be tranferred to a new domain name eventually. And the revamp will be for my drill design business. :)

When I started doing my original site, photoshop was used very minimally. I had a couple pics with drop shadows and stuff... and of course being able to change my template. But getting involved with designing my own web site just gave me more opportunities to see what else was out there and try and learn how to do things. I have about 12 bookmarks of photoshop tutorials and if I ever have free time (which isn't a lot these days) I'll look up something and try it.

Everything on my "blue" site was more or less the result of experimenting with stuff. I was looking up how to make "bent paper or photo" and on my Media page, that polaroid pic was just one of those experiments.

The "****" on my front page... done using a tutorial also.

The menu buttons were from looking up how to make reflective glass... etc. And the use of perspective, this and that... lots of practice that took me a LOT of time to get used to. Heck, if I had to do any of those things again, I'd have to pull up the bookmark and follow the instructions again, one at a time. :)

And just know that even though there have been only 3 main templates I've done thus far, I have experimented with MANY variations... different color combos and different shadings, buttons, sizes, etc. These were just the ones I liked the best. (And with the blue one... oy! I think I spent a week trying to find the right colors for that... and when I say "colors", I mean shades of blue specifically). I just wanted it to have the right "feel"... sometimes it doesn't come that easily. :)

My advice is that if you have photoshop or paint or software like that, just take your time and learn how to do certain things on them. It's not a necessity to have cool graphics and stuff for your website to work.... but I understand that you'll look around at other sites and say "gosh, I wish my site looked this cool". I'm there too... and that's what motivated me to skip out on some of my favorite TV shows in order to get some stuff done.

And people have asked if I use Flash or Dreamweaver... I don't have the slightest clue how to do anything with those programs. So, that's another option you have if you wanted to improve the look of your site. :)

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

I forgot to mention... I use Photoshop 7. I bought it around 5 years ago. I know there are a few newer versions out now, like CS2 or something. I'm sure it's better... but Photoshop 7 has everything I need right now. :)

You might be able to find it pretty cheap these days if it's still around... ?? But if you are on a PC, I know that Microsoft has a free software which is very similar to Photoshop. I forget the name of it... media center?? ... media something??? I don't know. But you can find it through the microsoft website I believe.

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

Darn it, my HS computer teacher was right! My thing was what am I going to need photoshop for as an Accountant. Haaa, the joke is on me.

I too wondered if your site was made using bv at first glance. I just started designing websites, so I like coming across great finds, and yours, I friend, is waayyy up there. Keep doing what you're doing.

I wasn't all that bad at Photoshop...I kinda liked it, but didn't have the time for it then. And to be honest, I don't think I have the time to learn it now.

I do use Paint, though. It comes in really handy with using so-called "fancy" fonts. I learned my lesson with that. I was using really nice fonts on my end and they were showing up just fine on my browser, but were feeding everybody else loads of you know what.

Danielle, web designing, especially if you are learning as you go along, is about trial and error...you just have to look at it with a positive and a willing-to-learn attitude and you should be fine.

And as always, there are a lot of people who come on here to help.

Actually... a funny thing what you mentioned about the fonts... I caught it before anyone else saw it... I made that same mistake.

I'll let you in on another tip I did when creating my site. Now, even though most of it didn't matter too much, I read a LOT of the reviews on this forum before I even started creating my site. I looked at what people were doing and the tips people here gave them to help improve their sites. Many ways it never pertained to me for what I wanted, but it still helped. The biggest thing was the fonts... I really wanted to use non-natural fonts, as you can see with the buttons I created. :)

And thanks!! :) You mentioned that you don't think you have time to learn this stuff. I really don't either... as I said... sacrificed some time here and there to learn. It took me about 6 months to go from what I started with to the "blue" version of the site... trying little bits whenever I could. Trust me... I really wanted my site to look the way it is now when I first did it... but I knew that in order to do some of that stuff I'd have to take the time to learn. Luckily most of it was during the summer when I don't have to teach.

And I do wish I could do this more... But again... not much time to do much more than what I try to do for myself. I really want to eventually start designing for other people... but I think I'd rather wait until I become more accustomed to more photoshop skills, as well as writing scripts (which I've never done before) and using Flash (which I also have never done before). :)

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

Well, I was sorta forced into designing web pages...heavens know I didn't solicit my current clients. To be honest, I wouldn't know how to sell a free Hawaiian Vacation with no strings attached...yeah, I'm that bad.

After a friend of mine spent over $500 (which was half of the total price) for a website, the designer seemed to vanish into cyber air. I'm pretty good with designs when it comes to Word, Publisher, PageMaker, and other such designing programs so she asked me if I could design her a website in Publisher...which I did (biggest mistake of my life). It was around then, June 2006, that I downloaded the free bv from a website and started playing around with it. I managed to *******ted what I had done in Publisher with such ease that I was amazed...

And now, I can't seem to get off this box. But I like it...wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it, to tell you the truth.

By the by, you updated you curent page...does that mean that our server is up and ready. If so, I wonder why I can't access it? Hmmmmmmm

Well.... since I didn't wanna wait, I went ahead and tried to publish a page and it worked... all I did was moved the original home page back while I try and finish up the rest on BV.

Yeah... June 2006 was when I started with BV also. Actually... it was sooner than that... May perhaps?

Anyway, before that I used Yahoo Geocities website stuff... boy was that a huge bust. It was just terribly difficult compared to BV. I wrote it ALL in HTML code... uploaded pics to the file manager and had to do everything by hand.... trial and LOTS of error. :)

BV turned out to be exactly what I needed... and at this time last year, I might have had about 5 other programs downloaded and installed to build a site... nothing came close to the ease of BV. I love it!!

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George Hester

musician & designer
www.georgehester.com

You sound like me when I tell people about the excellence of BV AND VH. I try to encourage my clients to download the program and do their own maintenance...you know, trying to save them a buck or two.

I never got into other web builders, but I've been thinking about exploring others. I've used a touch of flash effects on a couple of my sites and would like to learn more about that, but I'm not really into all flash designs so....

HTML? Not my forte. Actually, it creeps me out. I can tweak it a bit to modify a design but I wouldn't say I know much about writing it. I did a Quarter of Visual Basic and really liked it. I got to design calculators like the one that comes with Windows and I just thought that was so cool...but that was about a year ago and I don't think I remember that much about it to know any thing about it, but it is interesting...

Great Design Mate!