website help

[b1tchm4gn3t]

I had a friend of mine make the pages to this site>>> http://classicbilliards.tv a long time ago, and since then the site has not been on and she has totally disappeared off the net for like 2 years now. Recently I bought a domain name and hosting plan and a friend of mine helped me upload it to get the site up and running. Problem is I hear its in flash and I know NOTHING about any of this and I want to be able to edit the text on a couple of these pages. I have Swish and I am now even more lost than I was before. If anyone could point me in the right direction I would be most appreciative.

[canadateck]

I think you would need the "Source Files" to edit the Text in Flash then Re-Render.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

I do have all the source files. Its the 'editing the text in flash' I seem to be having trouble with

[canadateck]

This may help.

http://www.template-help.com/changing_text3.htm

[thecoalman]

It's not all in flash, having a quick look at it the menu is regular html using frames and javascript.

The content to the right is flash.... By source files he's referring to the the swish files, not the .swf files. Not sure what extension they have but it's probably propietary, I don't know if that link he provided above is for using swish files. Is that what you have the swish files or the flash files?

Some friendly (but blunt) advice . Have a new site built. Why?

1. Frames blow, period.
2. Flash content sucks, period. Use it sparingly.
3. That site could use a heavy dose of optimization... each ball for example is about 7kb. For an image of that size it should be maybe 500 bytes.

I could go on but won't.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

I like blunt advice. Straight to the point makes things happen. By ALL means...go on, Id like to hear ANY ideas you have.

[thecoalman]

Well .....frames suck, search engines have trouble indexing them for one. What the engine sees is this: http://classicbilliards.tv/set-6.html Let's say that's your location, as you can see the navigation is gone. That would be what someone would probably find if they stumbled across your site if they found it through a search engine. Which brings us too flashh content....

Flash has it's uses and place but using it to display the content of a site is undesirable. Search engines don't read flash content so there's nothing for them to index.... Text and lot's of it is the way to go. Additionally flash files generally are quite large, not a problem if the user is on broadband but most likely anyone on dial-up is going to quickly leave your site.

On to the optimization, as I pointed out those balls files were quite big (just like AC/DC's :P ). One reason is because they are large images that are being resized by the browser, here's the full image:



Not only does that increase file size it also makes them look like shit... Try resizing and optimizing with a gif animator. I'm not too "keen" on gif animations for major parts of a site but those could be made quite small and would probably look pretty good.

Like I said have it rebuilt or rebuild it yourself. Try here to get started for a decent editor at a decent price: http://www.coffeecup.com There's others as well, but some can get quite expensive.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

ok. Advice is greatly appreciated. I know this site could be better, as I said...this may as well be in greek for me, as I am TOTALLY lost here. I do have Dreamweaver and tried to play with it some but this seems MUCH more hard to learn that all this video. And what I mean by I played with dreamweaver is I opened it to see if I could make a page. Didnt get far...hahaha

[thecoalman]

I've never used Dremweaver so I can't give you nay advice on that, perhaps someone else can.

The HTML editor that I liked to above is primarily a text editor which allows you to work with the code. But it also has a "what you see is what you get" component. Essentially you place images text etc like you would in Word and it generates the code for you. The added bonus is you get to switch to the text editor to see what the code looks like, knowing basic HTML is essential for learning how to create pages.

Anyhow if you decide to rebuild you gotta start somewhere. That site doesn't look bad but that's about it...... You could create something similar in a few days I'd imagine using basic text without the flash and frames. I could throw it together in few hours, but I was in the same boat you are 4 years ago too....

[b1tchm4gn3t]

ok...Ill try what you said cause that seems to be a good starting point. Thank you for all the insight to all of this. Ill post back the new site when I get it done, definatly will be awhile though.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

http://classicbilliards.tv


ok...my buddy that I buy hosting from made me a new site. What do you think of this one? Keep in mind the pics dont look good because he took them out of the old flash site and will be updating that for me when I find the disk with the original good pictures.

[Garibaldi]

Have you considered using a CMS?

[Conquest10]

I don't like the huge © watermark over the main image.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

Have you considered using a CMS?

I dont know what that is.

I don't like the huge © watermark over the main image.

I agree and Ill be checking into that

[Garibaldi]

Have you considered using a CMS?

I dont know what that is.

I don't like the huge © watermark over the main image.

I agree and Ill be checking into that

A Content Management System is a forum-like application that makes managing your website a lot easier. Here's an example of my site with a CMS and without a CMS

My Site With A CMS

My Site Without A CMS

Here's a great CMS software called Mambo:
www.mambo.com