Newbie help please!

[Bob Thomas]

Hi,

I am writing a web page for a church, and whilst I can manage a
"normal" page using Dreamweaver or whatever, there is one requirement
I am out of my depth on.

They want to be able to have a "sign" on the page (like the signs
outside churches) that can be easily updated by an inexperienced
person without great knowledge of html or web page design.

What would be good would be if there could be a text document in the
site with a whole lot of short sayings that the "sign" on the web page
could somehow read from so that it showed different messages. That
way, someone could just upload a new text document every now and then
to change the sign rather than actually changing the web page itself.

I presume I need Flash - but I have no experience with flash. Is there
any software that can create such a sign that an inexperienced person
like me could use to create this part of the web page? Any other
suggestions?

thanks,

Bob T.

 

[mscir]

Hi,

I am writing a web page for a church, and whilst I can manage a
"normal" page using Dreamweaver or whatever, there is one requirement
I am out of my depth on.

They want to be able to have a "sign" on the page (like the signs
outside churches) that can be easily updated by an inexperienced
person without great knowledge of html or web page design.

What would be good would be if there could be a text document in the
site with a whole lot of short sayings that the "sign" on the web page
could somehow read from so that it showed different messages. That
way, someone could just upload a new text document every now and then
to change the sign rather than actually changing the web page itself.

I presume I need Flash - but I have no experience with flash. Is there
any software that can create such a sign that an inexperienced person
like me could use to create this part of the web page? Any other
suggestions?

Can you list any example web sites that have an effect like the one you
want to produce?

 

[Paul Furman]

Check if your web host supports SSI (Server Side Includes). If so that'd
be real easy to make a reference to a plain text file and just update
that. If the host supports php, perl or ASP, a trickier solution could
let them log on from any web browser to update it without an ftp program
or anything.

 

[Steve R.]

Bob Thomas wrote in message ...

They want to be able to have a "sign" on the page (like the signs
outside churches) that can be easily updated by an inexperienced
person without great knowledge of html or web page design.

If you wanted to keep it very simple you could create an iframe on the page
like this ..
http://www.myby.myby.co.uk/iframe/iframe_in_table.htm

The contents of the iframe (Page 1) can be from a server anywhere, so the
person creating the content would just from time-to-time update their page
without affecting anything on the main website.

You could surround the iframe with images so it actaully looked like a
church notice-board. The table boxes are there for demo only and could
easily be changed.

If the person creating the content had absoulutely no idea how to upload
content to a web-server, then if you wished you could use any one of the
free "Guest-Books" as the content page, so in effect all they are doing is
signing a Guest-Book. (but writing information instead). That's the
ultra-simple way, but won't look as good.

 

[Bob Thomas]

Can you list any example web sites that have an effect like the one you
want to produce?

Not off the top of my head, but I have just downloaded a Coffee Cup
program called "Headline Factory" which seems to achieve approximately
the idea i was looking for - it loads info from a text file into a
little applet, so I could use that I guess - otherwise the suggestion
from Steve might be good (once i learn how to do it). 8*)

Bob T.

 

[Bob Thomas]

Check if your web host supports SSI (Server Side Includes). If so that'd
be real easy to make a reference to a plain text file and just update
that. If the host supports php, perl or ASP, a trickier solution could
let them log on from any web browser to update it without an ftp program
or anything.

I think they'd handle FTP - but just to update say one text file to
make life really easy - but I'm not sure about the SSI.

Bob T.

 

[Steve R.]

Bob Thomas wrote in message...

the suggestion from Steve might be good (once I learn how to do it).

To create an iframe just copy and paste this HTML into the page after the
<body> tag.

<IFRAME NAME="iframe1" SRC="page_1.htm" ALIGN="center" HEIGHT="320"
WIDTH="450" HSPACE="50" VSPACE="10" scrolling="Yes">
</IFRAME> <br>

If you alter the height and width figures to suit and the SRC="?????.htm"
will point to the webpage you wish to show in the iframe. As I said that
content can be anywhere on the www.

 

[Bob Thomas]

Bob Thomas wrote in message ...

If you wanted to keep it very simple you could create an iframe on the page
like this ..
http://www.myby.myby.co.uk/iframe/iframe_in_table.htm

That looks like a simple sort of thing that maybe I could do - as you
say, I could build an image around it. Now ... the only thing is ...
how do you make an iframe ?? More importantly, how do I get the text
inmside it to be drawn from a text file ??

If the person creating the content had absoulutely no idea how to upload
content to a web-server, then if you wished you could use any one of the
free "Guest-Books" as the content page, so in effect all they are doing is
signing a Guest-Book. (but writing information instead). That's the
ultra-simple way, but won't look as good.

No, I don't think I'll go that way - thus far it looks like some sort
of applet (which I don't know much about) or this iframe - might be
ways to go.

Bob T.

 

[Whitecrest]

I think they'd handle FTP - but just to update say one text file to
make life really easy - but I'm not sure about the SSI.

I like your idea a lot. A nice looking Flash object can do exactly what
you are looking for. And with proper graphics, you could make it look
exactly like the message holder in front of your church. (Maybe the
flash loads a background jpg of your banner?)

This is something that a lot of churches would like. Tell you what, I
will make one in Flash, and offer it on my site for free when it is
done. I work with NAMB (North American Missions Board) on a regular
basis, and they would probably be interested in something like this to
offer to their 40,000+ churches.

It will also have a flash piece to change the text. So all they need to
know is how to type. No FTP or SSI or anything else.

All your vision impaired visitors will get the alt-text of the flash
(Flash is 100% 508 compliant) The entire size will be less than 20K so
bandwidth is not a concern

Thanks for the idea, give it a week and I will have it for you if you
(or anyone else) want it.

 

[Bob Thomas]

I like your idea a lot. A nice looking Flash object can do exactly what
you are looking for. And with proper graphics, you could make it look
exactly like the message holder in front of your church. (Maybe the
flash loads a background jpg of your banner?)

Well that was actually what I had in mind - I have a photo of the
actual sign out the front of the church, and I was thinking of maybe
cutting the middle out with a graphics program and substituting the
words from a text file.

The idea is so that anyone can just upload a text file and the sign
would be upgraded. Much better than trying to get them to actually
fiddle with the html or the actual page.

This is something that a lot of churches would like. Tell you what, I
will make one in Flash, and offer it on my site for free when it is
done. I work with NAMB (North American Missions Board) on a regular
basis, and they would probably be interested in something like this to
offer to their 40,000+ churches.

It will also have a flash piece to change the text. So all they need to
know is how to type. No FTP or SSI or anything else.

All your vision impaired visitors will get the alt-text of the flash
(Flash is 100% 508 compliant) The entire size will be less than 20K so
bandwidth is not a concern

Thanks for the idea, give it a week and I will have it for you if you
(or anyone else) want it.

That sounds *excellent* ... I shall await your efforts with great
interest. 8*)

Bob T.

 

[Bob Thomas]

Bob Thomas wrote in message...

To create an iframe just copy and paste this HTML into the page after the
<body> tag.

<IFRAME NAME="iframe1" SRC="page_1.htm" ALIGN="center" HEIGHT="320"
WIDTH="450" HSPACE="50" VSPACE="10" scrolling="Yes">
</IFRAME> <br>

If you alter the height and width figures to suit and the SRC="?????.htm"
will point to the webpage you wish to show in the iframe. As I said that
content can be anywhere on the www.

Thanks Steve - another bit of HTML I hadn't heard of. That means
there's only 98% of it left to learn! 8*)

I'll give it a play while I wait for the interesting offer from
Whitecrest Entertainment.

Bob T.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

They want to be able to have a "sign" on the page (like the signs
outside churches)

http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/scratch/sign/example
Source: http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/scratch/sign/example-src

Basic technique: ensure that your server has "fortune" installed and
create a fortune cookie file containing all your quotes. Then call the
fortune program from a script.

 

[Bob Thomas]

http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/scratch/sign/example
Source: http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/scratch/sign/example-src

Basic technique: ensure that your server has "fortune" installed and
create a fortune cookie file containing all your quotes. Then call the
fortune program from a script.

Thanks for that ... looks Ok, but I think the techniques which just
use a text file might be a bit easier to maintain. I do like the way
it changes quotes all the time though although it would be nice to be
able to control that too. I think this one might be beyond my
knowledge to create very well.

Bob T.