Thanks for the compliment, Nell! I've had several personal email conversation about websites with Kate, as well as with another gardener writer, and will share some of my thoughts here. In general, we are well served to design most websites in a common format, because that is what people (and search engine spiders) are used to seeing. This is a menu either across the top or down the left side (or both)  title and logo at the top, and the splash page content on the right. At the last GWA meeting in Vancouver, I got a very valuable piece of advice about the left-side menu. One of the speakers mentioned that your links should finish the sentence: "I want toÂ." So the link could be "Contact Kate" or "View KateÂs Portfolio" for example. It should be easy to find contact information. If you go with ads, they should be unobtrusive, and it should be easy to tell what is your content and what is an ad. I have been testing Google ads on my site for awhile I think that the way IÂve used them is not too conspicuous, but IÂm not fully convinced about their usefulness at this point. The text should be easy to read. Sounds self-explanatory, but IÂm amazed at the number of sites I visit with small fonts, or pale colored lettering. I personally find black backgrounds too dominating, and flashing or moving symbols annoying. When putting content on the site, you have to first think of your overall purpose for designing and paying for the site in the first place. If you are looking for work as a garden writer, then there should be some samples of your writing, a resume, and some illustrations at the very least. (The mention of illustrations is important  People are used to seeing photos or illustrations presented with text, and will more quickly leave a site that is all text.) A page of links on your site will help bring people to you, through a "back door." (They are searching for one thing on a search engine, and your website appears.) As I explained to Kate, one of the best things I ever did was to hire someone to help me with the website. When I was doing it all myself I would have to re-learn the software every time, and so my updates were few and far between. Now I can email new articles, photos, and schedule updates to the woman who helps me, and within a couple of days the changes are made.

I work in a hospital as the Website Coordinator and since 90% of our user's has a resolution of 800x600 or greater, we ran into a printing problem. (i.e. the right side of page getting cut off) I believe a printer will only print 640 across. It might even be a little less, but I know 800 pixels will get cut off. Our solution? Have a "printer friendly version" button that removes the template and just diplays the text. Click here to see Newsletter Try "File/Print Preview" to see how it gets cut off. Now press the "Print Friendly button" and do a preview again. The text will automatically justify to the printers margins. (landscape or portrait) I'd forget about the printversion.doc idea. Since Word docs can have macros embedded with viruses and crap... a lot of people will not open them. You have 2 easy options though. 1. Get Adobe Acrobat. (you'll need more then the free version if you want to create PDF's) 2. Create another HTML document with just the page content and not the template. Whatever you choose above... link to it like this: <A HREF="filename.pdf">Click here for printer friendly version</A> <A HREF="filename.html">Click here for printer friendly version</A> Good luck! Hope it works for you. www.LiveNudeDogs.com ------)>

Thats better than me. My real name is Alice Ann. No Judy at all. It's a long story. Always been called Judy,hate Alice!!!! In school someone gave me the nickname of Cuder(don't remember why), tried using that as my screen name but it was already taken so I did it backwards, reduc500!!! And I'm not even a redneck!!!

Is this a webpage that is on your hard drive? Or is it a webpage space provided by a host on a remote computer(remote means a different computer than yours). If the webpage is on your hard drive, i would make a folder under "C" and call it html. Then in the folder put your html document and all related files including pictures. When you open your browser and click file/open and browse to the html folder and click the html document you will see the webpage. The coding should look like this on your webpage if every file related to the page is in html folder. (img src="8loopy.jpg") It is not good to use any caps in file names or extensions with html files. Many webspace hosts do not allow CAPS. Some Unix host puters wont even read caps in file extensions so the picture doesnt show on your webpage. All you get is a blank space with a red X in the corner. If this html file is on a server then you need to put the image in the same folder on the server and use the same coding on the webpage. you CANNOT call for a picture on your computer from your webpage on a host computer. Get a free FTP program and learn how to use it to transfer your files to the webpage space on the host server. JamesS