mzwebfreak

Driving force? I guess for me now, it's about finding answers to what is what I want out of life, versus what my parents wanted for me in life. I mean, I grew up in this really conservative Christian household, and was told that this was the truth and the right way to live and all that, which I might have been able to accept if it had been phrased more like "here's what we'd like you to belive, and here's why, but here's these other options that people have chosen." See what I mean? I'm not trying to say that I'm trying to do a complete 180 from the way I grew up, but after I left college and started broadening my horizons, a lot of what I decided to do with my life was opposing to the way my parents might have done, but isn't that what growing up is all about? Finding out what part of your parents fits you, and what doesn't. So, again, I think my driving force is to find out what is MY opinion, not something my parents told me to do.

yes, everyone else can see it..may be the version of your browser that you're looking at...here's the links to the pictures: http://www.christywild.net/nn/cherry.jpg http://www.christywild.net/nn/cherry2.jpg

Yep...tried something else for the tutorial thread, but I really didn't like it much.

I decided to take some of the tutorials and advice from other people and try my hand at making a signature...tell me whatcha think: Yeah, I know, not much, but I've always liked the cherry pic I used for my avatar, and wanted to try and make a sig from it...can't decide if I want just my name, or have something like this: Any ideas, criticism, comments?

Yeah....might work...except for the student part...I graduated college back about 4 years ago. lol But thanks for the advice.

Me, I mainly use notepad and frontpage, mainly because I'm a visual oriented person and don't have the 400 bucks to buy dreamweaver, though I know I'd have a blast if I ever got my hands on a copy. However, in lieu of that, I find that notepad and frontpage, the old standbys work just fine for me...however, I have been suggested to try out Crimson works, or something along those lines, which is supposed to be a notepad plus kinda thing, so I'll check that out and see how that is too.

Wow...cool effect! I mean, I personally found that the marquee thing worked better for me on surrounding the rest of the graphic after the first black border, but I guess that's just me. That, and it took me a while to figure out how to do the overlay right lol...here's the finished result:

Thanks; I'll definitely try it out this weekend. As for WYSIWYG, the reason I use Frontpage instead of Dreamweaver is cuz they want too much for the darn program....I mean- $400?!? Sorry, I'll stick with lowend stuff and this crimson editor you suggested. Wish I could afford Dreamweaver, but if that was the case, could probably afford to use the paid hosting these people have as well.

Abhiram, you said you use Crimson Editor for editing layouts and such...how does it compare favorably or unfavorably to Frontpage? Yes, I know, I'm lazy, but I mainly only use it to see how things work together visually. But, that's not to say that I'm adverse to change...I mean, after years of using IE, I finally converted to Firefox and love it...but I digress. If I wanted to try Crimson, where would I find it, and how much space does it use/take up? I've never heard of it before, and would love to try it.

Anyone else having problems with having credit days and yet they can't access their site? Mine was fine til a couple minutes ago....another server hiccup, I guess.

Personally, IMHO, when a website makes it hard(er) to find simple information that, for most people, I would see as vital to where they chose to go for domain registry, such as renewal price, that sends up a little flag with me...that, plus the fact that I was looking at their hosting packages just for kicks, and they have Frontpage and ASP support on their servers, but I couldn't find any info on CPANEL access, mySQL databases, or even if they supported PHP. I'm having warning bells going off in my head about this company, and was wondering if anyone on here had done any in depth research yet into the background about this company. Where's it based? How long has it been around? What's its record so far? Would love to hear some feedback on this, folks.

another thing that I've seen a lot of webmasters do is something along the theme of webbyNOSPAMatnevernormaldotcom....a spammer has to literally reedit the email address to remove all the excess to put you on their lists.

OMG! I never knew I could do this...I always thought I had to go through WS_FTP to get things done...however, what would you see as the possible drawbacks of ALWAYS doing it this way? I know it did fine with my php files this time, but doesn't mean it will every time...any thoughts?

yeah...not only am I having problems with cpanel access being slow, something appears to be wrong with my SQL as related to my databases and webmail...any ideas?

In my search for the perfectly formattable (for me) blog, I've tried to use Moveable Type, Wordpress, even used a tutorial on codegrrl.com for how to make your own blog, and I have to say that Blogger is my favorite. Yes, it's not exactly the best for a complete novice if you plan on playing around with the code at all, but, aside from some trial and error (where I found out, among other things, that you can have the blog page AND archives be published as fully integrated php files), it generally works just fine for me.

I really think that the layout you've got here is really great for a graphics site layout...and, if I'm not mistaken, my first thought about the chains you have all over the layout is to prevent people from just out and out copying it from this thread. My only real critique is that I really don't like the way the "contact me" section of the buttons looks...I think it would look a little bit better streamlined to look the same as the "home" button, but that's just my two cents on that. As for the rest of it, it looks good to start with, but I'd reserve total judgement til I see how it plays out online.

In all my years of web and graphic designing, I have a few main sites, such as gettyimages.com, that I go to for stock photos, or ones like atpictures.com for celebrity photos. What kind of sites, if you prefer those over stock CDs, have you found to be the most helpful in your designing, and, if there's a specific reason, why. What are the pros and cons of your favorites? Me, personally, I like Getty because it seems to be the main source for all sorts of graphics for all kinds of ideas...yes, some are rights-managed, so you have to give credit and such like that, but they also have a ton of royalty-free images you can use for graphics and layouts. As for AtPictures, yeah, they generally have a lot of celeb pics, but most of them seem to be at events, rather than photo shoots, which is what I prefer to use for my graphics...then I found out about All Stars Online, that is more along the lines of what I was looking for, plus the pictures scanned are of really good quality...as long as I link back to the site, and say that's where I got the graphics from, they don't mind people using the graphics...that's what they put them there for.

Considering that I don't have any way to check out gmail at this time...beta testing and all that baloney...I have had excite, hotmail, and yahoo, and, out of all of them, I've found that yahoo is the best out of all three...especially since I use yahoo for more than just the email, so it's a lot more versitaile for me than any of the others I've used so far.

I used to totally use Internet Explorer, but I seriously believe that there are a lot of bugs that are specifically designed to infiltrate your system simply by utilizing the IE or Netscape modules. So, I've been trying out Firefox, and, not only do I not seem to have as many bugs trying to get in, but the popups...oh thank god! So yeah, I think that, out of those three, Firefox is the best....btw, has anyone tried Opera? How well/poorly does it interact with Windows XP? Any problems?

Honestly, to be perfectly honest, I have generally stood by Internet Explorer, mainly because the only alternative I knew of, until acouple months ago, was Netscape, which, IMHO, sucks next to Internet Explorer. But, now that I've read about Firefox, I'm going to download it and play around with it for a couple of reasons. First, to see how much better it may be than IE, and also to check my sites in Firefox to see how well it may or may not be coming out, so I can better manage the designing of my sites, since it seems like more and more people are moving over to Firefox, so it would behoove me to be able to give the same kind of browsing experience to both parties.

Has anyone thought of this for an idea- combining the usage of a couple of anti-virus, like AVG and McAfee, so that you've got paid support with a free backup, so that either one could double check the other. Viable, or am I just being stupid or naive?

We use AVG from Grisoft on both the desktop and the laptop, and it works really great, and, like the others, is free!

For me, I've only ever had interaction with Internet Explorer and Netscape...Netscape was always the slower loading of the two, but, then again, this was a couple years ago. I've heard a lot of good things about Firefox, but have never really heard nuch more about it other than it's exceptionality to IE. What exactly is it about Firefox that makes it so much better than Internet Explorer, aside from the thumbing your nose at the big burecratic company owned by the multibillionaire tycoon?

Me, I wish I could say that I knew exactly what to say to help you, but I basically was one of the more foolish ones, and jumped in feet first into the middle of the pool. What happened is that I run a bunch of little fansites, and thus need to keep track of the members. Well, in the group that I run the fansites with, one of them came up with phpFanbase. It's basically a php/mySQL combo to have database tables for each of the fansites. Now, yes, I didn't do the programming for it, but I figured out my way around by a little trial and error, and managed to put together a couple of bells and whistles for a couple of the fansites. However, on a simpler note, there is a way to make a site purely php-based with a tables layout. I've done it on my site index, and it works just fine. If you'd like me to explain about it more, just gimme a buzz.

I would have to say myspace is more addicting mainly because I use livejournal for posting for my mature site, so it's something I do to keep my members updated, while with myspace, I'm always checking either the groups I'm in for concise commentary to posts, or I'm replying to people who wrote me. (Or, in the cases of idiots who either can't spell or can't read that I'm already dating someone, a non-reply.) And then, there's always the opportunity to meet people via myspace, which I think is the main reason why I'm more addicted to myspace- there's a possibility of really meeting a good friend, while, with livejournal, all it is is people commenting on what you've written/ranted on.