During the production of this site I've discovered that its hard to find simple instructions for doing basic things
so I've cobbled together some tips and links that may help complete computer idiots,
(such as myself)
During the production of this site I've discovered that its hard to find simple instructions for doing basic things so I've cobbled together some tips and links that may help complete computer idiots, (such as myself) |
       
   
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Topics covered will
include... RSS feeds Podcasts and podcatching Firefox and extensions Creating a simple site Favicons Domain registration and webhosting Search engine registration, adsense and adwords etc Creating and eating the perfect chocolate muffin. RSS feeds These allow websites to send out update notices, highlights or stripped down versions of their site out to their readers. They can be read by software generally called feed readers or aggregators. Software can be found as 'stand-alone' clients or as extensions to your browser or email client. The feed can typically be seen on a page as a button such as 
 or  if you click directly on it will just open in your browser as its source code. However if you run a search through your feed reader it will be found and listed correctly in the software. Podcasts and Podcatching More or less these are audio or video extensions to an RSS feed. They can be listened to or watched directly from your news reader or you can download them and access them through a media player. To download them you will need a 'podcatcher' which is software that does exactly that. It will list your subscriptions and download them automatically or on demand. I use Juice - a free open source application that is simple to use. To get the URL to subscribe to a podcast hover over the podcast button and it will appear in the info bar or right click and 'copy link'. Then paste it into the field in the podcatcher. For this site the URL is http://www.papersurfer.co.uk/RSS/rssfeed.xml Firefox and extensions This site was built to be viewed in Firefox. It probably looks shocking in Internet Explorer. Not really bothered. Change now, it's faster, simpler, it has tabs and everything! Its free. I use a firefox extension called Sage as my news reader. Seamless and simple. It appears on the side of my browser window with my subscription lists. It finds the RSS feeds for me. 
I also use Thunderbird as my email client for all the same reasons.Not that I have anything personal against Microsoft, just their software. Support open source or all the geeks will starve!! Creating a simple site Download nVu and follow the instructions. I went through it all from scratch. Its well laid out and probably explains everything better than I could. A few top tips are - resize images before you put into the webpage (photoshop - image/image size) otherwise the page will load slowly. Design layout with tables and use image properties for spacing (borders etc). You can use tables inside other tables to get more detail. This will give you more chance of 'other' browsers ending up with a similar layout. Favicons Tiny icons that appear next to URL in browser address pane or next to page title on tabs. The easiest option I found for these is here http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/ you can upload an image then download an icon - peasy. Muffins Firstly we'll deal with the eating bit. Then when hell freezes over we can discuss baking. |
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