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Cool, easy tattoo parlor website template?

Gucky — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:56:47 -0800

What should I use to set up a simple, cool-looking small business site for a non-techy friend? I bought my cousin-in-law 2 domains for Christmas related to his tattoo parlor. (I searched his small business and found that they didn't have a web page and some other business took the most obvious way to spell their URL.)

I've only hand written a webpage in HTML before or grabbed one of Dreamhost's default WordPress themes.

I don't want to become the business's tech support.

I just want to hand him a paper with a URL and a user name and password and there will be an easily update-able web page with the business, address, link to Google directions and blog and/or Twitter feed and a gallery (possibly a Flickr pull in?)

Do I use Google Sites? Is there a theme that is suitable for a pretty tough tattoo crowd that's easy to use?

Do I host it on my own Dreamhost with a WordPress theme? Is there a WordPress theme you'd recommend?

Low effort. Cool enough. Doesn't require a regular outlay of cash or tech effort. Help?

Administering non-celebrity Facebook pages

total warfare frown — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:26:09 -0800

Does anyone run a Facebook page with a large number of fans? A friend of mine and I set up a page (Not Being Murdered By Clowns) as a goof and were surprised when the number of fans climbed into the tens of thousands. Around the 50,000 fan mark, I received a message from Facebook saying that I needed to prove my affiliation with the subject of the page in question. A tricky proposition, since we made the subject up.

They suggested changing the name of the page to the official web domain. I registered notbeingmurderedbyclowns.com and asked them to change the name of the FB page. That didn't work. They suggested adding a badge or "fan box widget" to the "actor's official website." Obviously this isn't possible. None of their suggestions - get someone affiliated with the alleged celebrity we're a fan of to link to the page, basically - are doable. I don't have anything on the web page I registered yet, and frankly don't have the time to put something together right now.

There are several other "Not Being" pages out there (Not Being On Fire and Not Being Eaten By Sharks are the biggest), but I can't find any contact emails for them, and their info appears even more bogus than ours. My replies to the FB emails have been fruitless as well.

It isn't like we're emotionally invested in this, but we're almost at 80,000 fans and had thought about printing some t-shirts and making a little money off the venture. Now, however, both of our publishing rights have been blocked. Any thoughts?

Enlarge and print part of pdf page?

ragtimepiano — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:21:13 -0800

How do I enlarge and print part of a pdf page? I subscribe to the NYTimes Digest online and print out the crossword puzzle page. The print on a standard 8 1/2 by 11 page is fairly small, and by the time I finish the puzzle my eyes are tired. Besides printing out, scanning to file and using photo editing (a time-intensive process), is there a way to enlarge the part of the page on which the puzzle appears, and to print out only that part?
Thanks, members of the hive mind!

What software should I use to design a Webpage logo?

hellodonna — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:09:42 -0800

I am trying to create a professional looking logo for a Web site. I am using GIMP but finding I am very limited in terms of what I can do with it. Is there a software package that I should be using that will allow me to create a good looking logo/header image? I understand Photoshop is the best however, it's really expensive (700.00). Are there any software alternatives or do I just have to pony up for Photoshop? By the way, I have a PC.

facebook page question

jschu — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:34:09 -0800

Question regarding facebook page for a business. I am doing a six month marketing internship at a new magazine. My first assignment is to create a facebook page to help promote the magazine.

My problem is that I need to be able to let others access and edit the page at the end of my internship. I created the page but it seems that it is only accessible through my personal facebook account. Facebook's help page say:

Maintaining multiple accounts, regardless of the purpose, is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If you already have a personal account, then we cannot allow you to create business accounts for any reason.

Is it possible to let others have admin access to this page? Or should I just create a facebook "group" instead of a "page"?

I lost my pagerank

Lord_Pall — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:19:45 -0800

What's going on with my Home of the Underdogs revival Google rank? Until today http://www.hotud.org was the 2nd returned listing for a google search of "home of the underdogs". (Below wikipedia)

Now I'm not anywhere to be seen. Like 3 pages in at the best and the first real link is to a dead revival project...

What gives? What can I do to fix this?

Is there a cheap, easy way to put a custom welcome page on a home wifi network?

nathanrudy — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:38:55 -0800

Is there a cheap, easy way to put a custom welcome page on a home wifi network? I'm leaving the connection unsecured, and would like anyone who comes on to see a custom home page telling them about the area and why it's an open network. I have guests at my camp in NH and would like them to see a page come up with local links and assistance when they hop on the Internet. It would give them info on who to call for help, where to go for pizza, what gyms are available, where to rent a boat, etc.

Need Googlepages replacement: free, no ads, javascript. Amazon S3?

nolnar — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:40:26 -0800

Googlepages webhosting shuts down in June. Help me find a replacement. Requirements: free/almost free, no ads, javascript, css, custom html upload, at least 50Mb storage. Would Amazon S3 work? Not needed features: mysql, php or similar server side scripting.

There are of course many commercial webhosts. But are there any reliable free (or almost free) services around similar to Googlepages (Google Page Creator)?

I've glanced at Amazon's S3. If I understand their prices then hosting a small site with very modest monthly data transfer would be very inexpensive. But I've also read claims on blogs that S3 can't autoload index.html and various other skeptical posts. However I find no clear info on the official S3 site regarding the index.html issue. So maybe it does work now. Or there might be some smart way around it. So I ask:

question 1: can S3 satisfy the requirements above?

I here hope for feedback from people with experience of S3, maybe even as a html web hosting solution.

question 2: if S3 doesn't satisfy the requirements above then suggest some other interesting free/almost free alternative that does.

number my pages, dammit!

crazylegs — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:48:41 -0800

How do I put in page numbers in OpenOffice? What's the deal with OpenOffice? Sure it's free, but man it has some wierd quirks! I'm trying to put in page numbers, which has always been totally easy in Wordperfect and Word, the other two programs with which I'm familiar. The only way I can figure out to put page numbers in OpenOffice is to insert a header and then type in each page number individually. Surely there must be an easier way to do it. I've searched the help files, I've done everything. It's really pissing me off. Help!

Facebook group vs. Facebook page

veggieboy — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:31:50 -0800

Blog has a Facebook group . . . but I think maybe it wants a Facebook page. What is the real difference? Advantages/disadvantages? If I switch from group to page, I'm going to have to start from scratch, i.e. invite everyone all over again, right? As it stands, the Facebook group is envisioned mostly as a way for people who enjoy the blog to let other people know about it. (You see the blog mentioned on your friend's Facebook page somehow and decide to check it out. Success!)

There's not a lot of interaction regarding the blog that needs to take place on Facebook. Occasionally it might be used to let people know how they can support the blog, and for any blog milestones.

So what would be the best way to accomplish this? My impression is that Facebook has revamped pages to be more active than groups, which seem to just sort of sit there and not, say, appear in your feed ever. But please correct me if I'm wrong. And thank you.

Layout Inspiration

b33j — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:27:47 -0800

Where do you go for page layout (for print materials) inspiration? Websites, books, anything? Extra difficulty - education material for children P-12 written by professionals.

How do we make web-based scheduling available to patients?

blueberry — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:31:48 -0800

Looking for a way to allow people to schedule their vet appointments via the web. My friend is setting up an animal acupressure business out of her home. While she is like Dr. Doolittle when it comes to animals, she's like John McCain when it comes to HTML.

We want to set up a pretty basic web site for her: main page, FAQs page, maybe a page with how-to-get-here directions... however,

here's the gist of the question:

She would like to have a page with a calendar so that people can see appointment availability and also make appointments via that same page (that is, say a client sees there's an opening from 2pm to 6pm on Tuesday, so they click on something and then are able to make an appointment from 2–3pm). The calendar could show a month or a week at a time, but would need to have a "next week/month" and "previous week/month" so people could schedule weeks/months in advance.

Once clients filled out the "schedule appointment" form
(which would ask for [day/time], name, phone number, email address)
and clicked submit, the schedule calendar would be updated so that that block of time would no longer be shown as available for other people to make appointments.

If it matters. there are only two durations of appointments that would be needed: 90 minutes for new clients, and 60 minutes for previous clients. It would be nice if she could somehow tell the scheduling software that after a 90-minute session, she'll need 30 minutes to take care of all of her notes (so she would be unavailable for other appointments), but maybe that's too intricate and she'll just have to book 2-hour slots and then tell the people that it'll actually only be 90 minutes in-office.

Finally, there are two forms that new clients need to fax in before their appointment (an intake form about their animals various info, and a form that just needs the signature of their veterinarian). I was thinking that it would be good to have an automatic confirmation email go out right after the person makes their appointment—the email would say hello, list their appointment date and time, and include a reminder about the need to fax in the two documents.

Is there some sort of web plug-in or something out there that can do this calendar-scheduling this for her?

Right now she has no web page, so if your suggestion requires something specific ("...Such-And-Such requires that your web host be running Apache v4.3 with the retro-encabulator and prefamulated ammulite..."), please let me know so we can choose the proper hosting place.

Also, she's on a Mac, so if you happen to know of any WYSIWYG web page builders out there that would allow her to easily set up something like this on her own, please throw those suggestions my way too.

So just to recap: web-based calendar/scheduling program that she can embed in a page and doesn't need to touch or fiddle with—just look at to see her schedule.

Thanks in advance!

What is that printmaking symbol called?

damnthesehumanhands — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:45:44 -0800

What is that symbol one finds at the beginnings or endings of chapters of books called? It's like a little arabesque, but with a (reasonably) flat bottom or top.

Cached Web Pages

kjl291 — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:15:01 -0800

Is there any way to find a cache page of a website that was taken down within the past day? I have tried the major search engines with no luck... The site is fileinc.com. fileinc.biz is the same site and is still available, but I'd like to get the .com page as well. Any google-fu ricks that I am nt aware of?

How do I make Google Apps and Page Creator work together?

gfrobe — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:04:32 -0800

How do I get Google Apps and Google Page Creator to work together? A friend asked me to set up him a very simple web page for him. He owns his own domain, which he wants to use as the page url address (www.hisdomain.com) and he also wanted to use the domain name as his email address (john@hisdomain.com). After some googling I read that you can use a custom domain in Page Creator so thought Google Apps combined with Page Creator would do the trick. I registered his domain with Apps, set up his mail, etc. but now can't find a link anywhere in Apps to Page Creator. I see a link to Sites but that seems like a completely different application. And if I just go to the normal Page Creator site it asks for an email sign in and his apps address isn't working there. So I have two questions:

- can I set up a Page Creator site using a Google Apps address or do I need to sign up for separate gmail account for that? I was hoping he could administer the site and and his email all from the same place.

- if I need to sign up for a separate gmail account to use Page Creator, how do I then use his apps domain as the url address for the website?

How can I "tail -f" into a constantly updating web page?

kuperman — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:34:19 -0800

How can I effectively "tail -f" into a constantly updating web page? I've got a log file that I need to have visible in a web page, constantly updating, kind of like doing 'tail -f logfile' in a console. I've seen this done before (e.g. the Shoutcast server has a built-in cgi routine that will constantly update the page with the contents of the sc_serv.log file) without having to manually refresh the page. A meta-refresh won't work because you'll lose your place in the log (the page may rescroll to the top).

The caveat is that I'm using IIS5 on Win2k. I can't install PHP or Perl (policy), otherwise this might be a walk in the park.

Any ideas? Got two seconds to give me some awesome code, or link me to something where this has been done before?

Putting the page numbers exactly where they ought to be?

.kobayashi. — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:18:44 -0800

Can you help me figure out Microsoft Word 2007's settings to meet some very precise requirements for page number formatting? For my dissertation, I need to reformat my page numbers so the top of the number is exactly one inch from the top edge of the page, and the right edge of the number is exactly one inch from the right edge of the page. After that, there should be a double space separating the page number from the text.

I've been futzing around for a while with the headers. But I'm clearly overmatched here. Can anyone either give me a step by step through this, or point me to some clearer online instructions than the ones I've seen so far? Thanks so much!

(And yes, I know, I know, Word has lots of problems, but switching programs is a non-starter right now.)

[CSS/Javascript] How do I create full page overlay ad that covers the page when user first enter (similar to news.com)?

parttimeninja — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:08:55 -0800

How do I create full page overlay ad that covers the page when user first enter (similar to news.com)?

How can I see pages side-by-side in Acrobat 8?

penciltopper — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:52:37 -0800

How can I open multiple pages at once in Acrobat, so I can see them side-by-side? I have Acrobat Standard 8.

I have some documents where I'd like to compare pages - see 12 with page 37 side-by side, for instance.

I can't seem to find a way to open both at the same time - only to pop back-and-forth betwen bookmarks.

How does one open several pages at once in the same document, or open multiple instances of Acrobat at once?

Writing front to back then back to front

dcbarker — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:45:20 -0800

Is there a term for writing only on the right-hand page of notebooks then flipping the notebook over and working from back cover to front cover? I *hate* writing on the left-hand page of notebook. Maybe I have an odd pen-grip but I find the middle of the notebook seems to get in the way as a write (especially with spiral-bound notebooks!).

So I write only on the right page and once I get to the end of the notebook I close it, flip it vertically and start writing from back-cover to front-cover, again only writing on the right hand page.

Is there a term for this? Is it a popular technique and does it have any historical significance or is it actually really uncommon.

How does this translate into money?

Oriole Adams — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:31:21 -0800

Explain Web Commerce to me in simple terms. Does a web site make money just by virtue of people going to it? For example, if the company I work for sends a regular end-of-month email to the employees (this is a relatively small compoany, less than 50 employees) enthusiastically showing we've had over a million page visits, does that automatically translate into revenue? Or do visitors have to click on an ad or actually purchase something from the Web store for the company to make any money? If that's the case, why all the enthusiasm for the amount of traffic to a company site?

Custom Page Cannot Be Displayed Error

linklog — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:39:56 -0800

I know you can create custom error pages (via htaccess) for specific sites but is there a way to create a custom 'Page Cannot Be Displayed' page on the browser side with Explorer? I was thinking it might be nice to include a link to google cache of the page or perhaps automatically redirect Explorer to that page.

How do I legitimately hijack website content?

jedicus — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:25:07 -0800

HTML/Javascript: I need to "hijack" website content so that it appears to be hosted by a different domain (with the full knowledge and cooperation of all parties). My boss maintains a website at, let's say, boss.example.com. He has an affiliation with another organization with a nicer domain name, let's say, fancyexample.com

He would like to allow users of fancyexample.com to go to fancyexample.com/boss and see all of his boss.example.com content as though it were hosted on fancyexample.com. So if a user went to fancyexample.com/boss/homepage.html they would see that in the address bar but the content would be pulled from boss.example.com/homepage.html

Ultimately, I want to write a small shell page to place on fancyexample.com that "hijacks" the boss.example.com content in as seamless a way as possible. I believe that this can be done very simple using javascript and a frame but I don't have much web programming experience.

Again, don't worry, my boss, boss.example.com, and fancyexample.com all know about this and approve completely.

how to search for English pages with Chinese characters?

MonkeySaltedNuts — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:27:52 -0800

Any way to search for English web pages that contain specific Chinese characters? For example in Google when I set my preference to English pages only and then search for Huamei with the characters 话梅, I get mostly all Chinese pages. I would just like to see pages that are mostly English but know enough about 'hua mei' to include the Chinese characters. Google does not think the results it gives are English because it offers to translate the pages.

I've tried adding (ume OR plum OR prune OR apricot) to the search but this still gives mostly all Chinese pages and seems to miss some generated by the simple search.

Google help does not seem to address this.

Andreana Weiner: recent-ish pictures plz?

Quarter Pincher — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 11:43:57 -0800

Can you find me some more recent pictures of Andreana Weiner, an American actress, other than from the ST:TNG s07e07 "Dark Page" with which co-stars a young Kirsten Dunst? Perhaps someone has Adams Family Values or Red Dragon and could take screenshots? Thanks!