Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with webpage

Webpage personalizer wanted

leigh1 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:25:28 -0800

Is there a website that can allow me to make a personalized webpage (similar to iGoogle) full of pictures, like a simple image gallery, and all I have to do is add link to the picture? I don't want thumbnails, I want the page to be scrollable and all pictures at 100%. This is for personal use only. I am too lazy to save pictures to my disk and make this in Dreamweaver, then upload for every picture, etc etc.

How can I force Excel 2007 to save as a single html file?

thisisnotbruce — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:49:34 -0800

How can I force Excel 2007 to save as a single html file? At work we use an application (Tririga) which can take uploaded excel spreadsheets in html format in order to perform calculations.

Previous versions of excel would output a single html document, which worked beautifully. Excel 2007 now outputs a folder structure with the base html file using frame references for the actual content.

/Report.htm
/Report_files/sheet001.htm
/Report_files/tabstrip.htm
/Report_files/filelist.xml

These spreadsheets are maintained by end users, so an optimal solution would be finding some hidden setting in Excel rather than a multistep process.

Thanks in advance for any help.

auto-name saved webpages

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:41:08 -0800

Is there a way of saving a web-page from a web-browser, using a name from a source outside of the web-page? I want to save several web-pages to a folder, and I would like a semi-automatic naming convention. Previously, I have been manually saving each web-page by hitting ctrl-s, and entering sequential numbers. I am analyzing these pages using a loop, so this convention makes it quite easy to loop through all files in the folder (I am doing this analysis using a few VBA macros in excel).

One mild complication is that some of these web-pages will all have the same default name if I use the actual prompted name, so re-naming after saving is not an option as it would overwrite files.

I haven't been able to figure out how to go about doing this within firefox on windows xp, so any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Suggestions using alternative browsers/OSs are fine as I use mac and linux also.

Need recommendations to learn simple Wordpress to modify an existing webpage.

judybxxx — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:57:38 -0800

I Need help with (I hope) simple Wordpress to modify an existing Wordpress webpage Seeking recommendations of (youtube?) tutorials, basic manuals, etc. I have 30 years of varied computer experience, but none with creating/maintaining web page content. And didn't want any. A friend and I have inherited that task from our webmaster and I don't understand the mindset and terminology of pages, posts, categories. I need to rearrange the home page , adding some pages and changing the layout, add photos (linked to (apparently) pages, in a changing display, etc etc. googling wordpress tutorial free gives lots of possibilities. I think we will set up a blog one of these days, but most important is to modify the web pages. I need some basics. Is a blog a subset of a web page, or vice versa, or is it all the same? Any help will be appreciated. I found the following in the archives, but still appreciate help. (from MeFi archives) I would recommend wordpress as an engine for driving a simple website as you describe, but you may need smoeone to set it up for you. I think you should look at basic things like how to upload files and display images first, get some idea of how the internet works in general. Then any package you use will make a lot more sense to you. Things like wordpress are very easy to set up once you have the basic skills, but if you don't even know how to ftp it can be a big step up.
posted by shelleycat at 7:23 PM on January 8, 2007 [+] [!]

If she does not know web design I would start with Wordpress.
posted by yoyo_nyc at 12:01 PM on July 2, 2008 [1 favorite +] [!]

I'd disagree slightly over Wordpress. It's perfect if she specifically wants a blog, but to adapt a wordpress template to her own design she'll certainly need to know CSS and possibly even need a rudimentary understanding of PHP, and that may be a case of going in at the deep end.

If she's a graphic designer with good Photoshop skills, then what she's probably looking to learn is some basic HTML and CSS, and the techniques involved in transferring a page design from Photoshop to the web. I'd suggest that she gets a good HTML/CSS book that caters for people from a design background, and just has a go at putting together a simple site of a few pages. Alternatively, a site I've heard a lot of people rave about is Web Design From Scratch.

If she decides she also wants a blog, then maybe she could explore Wordpress once she has some basic HTML/CSS skills; probably the best avenue would be to find a basic template from one of the many online repositories and then tweak the existing HTML/CSS to her own requirements.

another view
I'm not saying that WP is the best choice (it's not a true CMS), but you might want to give it a try because it is fairly easy to use and it has is an enormous amount help available for newbies.

Web page templates without CSS

Bleusman — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:55:15 -0800

I'm looking for a stylish free webpage template that doesn't use CSS. Here's the story: I'm taking a terrible, terrible web page design class; one where the teacher said on the first day "No one uses code anymore." So I'm stuck using Dreamweaver, and now I'm assigned a project in which I need to modify a template to make a webpage. However, all the free templates I can find are either:

a) much more simplistic than the teacher wants
b) heavily use CSS, which we aren't allowed to use

Essentially, she wants us to use an outdated template that relies on HTML tables. So, to deal with this impossible handicap, I turn to Metafilter. Is there anything out there that would actually work for my purposes?

I want to put a web site on my Kindle.

grumblebee — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:20:06 -0800

Is there a simple way to convert a multi-page website to a mobi-format book for reading on a Kindle? The site contains html-text plus graphics, but no interactivity. It's an online computer manual. It has a home page, which is a table of contents. Each item in the contents links to a different web page.

The individual pages are composed of text and screenshots of the application.

I want to be able to read this manual on my Kindle, rather than on my laptop. I don't want to read it on the crappy Kindle web-browser, because I won't always be able to be online. (My apartment is in a Sprint dead zone.)

I assume that I'd have to make one big web page out of all the site pages and then convert from html to mobi.

Is there a way to turn a site into a single page?

Is there a way to then turn that page into a mobi document (or something else the Kindle reads) that still contains images?

Easy content management?

monkey closet — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:34:40 -0800

A friend has asked me to design/build a website for an organisation he's involved with. He will be updating the pages, creating new ones etc. There's a very small budget, which only covers the intial setup He has no experience, and a copy of FrontPage (which I don't use or have). The host allows php and ssi, but not databases. What's the best option for providing him with a template that will let him create and change pages easily, without screwing up my layout and causing me more grief?

Help me find a Crunchbase-like widget and database combo for custom data display.

underdetermined — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:40:36 -0800

Is anyone aware of a widget and database like Crunchbase that I could use to display my own data on my web site? I'm looking for something where I could insert a tag onto the web page (or Wordpress post) to call data for that particular item from a database and display it in an intuitive format. The database could be accessible only by me, or could be a wiki. Does anyone have any leads? I've searched to no avail. Thanks!

How can I make a self contained blog?

ooklala — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:28:05 -0800

Is there a one page, databaseless blog? I would like to have a page that I can update easily (from my browser), and does not use a database.
Ideally, this page would entirely self contained (the editing and the viewing part).
Does such a page exist?

I want something with similar ease of use that opening a textfile and editing the file has, except with rich text, and in my browser.

How can I get an email alert when a web page changes?

tamagosan — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:27:22 -0800

I need to automatically refresh a web page and be alerted via email (or run an applescript) when it changes. There are a few commercial apps that do this, but they're Windows based and I'm on a Mac. I'd also prefer something that's freeware. There's also a couple Firefox add-ons which will automatically check a page for changes, but none that I've found allow for an email alert (or to run an applescript).

How do I save a script/content rich web page as a local file?

nickerbocker — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:07:35 -0800

What is the best way to save a script/content rich web page for archival reasons from a remote server, locally? I would like to save my World of Warcraft Armory Page as a local file, for archival reasons. Is there a way to do this that would preserve all the mouse-over's and in general be a complete recreation of the content available? If so, what is the best way to do this? Is there a way to do it without locking it into a particular web browser or viewing program?

More on the reasons why:
Whenever a new item in the game is found, the armory web site is updated. A history of changes isn't reflected on the web site.

What I've tried:
All of the "Save Page As..." options in Firefox 3.0.3.

How to see expired posts on Craigslist?

MrZero — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:52:01 -0800

I did a Google search and came up with a link to a Craigslist posting, but the post is expired. Obviously, Google has the text of this because it shows me snippets of it in the search result list, but there is no "Cached" link for me to see it. How can I get this info out of Google or Craigslist? Or, alternatively, is there a website that has cached versions of Craigslist posts? The post in question is ten days old.

You like to what, now?

Cricket — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:27:00 -0800

Does anyone remember a site that had symbols for designing a comprehensive logo reflecting one's sexual practices and orientation? Some time ago, a friend of mine had a site bookmarked that had small images designed to be combined to show what sexual practices someone enjoyed, including instructions for indicating whether the person preferred to "give or receive.".

My friend wanted to design a tattoo around the idea, and having the original site would help. Does anyone remember seeing anything like that?

How to find the age of a page?

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:02:12 -0800

For certain reasons, I need to get the time of birth of a certain web page on another company's site, down to the minute. I've checked the source code for notes, archive.org, and a couple of SEO tools I use but I'm drawing a blank on how to find out the precise age of this page to the date and time, EST, without access to their server logs. The page cache is not even indexed in Google at this time.

Is there a good tool or technique out there for finding the exact age of a web page?

And, no, unfortunately I cannot simply call them and ask them.

The url is formed like this:
http://example.com/?id=foo

Whose line-height is it anyway?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:51:28 -0800

What's causing these unruly line heights in my web page and how do I solve it? It's the site linked from my profile. Most of it is dynamic content so it changes fairly quickly; the snapshot linked above is how it renders for me right now, FF 3.0 b5, XP. It happens only occasionally, sometimes the lines are all the same height, as I want them to be.

I'm fairly certain I'm overlooking something, but what is it? Is it an inheritance issue? Should some other value be cleared first? Is it not line-height after all but paddings and/or margins? Something else?

Thanks in advance, guys.

How to make spreadsheet dynamically sortable web table?

Malad — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:01:35 -0800

I want to take an Excel spreadsheet and just make it a dynamically sortable table I can put in a webpage or blog. I want people to be able to click a column, and have the table be sorted by that column. Best solutions? Also, if the table included locations, is it possible to make them selectable, and have the selected locations display on Google maps? Thanks.

Please recommend software program for creating/maintaining webpages

jujube — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:49:06 -0800

Please recommend software program for creating/maintaining webpages I would like to be able to create webpages, and also to be able to edit/maintain current webpages. I currently have others do this for me, but I'd prefer to learn to do this on my own, rather than find someone every time I need to update something minor to the webpage, or when I want to add a new link/page, etc. The webpage is currently maintained by using a combination of something called Filezilla to transfer the files, and Seamonkey to edit the files. As I said, this is currently done by various people I find to edit/maintain on an ad hoc basis.

So my question is:
1. My impression of the current method is that it is cumbersome and difficult, and I find the prospect of trying to figure out how to do this rather daunting. So, do the for-purchase programs for creating webpages make the job that much easier than the current free-wares that I'm using?

2. If so, what are the webpage creating/maintaining software out there that will be fairly simple to learn? The key here is ease of learning. I have a few hundred dollars I can spend on this, but not so much time learning how to use it.

3. If there is such a program, does it matter that the original webpage was created using a different software?

Thanks!

[it stands for getting my own fucking blog]

heeeraldo — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:39:40 -0800

Help me pick a CMS, so I can GMOFB (among other things) I'd like to pick a CMS to build a personal webpage off of; although it wouldn't be too difficult to put up HTML pages, I'd like to get some experience working with CMSes in case I need to do so in future.

I'm fairly proficient with X/HTML and CSS; I use mostly Coda to put stuff together (but have Dreamweaver CS3) and would like the following sections:

an about me page
multiple photo galleries
a portfolio section
a blog, mostly for detailing what I'm working on and/or interesting, work-related links
a fairly static colophone page
a contact page

As you can see, it's not really anything that would tax a CMS but it I would like something that is fairly flexible and tweakable because, frankly, I like poking around in the guts of things.
I've worked with Blogger before, and thought it was alright. At this point I'm leaning towards Wordpress but Movable Type also looks like an interesting option.
Thanks, folks.

perhaps i just need a better mouse.

verisimilitude — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:25:37 -0800

I'm looking for a software app that helps me follow instructions for other computer procedures. Sounds complicated? Well what i am looking for should be really simple.

I am trying to learn various programs (SPSS at the moment) and find step by step instructions on the webpages of benevolent souls really useful. Perhaps I'm monumentally lazy but I find clicking back and forth from SPSS to the webpage really irritating. I'm sure its a simple task to make my mozilla browser stay in the foreground, but I cant figure out how.

In searching for a solution it dawned on me that there should be an even better way forward. I propose a simple app that allows me to select (like PrtSc) a set of instructions from a webpage, then pins this text in a lightweight easy to move and modify window that stays in the foreground. That strikes me as a good idea, so I am some bright spark has already bettered it.

How can I be cheap and have a good website?

Bageena — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:05:40 -0800

Anyone know where a pair of clueless artists can find some free website design templates? My friend and I are trying to get something up FAST, as fast as possible, while keeping as much money free as possible as we have an upcoming art show and we need money for the prints and frames. So yeah.... flash would be awesome, but HTML will suffice. I just don't want some geocities-esk 1990's website! Thanks Mefites!

404 Not Found

lou — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:40:56 -0800

Why are the 404 pages on my server broken?! I get a 500 Internal Server Error instead. Link to my .htaccess inside. Here's my webpage.

Here's what happens when you go to a page that doesn't exist.

But I get an Internal Server Error instead!

Now, I'm suspecting that the problem lies in my .htaccess file, but I can't be certain. I can't link directly to it, because you get the 403 Forbidden page, properly. So here's the text file version of its exact contents.

Any suggestions? Anything I'm overlooking??

WebPage Design Basics

snap_dragon — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:34:48 -0800

I have an older iMac running 10.3. I need to learn a basic web design program. I have a Dreamweaver tutorial book with a demo but cannot anytime soon afford that program. I may have access to a laptop with windows. Anybody have any suggestions on web design programs that are inexepensive? I am already adept in Photoshop and Illustrator. I appreciate your input

Why do web pages of text load so slowly?

cgc373 — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:18:17 -0800

Some web pages with a lot of text seem to load slowly, even over broadband, and especially when compared to the bandwidth streaming video uses, I don't understand why. Can somebody explain? (Warning: Those links load slowly.)

How to create current-looking graphic design?

foxinthesnow — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:24:26 -0800

I am trying to design a banner for a public library web site. I find that all the banners I design are too retro-looking. Kind of 1950s, Alvin Lustig or Saul Bass inspired. Cute, but they don't seem to represent a forward-thinking, technology-oriented library. I am looking for examples of banners that might inspire me, and I am hoping you all might have some suggestions. Also, any elements you think I should try to include or try to avoid. This banner will be seen by tens of thousands of people, and will be the "face" of the library online. Links to examples of what you think works and why it works would be much appreciated. I had no idea that I would have such a hard time with this; I just don't seem to get 2007 design! Thanks.

Is there an iWeb equivalent for Windows?

dogwelder — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:06:20 -0800

Is there a windows-equivalent to iWeb? I work at an elementary school. I have teachers who want the ease and bells & whistles of iWeb, but we’re all windows here. I don’t care how bloaty the code gets; I just want teachers to look and say “ooooh, pretty!” I tried to convince them to use something simple like Vox, but it isn't flexible enough.