page layout

swordsinfo

site review again

Hi all im back again and looking for your ideas. I have added a page on my site to promote a band in swords - trick is I have to promote his new cd / his gig guide and his news releases but i have built thr site to suit 800px resolution would be interest in how you think I should lay out the info

http://www.swordslife.com/entertainment/

thinking of spliting the "no event news listed" area as this info is generated from a custom cms and having justthe date and venue of the gig with floating divs. let me know what ya think. Plus is there much in setting up mysql dbs. I use access all the time cause its what I know best but I know theres limits to access and I have used myphpadmin but only after its been installed or if its hosted locally. is there a actualy file name from phpmyadmin thats athe database file like example.mdb in access

sorry lots of questions:eek:

Liam Byrne

swordsinfo wrote: »

Plus is there much in setting up mysql dbs. I use access all the time cause its what I know best but I know theres limits to access and I have used myphpadmin but only after its been installed or if its hosted locally. is there a actualy file name from phpmyadmin thats athe database file like example.mdb in access

sorry lots of questions:eek:

The database is actually MySQL; phpmyadmin is only a front-end to it.

The mysql database & schema is contained within a folder, but that folder is rarely within your site files / FTP access. Your host should be able to enable a mysql database within your hosting package, and will usually provide phpmyadmin access to it.

swordsinfo

I use an america host and its on a windows box so dont think it supports phpmyadmin (i know re the fromt end). I hava phpmyadmin on my machine hence why I mention it - dont think the host supports it.

You mentioned its not in the site/ftp files? Then where is it? is it just in a folder on the host server that is in a protected folder? Either way I would like to convert my access database to mySQL but still stuck in the middle of how.

Cheers for the comments

matt-dublin

your code doesn't validate. and your css calidation link doesn't work properly. Plus, personally i woudn't use the images provided by w3c on your pages, they're very dated and look crap. You're better just putting something like a XHTML - CSS in your footer or makein your own images.

layout is strange and my eyes are being pulled away from the real content by the red logo in the top left.

The header picture you should try and take again early in the morning when there's no traffic.

also your advert on the right is way too overpowering. you should let the page content take up the whole page width and put an advert in the footer or below your main header but not much more than 100px high.

i use mysql and asp for most of my sites and depending on who your host is its fairly straight forward to set up, and the sql isn't too different from access.

Generally i make the connection with ODBC and the databse i create on my own machine, get mysql to build a script that will create the tables and then run it on my hosts server.

swordsinfo

Hey cheers for the comments
The side menu is a server side include so imports onto most pages - so far the news and home pages have been adopted for validation the others will follow suit.

Eyes being pulled away to the logo is a good thing I would have thought - branding and name recognition. Most people dont even look at site logos so this is a good way to brand it off (hence the red)

Agree with the header - it was one I had to kick it off - was only a small idea at the start tht has gotten bigger and bigger same it the side advert we had no news in at the begining and had a welcome note this is all beiginging to change - I have used sql with myphp but dont think my host supports it but it might have another front end for it - I'll investigate more. Like I said I am try to get away from using access.

Aye I connect to the db through odbc with file dsn so I presume the same is associatied with mySQL.

Appreciate the comments some I will take on and try improve the visuals of the site - but I do find it a simple site to navigate through and hopefully will take off the ground. Cheers for your imput!