Hi Barry,

Here’s an example of what it looks like:
<img src=”photo.jpg” width=”250″ height=”360″ alt=”My Great Photo” title=”My Great Photo” />
Note that the code: alt=”My Great Photo” is alternative text, which is recommended because this text is used by screen readers for the blind that ‘read’ web pages to people.
Adding the code: title=”My Great Photo” is not redundant, but you don’t have to use the same text for both. The title text will appear when you roll a cursor of the image.

Hope that helps,
Janine

I recently redesigned a site for a client with WordPress and hosted it on GoDaddy. Unlike a standard blog where we would be starting off from scratch, there was already an existing site, hosted on another service, with a lot of content so we used GoDaddy’s Preview DNS feature to give us time to put in the necessary content before switching over to the new site.

This feature allows you to preview your site on a separate URL with previewdns.com appended to the normal domain name.

Several days after launching the new site, many of the pages suddenly appeared with broken image link indicators. It turns out that the previewdns.com domain will get assigned to any images you upload in the WordPress database so, when the Preview DNS expires, WordPress will be looking for the images in a domain that no longer exists.

GoDaddy’s technical support, while usually very good, was not able to provide us with an easy solution to this problem. Their recommendation was to re-upload the images to the site under the new, real domain name – but at that point that would have amounted to uploading a few hundred images again and, through the WordPress system, would have cost us a lot of time and effort.

After doing some research it turns out that there are a couple of fairly quickways to correct this problem, but they require performing the equivalent of afind-and-replace command on the MySQL database that WordPress uses. These processes can be risky so you may want to backup your WordPress database before performing these procedures (http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups)

The first method, which I consider the easiest and preferable way, is to download and install a WordPress plug-in called “Search and Replace,” which you can find at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/. This should allow you to search for and replace all the instances of http://www.[yoursitedomain].com.previewdns.com with http://www.[yoursitedomain].com.

If the plug-in method doesn’t succeed in eliminating the extra “previewdns.com” from the URLs, the next method involves operating on the MySQL database at a lower level. The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure that WordPress is that the domain name is updated in the WordPress’ options. Two good sources for instructions on that are GoDaddy’s help system (http://help.godaddy.com/article/5712?) and Sallie Goetsch’s blog (http://www.wordpressasylum.com/previewdns-can-bork-your-wordpress-installbut-theres-a-fix/)

The second thing you’ll need to do is replace all the instances of the
previewdns.com URL in the database with the new, normal URL for your site(replacing http://www.yoursitedomain.com.previewdns.com with http://www.yoursitedomain.com) Full, detailed instructions on how to do that can be found at Lorelle Van Fossen’s blog at http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/12/01/search-and-replace-in-wordpress-mysql-database/

That took care of the problem for me – saving hours of rework – and it should for you, too!

– Guest post by Dale Ellis dale@ellismultimedia.com

Answer:

In any URL, caps are optional up to the .com part. Addresses are only case-sensitive after the .com (same goes for .org, .edu, and other types of URLs).

When I’m advertising a Web address or URL, I like to use caps in the URL because most web site names are easier to read that way.  I recommend:

MyDomainName.com

or for my site: DigitalFamily.com

However, if anyone types your domain in all lowercase, they’ll get there just fine. (Some publications prefer that style and will only print URLs in all lowercase, but it’s not necessary.)

Both DigitalFamily.com and digitalfamily.com will take you to the same web page, but if you have an address that extends beyond the .com part, the case does matter.

For example: DigitalFamily.com/Books and DigitalFamily.com/books are not the same address — the one with the capital B will not work.

The technical reason is that most web servers are case-sensitive and the part of the address that comes after the .com is based on the name of the folder or the filename that page resides in on the server.

For the same reason that links within a web site should match the case of the name of the file they link to, the address after the .com needs to match the case of the specific file or folder.

Think of a long URL as being one long link to a page within a site. In this example, DigitalFamily.com/books takes you directly to a page on my web server that is in a folder named “books.” This won’t work with “Books” because I didn’t use a cap when I named the folder. Most web designers use lowercase after the .com consistently so they can easily keep things the same, but if you do use mixed case on folders and filenames, you need to do the same in the URL (as you see in this next example).

I could have linked specifically to the page about my newest book, Mobile Web Design For Dummies, by using this URL: http://www.digitalfamily.com/books/mobileWebdesign/index.html.

And here’s your bonus lesson for the day

Name your main pages index.html to create shorter sub-URLs.

The URL http://www.digitalfamily.com/books

goes to this page: http://www.digitalfamily.com/books/index.html

If you name the main page in any folder index.html, you can shorten the address and just use the folder name. That makes it easier to give the URL out in print, and because most web servers are designed to “serve” the index.html page first, you can more easily set it up.

Save people typing the extra long addresses and use index pages to take people directly to subsections of your sites.

Oh, and if you have a blog, use an SEO plugin to help create clean URLs. Short URLs are better for humans and computers…

I’m a capable freelance print designer starting to learn Dreamweaver. One of the first real-world tasks I have set out to master is creating an email message. I loved your article in the current issue of LAYERS but have had issues inserting images. I have looked on the Adobe boards for similar problems without finding an answer. I would greatly appreciate your help.

My problem is that my Photoshop JPG is not showing up. I have loaded the image in my Mac.com gallery, but when I place the link for this file in the Scr field of the Property Inspector, all I see is a broken JPG icon. When I switch to Live View, the area shows a blue box with a question mark. The Mac gallery is unlocked and not password protected. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for your great article.

Best regards,
Eileen

Hi Eileen,

Your problem is a little hard to diagnose from what you’ve written here. The only “trick” to all this is to make sure the photo is online and the path you insert into Dreamweaver takes you to the image.

Here’s a test you might try: Copy the URL for the image directly into a web browser and see if that takes you to the image. If not, you don’t have the right URL. I’m not sure how the Mac gallery sets up the path to images, but if you continue to have trouble, you might try copying the URL for an image (any image) from elsewhere on the web and make sure you can get that to work. It could help you identify what’s going on in your gallery.

Hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Dear Janine,

Thanks very much for your response. I did as you suggested with testing the image URL, was able to navigate correctly, but still had the same issue. I went back to read the directions, taking the “full image URL” direction a little more seriously. I used the Ctrl+click on the image, selected Copy Complete URL on my Mac, pasted this, and it worked. Previously I had been cutting and pasting the URL from the gallery window, which looks like it is missing a few numbers. I now know how very exact I must be when using these new tools. Thanks for the lesson and for helping me get started.

Cheers!
Eileen

Hope you can answer this question. I am using Dreamweaver MX2004 and want to include an image as a background in page properties. I don’t want the image tiled and I think there is a way to do that by using CSS, but I sure can’t find it in the Help section.

Can you point me in the right direction? By the way, I think CS4 and CS5 are far more difficult to use for those of us who only occasionally build a web page.

Thanks in advance,
Pete

Hi Pete,

I understand your reluctance to upgrade to a more complex version of Dreamweaver, but you won’t find the options you’re looking for in MX2004. To add a background image that does not tile, you’ll need to use Cascading Style Sheets, and those features were not included in the Page Properties in MX2004.

You can create your own style sheets in that version if you learn CSS and can write the code yourself, but believe me, that’s a lot more complicated. If you upgrade, you’ll find that the Page Properties features in later versions of Dreamweaver make it easy to control how a background tiles and the program generates the necessary CSS code for you.

You’ll find many free tutorials on the CSS features in later versions of Dreamweaver on my site at www.DigitalFamily.com.

Hope that helps,
Janine

I’m a capable freelance print designer starting to learn Dreamweaver. One of the first real-world tasks I have set out to master is creating an email message. I loved your article in the current issue of LAYERS, but have had issues inserting images. I have looked on the Adobe boards for similar problems but haven’t been able to find an answer. I’m not sure if you take questions like this, but I would greatly appreciate your help.

My problem is my Photoshop .jpg is not showing up. I have loaded the image in my mac.com gallery, but when I place the link for this file in the Scr field of the Property Inspector, all I see is a broken .jpg icon. Switching to Live View, the area shows a blue box with a question mark. The gallery in mac gallery is unlocked and not password protected. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for your great article.

Best Regards,
Eileen

Hi Eileen,

I do try to answer questions like yours, but it’s a little hard to diagnose from what you’ve written here. The only “trick” to all this is to make sure that the photo is online and that the path you insert into Dreamweaver takes you to the image.

Here’s a test you might try: Copy the URL for the image directly into a web browser and see if that takes you to the image. If not, you don’t have the right URL. I’m not sure how the Mac gallery sets up the path to images, but if you continue to have trouble, you might try copying the URL for an image (any image) from elsewhere on the web and make sure you can get that to work. It could help you identify what’s going on in your gallery.

Hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Dear Janine,

Thanks very much for your response. I did as you suggested with testing the image URL and was able to navigate correctly, but still had the same issue. I went back to read the directions, taking the “full image URL” direction a little more seriously. I used the control + click on the image and selected “copy complete URL” on my Mac, pasted this, and it worked. Previously, I had been cutting and pasting the URL from the gallery window, which looks like it is missing a few numbers.

I now know how very exact I must be in using these new tools. Thanks for the lesson and for helping me get started.

Cheers!
Eileen

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

For the past 45 days I have been trying to figure out how I turned off my Alternate text on my images. The browsers no longer show the text when the image is moused over. I know when this happened but can’t find the fix.

What I did is decided to use an image placeholder on a page. After I inserted this placeholder, the Alt text now only shows when the site is loading on the browser. I need this text to show when a visitor is viewing the site and moves their mouse over the images.

I am sorry to trouble you with this but I am desperate to get this problem fixed. Thank you in advance for any assistance you may give me,

Donna

Hi Donna,

I think your problem is the browser you are using. When you view your site in Internet Explorer and roll your cursor over the image on the front page, the Alt text appears just fine. In Firefox, you don’t see it, but that’s because the browser works differently, not because of your code.

You can use JavaScript to create a little pop-up message with the text so that it would appear in more browsers (unless of course the visitors have pop-ups turned off). You can find the pop-up message feature in the Behaviors panel in Dreamweaver (choose Window > Behaviors to open it, click to select the image, then click the + sign in the Behaviors window and choose Popup Message. Whatever you type into the dialog will appear when someone rolls a cursor over the image in any browser that supports JavaScript.

Hope that helps you solve your problem. I didn’t look at your code, but I like your site and what you’re doing for the arts center.

All my best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Thank you for making the DVD Dreamweaver CS3 (Total Training) lessons on creating Web sites. I have found your instruction method to be clear and easy to understand. I have found one or two places where your lessons might have included more clarifying information but did not, yet know this could also have been just an example of my missing something. The point is, I have very much enjoyed working with you via DVD, and now want to FTP the 60-plus page site.

Some time ago I subscribed to WebAssist so as to gain access to their many extensions. I have not downloaded anything as of yet so that if I suddenly experience some kind of difficulty, I will not have to isolate the one from the other to further isolate/identify its cause. So far, all well and good. Are you still with me?

A couple of weeks ago, WebAssist made available an extension upgrade called Surveyor 1.0.5; perhaps you are familiar with it. I decided to give it a try, using a copy of my Web site, in case problems should arise. Unthinkingly, for a moment forgetting everything you had taught me, I simply dragged the entire site to my other dedicated partitioned 1-terabyte HD, on which I intended to test Surveyor. Perhaps you know where I am going with this?

Suddenly I have files searching for their images or graphics. And when I actually can view an image on, say, Firefox and then attempt to test the links, nothing works as before, even though they worked perfectly prior to my dragging the entire site’s Root Folder to another partition. When trying to view via browser, I sometimes have an image, sometimes not. The more I read the more fearful I become that I may further damage the site; so I ask you, what can I do to remedy my major fopah? Is there anything I can do, or have I completely screwed everything up? Can you please help me?

Thank you, Janine.
Jamie

Hi Jamie,

From what you’ve written, it appears that you’ve moved your main root folder for your site and Dreamweaver is having trouble keeping track of your links and image references.

You have a couple of options. You can move the folder back to exactly where it was before, without changing an folder names, and Dreamweaver should find it again.

If you want to leave it where it is, or don’t want to move it back exactly, you can use Dreamweaver Site Management features to reset the root folder (just follow the basic site setup features I cover at the beginning of almost every one of my video lessons).

Once Dreamweaver knows where the root folder is again, you should be back on track, and if any images or links were broken in the meantime, they should be pretty easy to fix (consider using Dreamweaver’s Link Checking options to make sure).

You may also benefit from understanding that you can have more than one copy of the same web site on your hard drive; you just have to treat them as different sites in Dreamweaver. That means you’ll need to keep each copy in its own folder and then go through the site setup process using Dreamweaver’s Site Management dialog for each site separately. You can name them something like site1 and site2 so you can keep track.

A good practice is making a backup copy for testing new features, especially features as complex as the ones you can get from Web Assist.

Sorry I don’t have much experience with Web Assist, but I hope this helps you with your Dreamweaver challenges.

I wish you all the best with your Web site,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.