Frequently Asked Questions
Browse through the questions below or click on the links at the top of the FAQ to go directly to a section based on the heading. Read our Dreamweaver FAQ to learn more about Web design, or send your questions to Janine@DigitalFamily.com.
Quick Links to
Frequently Asked Questions
- Should I create a blog or a Web site?
- How do I create a Web site for my Wedding?
- How can I keep track of how many visitors come to my site?
- Is it safe to put my children's photos online?
- How come my images are broken on my Web site?
- Do I have to keep the subfolders when I create an online photo gallery with Photoshop? And why are some pages named index?
- Do I have to learn Dreamweaver to create a Web site?
- Can I create a calendar online?
How do I create a blog or online photo album?
Dear Techy Translator:
My son said I should have my own blog, or at least a family photo album, but I'm too embarassed to admit to him I don't know where to start.
-- Trying to keep up with a techy teen
Dear Trying to keep up:
First of all, give up on knowing as much as anyone who is more than five years younger than you — and remember it's okay to ask them for help....
We all need teachers. You'll find lots of instruction here at DigitalFamily.com and we hope the "techy translation" will help you understand your teen better...
Before I answer your question, I must warn you that you could study technology for the rest of your life. That's half the charm for some of us — the Internet is the ultimate research tool and resource in one. And it keeps growning and changing.
If you want to learn the basics of creating a blog, an online photo album, or Web site, a good place to start is our Web design intro tutorial. Once you have that down, consider learning how to register a domain name or look through a list of lesson descriptions to find more tutorials that interest you.
The best way to keep up with technology is to keep on learning.
-- Wishing you the best,
Your
Techy Translator
Re: How do I create a Web site for my Wedding?
Dear DigitalFamily.com
I want to create a Web site for my wedding, which will happen early next year, but I don't know where to start. What's a bride-to-be to do?
Soon-to-be married in Denver
Dear soon-to-be married
One of the biggest obstacles to creating a Web site is figuring out what kind of site is best for you. Many people don't realize how many ways there are to create a Web site, which is why I put together an explanation of some of the best Web design options for families in my Web Design section.
All my best,
Re: How can I keep track of how many visitors come to my site?
Dear DigitalFamily.com
I want to add a traffic counter to my Web site. Do you have any suggestions for a service that can help me?
-- Daniela
If you want to keep track of more than just the number of visitors to your site, my best recommendation is www.statcounter.com. Many professional designers use them and they have free and paid levels of service. Not only do they tell you where your visitors are coming from, they'll show you how they found you -- like what words someone searched for in Google that led them to your site.
In general, I don’t recommend public traffic counters, the kind that show the world how much traffic you have on the front page of your site. But a private way of tracking your own visitors can be enormously helpful to any Web designer.
Hope that's helpful to you,
Janine
Re: Is it safe to put my children's photos online?
Re: Dear DigitalFamily.com
I'm concerned about putting my child's photos on the Internet. How do I protect her privacy and keep her safe while still sharing photos with her grandma online?
-- Concerned parent
Dear concerned parent
Many parents wonder whether it is safe to put their children's photos on the Web; others simply don't want to share their stories with the world for fear they may attract unwanted attention. Although there have been some highly publicized cases of children running into trouble because of someone they met online, such incidents are rare. I consider a child's photo appearing on a Web page to be roughly equivalent to his or her image appearing in a school yearbook or in a sports team photo in a local newspaper.
Most of the problems I've seen or read about on the Internet occurred because a child met someone in a chat room or online forum. If you're concerned about your children's safety on the Internet, make sure you keep an eye on them while they're using the Internet, ask them who they are corresponding with, and keep the computer in a public part of the house, such as the living room, so they can't hide their online activities.
The other place kids can run into trouble is at free Web site services, such as www.myspace.com, where kids can create a personal site. Many naively include lots of personal information, such as their home address, where they go to school, and other details that I don't recommend you include in a personal or family Web site.
Here are a few things you can do to protect your personal information:
- Don't include your home address or phone number on your Web site
- Don't include your work address or phone number
- Don't include the exact name and location of a child's school
- Be careful when writing about the times when you won't be at home, such as the dates you'll be on vacation
- Consider protecting your site with a password. Although it's technically difficult to add a password to a customized Web site, if you create a site with an online service, such as MyEvent.com or KodakGallery, they automatically generate a password or special web address that you can use to give access only to those people you want to invite to your site.
Although I share your concern and, above all, I want you and your family to be safe, I hope you won't let fear stand in the way of getting the most out of the Internet and using it to share your family stories. Millions of families have created Web sites and enjoyed showing their photos and stories without any trouble. Indeed, many people report that one of the great benefits of a personal or family Web site is that they have made new friends and reconnected with old ones who find them online.
All my best,
Janine
Re: How come my images are broken on my Web site?
Hi Janine,
I'm reading your book to help me with updating the Web pages for my church. The guy who created the Web site has moved away, and the church staff understand little about Web development. I have just as limited knowledge but I am a graphic designer, so if I can figure it out, at least our pages will look pretty!
The problem I'm having is when I set up pages with photos or imported graphics. When I upload the page to the server, although the images are embedded in the page, they don't show up (I get the dreaded x'd image.) I'm using Front Page 2002. I've uploaded the images to the same folder as the index of the page and also placed them in a designated image folder. Neither fix makes any difference.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for your help,
Anne
Anne,
There are so many reasons why photos may not show up properly when you upload your Web site. It can be a bit tricky to find the problem sometimes, but one of the most common and easiest mistakes for beginners is to name your image files with spaces or special characters. Although they will work on a PC or Mac computer that way, most Web servers run on UNIX and they can’t handle spaces or special characters in filenames, so as soon as you upload the site, the image links break on the server.
If that’s not your problem, it may have to do with where your images are stored. You said you tried saving them next to the index file as well as in a separate images folder. Either option should work fine, but you have to make sure that when you set the link to the images, they are in the same relative place on your hard drive as they will be on the server. The easiest way to ensure that is to save all your Web site files and images in a folder on your hard drive, and then upload the contents of that folder to your server when you're ready to publish them. You can use sub-folders, such as an images folder for all your pictures; just make sure you copy your pictures into the right folder before you insert the image onto your page.
I hope that helps,
Janine
Re: Do I have to keep the subfolders when I create an online photo gallery with Photoshop? And why are some pages named index?
Dear Author
Hi, I purchased your book Creating Family Web Sites For Dummies and your book Dreamweaver MX 2004 For Dummies and they both are great.
One question I hope you can answer for me is about using Photoshop to create a web gallery. Once the files for the web gallery are created, do I create a new folder on my existing web site to insert the 3 files? Do I leave them in their subfolders or add all to the new web page folder? What impact does the Photoshop gallery file labeled index.html have on my home page, also index.html? Any conflict with the home page having exact same name and extension?
As you can tell I'm a newbie at this and any help would be appreciated.
Thank You,
Jim
Dear Jim:
You claim to be a “newbie” but you’re certainly asking good questions.
When you create a Web gallery with Photoshop Elements you should get three folders – one with the thumbnail images, one with the larger images, and another with the html pages for each image – you also get a new index.html page. You need to copy all of those into your main Web site folder exactly as they are, but there is a trick to not overwriting your home page.
That index.html page that Photoshop created is important – it’s the first page of your slide show. The way you keep it from overwriting your main index.html page is to save it into its own separate sub-folder within your site. That way, when you copy it into your main folder, you don’t overwrite your main page, because the index page for the slide show is in a separate directory. JANINE, this is confusing. Simplify it, especially the final sentence, and don't use "it" -- always say what you're talking about.
The easiest way to handle this is to create a folder called “slideshow” or something like that inside your main Web site folder and then copy the three sub-folders and the index page from Photoshop all into that subfolder.
Once you’ve done that, you can create a link from your main index.html page and any other pages in your site directly to the index.html page inside the “slideshow” folder and you’ll have a link to the beginning of your slide show.
Photoshop calls that main page that it creates index.html because it’s good practice. When you use index.html in subfolders, you can browse to specific sections of your site more easily. This may seem a bit complex at first, but here’s an illustration to help you get the idea of how it works.
Let’s say your main URL is www.JimsFamily.com. When you open that address in a browser, your main index.html page will open because that’s the main file recognized in your main folder – the browser always looks for the index page. If you have another index.html in a subfolder called “slideshow,” you can open that page in a browser by using the address www.JimsFamily.com/slideshow. If, however, you renamed the main page in your slideshow to something like slides.html, the address in a browser would be www.JimsFamily.com/slideshow/slides.html. If you create multiple slide shows, you can create a new folder for each one and name them separately – just remember you can’t use any spaces or special characters in the folder or file names.
I hope that makes sense and helps you get your slide show online. Please feel free to email me if you have additional questions.
Happy Dreamweaving!
Janine
Janine
The instructions to create a Web gallery with Adobe Photoshop were perfect. Can I suggest that you add this information to your next revision. I found the information very helpful and I believe it would help other readers in developing their web sites.
I want to say again how helpful your books have been. Without the clear and simple explanations, I would have never tried to learn how to put up a home site.
Thanks again,
Jim
Jim,
I'll definitely add that to the next version of the book. Questions like yours help me make my books even better with each version and give me great material for this FAQ.
Thank you,
Janine
Do I have to learn Dreamweaver to create a Web site?
Dear DigitalFamily.com
"I've heard that Dreamweaver is the best program for creating Web sites, but it seems really complicated and kind of expensive. Do I have to get Dreamweaver to create a Web site?"
I've written several books on Dreamweaver and it is a great Web design program, but you don't have to learn Dreamweaver unless you want to create a professional, custom Web site. There are definitely easier (and cheaper) ways to create a family site. Check out our Web design section for an overview of the options -- from blogs to online photo albums to custom Dreamweaver sites.
If you want to learn Dreamweaver, watch our free video lessons to learn more about this award-winning program or order a book from our bookstore.
Re: Can I create a calendar online?
Dear DigitalFamily.com
We want to create an online calendar to keep track of our crazy schedules. Any good suggestions?
-- Busy Family
Dear Busy Family
First, I recommend you all take a day off once in a while. Then I suggest you check out Yahoo! Calendar. It's remarkably easy to set up, everyone in your family can post to the same calendar if you share the password, and the best part is it's free! You can even create more than one calendar -- so you can use one for immediate family and another for your club or sports team.
Good luck keeping up with each other,
-- Janine