Desperately Need Website Help Before Monday

[Tiamat]

I've actually got most of of my website done, but I'm stuck at one part and need help before tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm taking some of my goodies and pies to the local paper here to the food editor and several of the staff members and if it goes well will be donating items for a charity desert thingy sponsered by the Mayor's wife which means loads of publicity however, I'm stuck trying to do what seems to me one simple thing but I just can't get it to work. All I want to do in the main heading is put Aunt JuneBug's Pies in script or handwriting lettering. We only have wordpad and notepad on our computer...yes I know but Billy Bob (husbands name for computer) was strictly built for gaming

Anyway we've tried everything to get it in there. We've renamed files jpg, jpeg, png named them everything the flippin' thing says but it won't load it. It just can't be that freekin hard to put Aunt JuneBug's Pies in the main image thingy!!! Look, I know I suck at computers and am extremly technologicaly challanged but does it really have to be this hard

Can anyone help please....I've worked on this thing for three days and am about at my wits end.

[SlowwHand]

Someone help her! She was near there to begin with.

[Tiamat]

I was close?

[SlowwHand]

To wit's end.



Japher had a thread asking for help. Maybe something there?

[Locutus]

There's a couple of different ways to go about this with all their own advantages and disadvantages, most of which are quite techie and boring (but important to know about if you're really getting into web design) -- I shall not digress on them here as you probably don't care. The easiest low-tech way to do this is probably to make an image of the text you want and put that on your site, as you indeed seem to be trying to do.

However, you cannot simply take a .doc or .rtf file made by Wordpad and just rename that to .jpg or whatever to turn it into an image, that's not how it works. A name is just a name, it doesn't say anything about the contents of a file. Even if Windows assign a nice little image icon to all .jpg files that doesn't mean they're actually images, they're still the same old text files they were before you renamed them.

To create an image you need an actual image program rather than a text editor like Wordpad. For example Paint, which comes with pretty much every Windows (it should be in the same place in the Start menu where you found Wordpad). You'll need to get your Wordpad text into Paint as an image and the easiest way to do that is to take a screenshot of it. These should be foolproof step-by-step instructions to do so:

1) Open Wordpad and create the text exactly as you want it to appear on your website.
2) Press the Print Scrn key on your keyboard (usually located somewhat to the right of the F12 key, above Insert)
3) Open Paint, go to the menu Edit and select Paste. If it asks you to resize the canvas or something along those lines, confirm that. Inside the Paint window you should now see an image of the screen you had in front of you when you pressed Print Scrn.
4) Click on the Select icon on the left-hand side of your Paint window (a dashed rectangle, second icon on the top row) and drag a box around the text you want to appear on your site.
5) Go to the Edit menu and select Cut. The contents of the box you created around your text should disappear.
6) Go to the File menu and select New. Do not save the changes.
7) Inside the Paint window there's now an empty white rectangle (your 'canvas') with a couple of blue dots surrounding it. Select the blue dot in the bottom-right corner of the canvas and drag it towards the top-left. This resizes your canvas: make it tiny, at least smaller than the box you selected in step 4.
8) Go to the Edit menu and select Paste. Again, confirm if you're asked to resize the canvas. The text you selected in step 4 should now appear.
9) Save the file (File > Save), but make sure to select JPEG, GIF or PNG as the File Type in the Save window (by default it saves as BMP, that's not what you want).
10) Add the .jpg/.gif/.png file you just created to your website as you would with any other image.

I hope that helps...

[FrostyBoy]

Locutus has the solution for you Tiamat. If that fails, tell us the name of the font and the words exactly how you want them written (and font size), then one of us can make it for you.

[Tiamat]

Thank you so much it does help. Now next question is after I hit publish how do I get it to the web?

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by Sn00py
Locutus has the solution for you Tiamat. If that fails, tell us the name of the font and the words exactly how you want them written (and font size), then one of us can make it for you.

Thank you....but please realize you're dealing with stupid girl 101 here. I feel a bit stupid. Meaning the font that I used on the wordpad?

OOOOOppppps almost forgot

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Tiamat
Thank you so much it does help. Now next question is after I hit publish how do I get it to the web?

That I don't think I can help you with. It depends on what program you use to create your website and where and how you want place it on the web (i.e. who hosts your site). I'm an old-fashioned guy myself, I handwrite my web pages in a text editor and upload it with an FTP client to my own server that I have full control over (i.e. Apolyton) -- a very techie way to do things, as well as expensive because a privately owned server like that costs a lot of money (but for a site as big as Apolyton it's the only way to go). I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with a lot of the simpler and more user-friendly solutions out there.

Presumably if you hit publish in the program you use to make your site it'll create all the files you need for your site in a folder somewhere. You need to find this folder and copy all the files in there to a web hosting service. If you use some consumer hosting service like an ISP service or Lycos it will probably provide you with some kind of easy-to-use web-based click-'n-drag tool for this. Some more advanced services (like a corporate server) may require you to use an FTP program like FileZilla. To make a long story short, how to get your files hosted on the web varies greatly per service.

If you already have a hosting provider, check their documentation or contact their tech support to find out how to get your site online. If you don't, first check if your ISP offers web hosting -- this is often a standard feature that you're already paying for. If they do, check their documentation or contact them. If they don't, you'll have to find a third-party service to host your site. For a fully home-made web site (made in MS Frontpage or similar) you'll probably want to sign up to a service like Lycos: it's free (although your site will have ads on it) and fairly easy to use. There may well be other services out there that are better, my knowledge on these types of services is grossly outdated. I'm sure someone else will be able to provide more up-to-date and useful advice...

[-Jrabbit]

Tia -- tell us more about how you want your logo to appear.

I assume it will be across the top of your homepage, centered. Are there color requirements? Can you give a "something like that" example?

Here are eight samples of script-y typefaces in MS Word. Tell us which is closest to what you want.

[Addled Platypus]

for those customers to the far right





btw Font=Rammstein, sehnsucht

[Tiamat]

You guys are the best!!!! I go to make a Buttermilk pie and comeback and this is just awesome!!!! I can't thank you guys enough for this. Ok originally I was thinking of something like forth or fifth one down. That's what I was originally going for but I really like number 3 it's kinda funky and retro a bit... next to the main title is a picture of my aunt june 1920's flapper style picture. #3 reminds me a bit of the mad hatter in alice in wonderland. #3 it is.

[Tiamat]

Or.......wait second to the last is good to. So let me ask this, my business cards have the pretty script like 4 or 5. Should website be similar to the business cards?

[Tiamat]

It will be across the top of the page I don't think there are color requirements. I was hoping to have it either brown or maroon (deep red) background on site is similar. at this point I should just give you guys my password and let you go to it

[Mrs. Tuberski]

i like two and three
three being best and one that should be on a card