Beginner

Creating a custom home page in Drupal 7 using Views (part one)

by Liam McDermott, 23 June 2011 - 2:11am

Having installed Drupal, one of the first questions people ask is, ‘How do I change the home page?’ By default the front page of Drupal has a blog feel, with the latest posts shown in date order, but it does not have to be like this! These two articles will show how a front page can be customized using Views.

CSS fundamentals: Data types (colours, lengths, URLs)

by Megan McDermott, 5 October 2010 - 3:52pm

All CSS properties have a specified type of value they can accept. Values may be keywords, lengths, colours, numbers, or url's. This article will explain some of the specifics of CSS values, including how colours are specified, what units of measurement are allowed, and how URL are specified.

CSS fundamentals: Selectors

by Megan McDermott, 5 October 2010 - 3:50pm

In CSS, Selectors are used to select HTML elements for styling. There are many different ways to select elements. This article will cover the most basic types of selectors: element selectors, classes, and ID's as well as the concepts of grouping and descendent selectors.

CSS fundamentals: The absolute basics

by Megan McDermott, 1 September 2010 - 6:01pm

This article will begin a series on CSS fundamentals. To begin, we need to understand what CSS is and how to use it. This article will include a definition of CSS, an overview of what a CSS rule looks like, and a summary of the methods available to use CSS in your web pages.

Choosing your web building software

by Megan McDermott, 23 July 2010 - 9:29am

To build a website you need several types of software: a code editor, an FTP client, a graphics editor, and a selection of web browsers are the basics. This article will describe these tools and suggest popular software to try. In most cases, there are many alternatives available. It's a good idea to try several of them and see what works best for you.

How to automatically include your header, navigation, and footer on every page

by Greg Sanderson, 8 March 2009 - 5:28pm

Have you ever wondered how large websites handle those repetitve elements that appear on every page? The navigation menu, header, and footer usually stay the same on every page of a website. But what happens when you want to change something? Do you have to edit every page and change it separately?

PHP offers a wonderful method to resolve this with the include() statement.

How to Build a Home/Small Business Web Server in no Time

by Liam McDermott, 19 September 2008 - 10:45am

This article goes through a quick and easy process for building a home or small business web server. The finished server will have Web server software, PHP, Perl, Ruby, MySQL, PostgreSQL, quotas, e-mail server software, anti-spam and anti-virus software, and a lot more good stuff. To top it off it will have a Web based GUI to control it all. Read on to learn how.

How to Choose a Great Colour Scheme for Your Site

by Megan McDermott, 8 September 2008 - 1:52am

One of the most important parts of the initial design process is the choice of colour scheme. If your client or topic of interest already has a set of preferred colours, your choice is easy. However, there are many occasions where the choice is entirely up to you. For many people, deciding on the colours can be a difficult task. Armed with a little colour theory, some great online tools, and your own design sense, you can create attractive and unique colour schemes for your website designs. This article will show you how.

Making Web Pages Search Engine Friendly

by Terry Llewellyn, 30 April 2008 - 5:49pm

They say that if you have the world’s best mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. When it comes to the Internet this couldn't be further from the truth. For any product to succeed you have to let the world know you have it. One of the easist ways to do that is to have the search engines pull up your site on page one of the search results for your product or service.

What is a Div?

by Liam McDermott, 27 October 2007 - 6:32pm

Web designers use it nearly every day, but not many actually know what the div tag means and where it should be used. This article aims to de-mystify the div tag, explain when and where it should be used and compare it with the similar span tag.