Foggy Header

We designed a new header for the Collective Obsessions Saga last week:

 

Kudos to Smart Photo Editor for the community-contributed "fog" effect. It overlaid perfectly just underneath the cliff and lighthouse, which depicts the essence in the series of books written by Deidre Dalton.

Access Management Et Al

December has been a busy month for us, aside from personal holiday preparations. All of us at Webs Divine are looking forward to a purposely quiet New Years Eve celebration to recharge our collective batteries, and then it's back to work.

In early December, we created an access management system for one of our existing clients. It was a first go-around for us, but from start to finish it took about six days to complete the project. The Members Only feature of the project included organizing and tracking more than six hundred user names and passwords, which gives access to confidential documents and web pages.

To that end, we utilized Coffee Cup's easy-to-use Website Access Manager. The software program was indeed a blessing, and comes highly recommended by us.

Product description:

"When it comes to password-protecting members-only areas of your web site, .htaccess files are the way to go. Unfortunately, they are also complicated. Website Access Manager gives you all the power of .htaccess files with none of the confusion. Its workspace is easy to use, setting up members-only areas is fast, and you can protect as many pages as you want."

Coffee Cup's customer service department is a cut above the rest as well. Whatever questions we had were quickly addressed by a member of their staff.

Website Access Manager (WAM) tips:

• Because the .htaccess function only works with Apache and Apache-compatible servers, WAM comes with a tool to determine if your server meets the requirements. Your server should have PHP 4.47 or higher installed in order to use WAM.
• Before importing an Excel spreadsheet for correct use in WAM, the spreadsheet has to contain information placed in a certain order. The various lettered columns signify specific information fields in WAM, so the data must be provided accurately in order for the spreadsheet to import properly. For example, column A must contain the user's real name, column C their preferred user name, column D password and column F an e-mail address. The reason columns B and E are skipped is so that when information is imported it goes to the correct fields for the individual member. For example, if we added information to columns B and E, the data listed would go to the wrong fields once imported into WAM. For a list of all correct property fields, click here.
• If you are using an Excel spreadsheet to create a database in WAM, the document must be saved as a comma-delimited file (CSV).
• After importing an Excel spreadsheet into WAM, all user details should be in their proper fields. However, if user details change in the future (new address, new member, delete member, etc.), the fields can be edited inside the WAM program (as opposed to importing the Excel spreadsheet all over again).

 

As we went along creating our access management project earlier this month, we also put together a personalized step-by-step "user's manual" for our client. This is something we do for clients on request. Call it a back-up plan just in case the client has to take over maintenance of a site for one reason or another. In other words, we don’t like to leave folks twisting in the wind in case the unthinkable happens.

Apart from creating the new access management system, we were busy in December with two quarterly online newsletters (IENA and WANA), along with several book cover designs, logos and buttons.

We also acquired a new client in December, but must remain mum about their identity for the time being. The client will be running for a political office in February and wants a web presence established before he/she begins their campaign.

Excel/WAM Guide

Before importing an Excel spreadsheet (CSV) for correct use in Coffee Cup’s Website Access Manager (WAM), the spreadsheet has to contain information placed in a certain order. The various lettered columns signify specific information fields in WAM, so the data must be provided accurately in order for the spreadsheet to import properly. The list below displays the guideline:

A)   Real Name

B)   Title

C)   Username

D)   Password

E)   Website

F)    E-Mail

G)   Company Name

H)   Address 1

I)     Address 2

J)    City

K)   State

L)    Zip

M)  Country

N)   Phone

O)   Fax

P)   Language

Q)   Time Zone

R)   Note

S)   Expiration Date (uses local system date format)

Leave the lettered column blank if the information is not needed, but do not place incorrect information in blank column or it will throw off the placement when imported into WAM.

Click here for more information, or click here to return to "Access Management Et Al" blog entry.

 

Holiday Buttons

We have lots of fun creating holiday-themed logos and buttons. This is our latest:

The button will be used for the Christmas recipes at Food Fare next week.

To view more, go to the Logos & Buttons page of our web site.

No-Repeat Web Background

Adding a tiled image as a web background can sometimes cause a continuous repeat of the image, making the page look confusing and unprofessional. A simple code can fix the issue.

The above image is named "scrollcandle.jpg." In order to stop the background image repeat, use the following CSS code (placing the name of your image in the brackets following url):

<style type="text/css">body{ background: url(scrollcandle.jpg) black center no-repeat fixed; } </style>

Using the code will allow the background image to display as follows:

The properties of the code can also be adjusted to fit the background of your web page. For example, "black center" can be changed to color and alignment suited to your needs.

Click here to see a live sample of a no-repeat web background.

Historical Logo

Creating personalized logos and buttons can sometimes be a challenge, but they are also great fun. Historical Essays is our latest:

The intent was to create an "antique" feel to the logo to accurately depict the advertised content. Each essay in the five-book collection reached back into history to include Jack the Ripper, US Political Parties, Billy the Kid, Anne Boleyn and the Loch Ness Monster (for which we also designed the book covers).

For the logo we began with a black slate, inserted the essay covers in a row and then saved it as one new image. After applying various backgrounds (glow, saturate, grungy and parchment), the above image became the final logo.

The border style of the logo is known as "wizard's book," which can be found within the Smart Photo Editor software program.

Quick Forward

Forwarding pages are often used to re-direct people to a specific web page that has moved or for one reason or another, has been renamed.

We recently designed a forwarding page for a new client. She wanted the page to forward automatically, so we devised the following:

The snippet used to forward a page needs to be placed between the <head> and </head> portion of the html code:

<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5;url=https://www.advocare.com/110918645/default.aspx">

In the above code, 5 represents the number of seconds before the page forwards. You can change this to any length of time you prefer, such as 3 (for three seconds). The url (also bolded above) needs to be replaced with the exact web address of where you want the page forwarded.

It's as simple as that!