The encyclopedia about UFOs and the paranormal

[ufopsi.com]

Proud to let you know about my baby:
www.ufopsi.com



It is a static encyclopedia about anomalous phenomena, such as flying saucers and ghosts.

[gwyneth]

Your site looks really good! Are you using a CMS, and if so, which one?

I've got a nitpick and a suggestion. The nitpick is a typo: "entertrainment" for "entertainment" in the headline down towards the bottom before "browse the photo gallery".

The suggestion is that you change to percentages for the column widths--yours seem to total 800 or so pixels which leaves a fair amount of real estate to the right. A lot of people are unnecessarily aprehensive or scared or something and won't use them but they're easy and produce a uniform appearance no matter how small or large a visitor's screen is.

Left gets a width in percentage and an optional left margin in percentage
Middle gets a width in percentage and left margin (bigger than the left's percentage(s), and right in percentage (bigger than right's percentage(s)
Right gets a width in percentage and possibly a right margin in percentage

But then, I'm not just a CSS freak, I hate fixed widths (nothing to do with you!)

It really looks good and is obviously content-rich, as they say.

[ufopsi.com]

Hi there,

Thanks for the typo-tip.

I'm using no CMS at all: I designed and built my template from zero using XHTML. Quoting Fats Domino: "All By Myself". The thing is, there are cool CMS out there, but unless you spend hours in customizing and hacking, you end up using a template or lose control. I wanted to create my own look. Plus, if the database goes down, your whole site goes after too.

I've been considering percentages, think I gotta study it a bit more. The one point that strucks me is that if a user with a big monitor goes full screen, (s)he'll have a very wide text area...which is a pain to read. I may be wrong.

Anyhoo, thanks!

[slapshotw]

So keep your site width constant (looks to be about 750px or so now), but center it in the monitor.

FYI, CMSs can give you a great deal of freedom of used correctly. I've set my new site up in my signature with a CMS (textpattern), and you can use any kind of layout you want-- you can see I use a different one for my front page than the rest, and a different one for the portfolio page. It just makes it easier to update the content and create new, but related pages.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by ufopsi.com

Thanks for the typo-tip.

You're being a lot better natured about it than some people. Mostly I don't mention them, but occasionally if I see a really bad one, I'll email the web-site and I've actually gotten rude replies.

I'm using no CMS at all: I designed and built my template from zero using XHTML. Quoting Fats Domino: "All By Myself". The thing is, there are cool CMS out there, but unless you spend hours in customizing and hacking, you end up using a template or lose control. I wanted to create my own look. Plus, if the database goes down, your whole site goes after too.

It looks very professional, but more than that--it looks so pulled together and coordinated into a package. That's why it looks like a CMS. (Actually, I suppose it's the other way around--CMSes are a quick way to achieve that effect.)

It's obvious, too, how much content of different types you've included. One of the things I really liked is that if there's a blog, it's not obvious--I've seen a lot of sites from students and graduates that feature the designer's blog as if that were the most important content.

All in all, your site looks as if a fairly large team produced it, which is even more impressive without using a CMS.

[ufopsi.com]

Well, thanks again. I've spent hours, days, weeks on my site. While I am using no CMS, there is a template with editable areas.

You're being a lot better natured about it than some people. Mostly I don't mention them, but occasionally if I see a really bad one, I'll email the web-site and I've actually gotten rude replies.

I am not Brit nor American, therefore glitches can happen. I cannot understand why other people are rude or do not reply.

[ufopsi.com]

Finally fixed "entertainment". Does anyone know how to have multiple columns in CSS, without using further DIVs?

[gwyneth]

http://alistapart.com/articles/holygrail

CSS Source Ordered 1-3 Columned Page Maker by ClevaTreva Designs - The Generator Form v2.90

[slapshotw]

Nice to see an A List Apart link on the forum! Gwyneth, are you as avid a reader as I am or was that a googled link?

[WEG0508]

I don't have anything to add other than to say that I have enjoyed reading this thread very much.

To the user who posted the site to share with others and those who have replied in a very positive manner offering "constructive suggestions" rather than criticism, thank you.

With the many thousands of sites hosted by Hostgator I think we would see a daily posting of several "here is my site, what do you think" type interactions here if we can maintain this type of very positive member interaction.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by slapshotw

Nice to see an A List Apart link on the forum! Gwyneth, are you as avid a reader as I am or was that a googled link?

I love A List Apart. The first link shown I haven't just bookmarked for my CSS folder (with about six other specific List Apart entries), I copied the source code for each of the examples and saved it in a special sub-section of my local CSS reference collection.

I actually found that particular entry the day of the last exchanges about width and I thought--that would solve the encylopedia problem PERFECTLY. I tried the examples with each of the four or five resolution change test widgets I've got and it was neat to see them work each time.

Passion for excellence in anything is great, of course, but when a zealot (like me) discovers a master who has not only pondered something but refined it to its most excellent simplicity, wow. (Sorry, I'm proselytizing.)

I'm putting together a list of CSS gems I'll post later.

[slapshotw]

Interesting and great to know. I too read A List Apart every time a new issue comes out. It's nice to see people on boards (besides evangelists like us) adopting CSS for layout and other stylistic decisions and seeing real benefit in it.

[gwyneth]

It's funny about CSS. You'd think people who were into efficient coding and devising elegant routings would appreciate the idea that you can, in effect, program the appearance.

Back when I was working with really complex documents and document systems (and playing with 'synthetic writing', or programming words and phrases to appear as appropriate), there was a lot of the same kind of resistance to styles and templates in Word, Frame, Pagemaker, and Quark, and it seemed as if the more technical the content a writer or editor was dealing with, the harder they fought against 'programatic' styling!

As recently as two years ago I encountered a very bigtime editor of science and technology oriented stuff, who in semi-retirement was assigning and collecting writers' articles, then editing and passing them off to a set of publications that ran a rather well-designed Word template. The writers all used the Word template, handed their templated material to this guy.

Then he'd strip every bit of formating because he didn't understand the concept of styles and templates, edit the material and turn it in to the publications in plain text for them to put back into the template!!

And, get this...he was removing that formatting and all the field codes around text manually, one by one. When I showed him how one command would eliminate all the field codes in a hundred page document, all at once (two seconds vs. two days) leaving the text those codes had produced, his jaw dropped. (I hated the idea he was removing them manually even more than the idea he was removing them.)

It's a general problem with all kind of technology--people are reluctant to undergo a little pain up front to understand how to spare themselves infinitely more pain over time. Two words: VCR programming.

[ufopsi.com]

Thanks to everybody; there is a new article:
http://www.ufopsi.com/articles/serpo.html

[gwyneth]

Michele, I meant to tell you last week after you posted this that your new story read well (as editor-types say)--it came across both scientific and journalistic, i.e., organized, objective, and that BBC-type flavor.

(That's the very, very, very slight skepticism that all BBC stories about anything have a tinge of--impossible to pin down, it's one of the things that gives BBC such authority. I've heard otherwise articulate journalism teachers try to explain the 'BBC eyebrow raise' for a whole class period and fail because it's so subtle but applies to coverage of everything from Parliament to rhino stalking--it's one of those things that can't be done deliberately but adds immense authority. My explanation is probably clumsy because I didn't want you to think the skepticism was something about your subject matter.)

[ufopsi.com]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

Michele, I meant to tell you last week after you posted this that your new story read well (as editor-types say)--it came across both scientific and journalistic, i.e., organized, objective, and that BBC-type flavor.

Hey, thanks for that! Skepticism is indeed part of my "strategy"...to a decent level. I try to think of interesting comments regarding a story; if someone or a place is mentioned I add a little background information; if there is something that's not convincing I say it clearly.

Here my latest story:
www.ufopsi.com/articles/tallwhites.html

To think I never worked for the BBC!