If you are familiar with
PHP, you can alter the site's graphic design
to suit your own taste; just make sure that you
do not interfere with the script's code files
(contained within the "scripts" directory)
or you will forfeit any obligation the script
supplier has to fix any problems with it. You
should not need to open any of the script files
in any case, as the editable pages are all
located in the "pages" folder.
Don't be discouraged by
the tech talk in this section: if you do not
want to get involved in changing the site
design, you can simply use the template as it
is, and it will still work perfectly well.
Text and Background
Combinations
If you take a look at
some of the most successful web sites on the net
– Yahoo for example, you will notice that the
main body of the web page has a white background
and dark text. Hence it is usually a mistake to
employ a template with any color other than
white (or a very light yellow, pink, green or
blue) as a background, especially for the main
body of the page.
The reason for this is
that a dark-colored page with light-colored
text is tiring to look at when viewed for long
periods. You want your visitors to stay on your
site for the longest possible time, so that they
can see the ads both you and your advertisers
have on display, so I recommend that you stick
to black (or a dark color such as royal blue)
on white.
Web Graphics
Your site template will
have everything you need to get you started,
with the exception of the specific graphics that
you may want to create to set the site apart
from all the others. These will take
the form of .gif or .jpg picture files, instead
of plain text.
If
you do not want to pay a website designer to do
the graphics work for you, you could do worse
than download some of the free GIF and JPEG
graphics available on the web. A quick search
for "free web graphics" will bring a
wealth of sites to choose from. Many of these
can be adapted for use as a main logo, page
headings, labels and so forth.
You
must make sure that you read the site's Terms
and Conditions properly before downloading
anything, as some owners insist that their
graphics can only be used for free on
non-commercial sites. Some designers will insist
that you link back to their site, in order to
use their work on a commercial site; a small
area at the bottom of your index page can be
used for this purpose.
We have provided a small selection of
specially created and optimized graphic elements, for use on
Cash Crusader PTR sites - click HERE
to access them.
Reducing Graphic File
Size
Ensure that the graphics
you use are of the smallest file size possible,
to ensure speedy download from the server. Your
visitors will not wait around, even for just a
couple of minutes, for huge graphics files to
download – they will be off to the next
website on
their list in a matter of seconds, if they cannot
access your site fast enough.
When you are creating
your images in a drawing program, such as Paint Shop Pro,
the image resolution will probably
be set at 24-bit (16 million colors). This is
far too high for web site usage, so the solution
is to optimize the graphics.
All you need to do is to
reduce the number of colors contained within
the image file, using the special commands in
the drawing program, or by using one of the
many online file-compression utilities, available
for free on the net (look for "image
optimizer"). With these, all you need to do
is upload the image from your hard-drive or a
net location, press a button, and the image will
return reduced in file size, ready for use on
your pages.
Making Good Use
of <ALT> Tags
If using graphics
instead of text headings, ensure that you
include a suitable <ALT>
tag with each one. In PHP, as in HTML authoring,
there are very good reasons to include an
<ALT> attribute into every image. These
are:
a) to assist in
navigation when the site is being viewed
over a slow connection, enabling visitors to
choose a site destination before the graphic is
fully loaded;
b) to provide further
detail for an image, or the destination of a
hyperlinked image;
c) to provide
information for people who surf the Web with
graphics turned off, or with text-only browsers.
d) to assist search
engines when determining the ranking of your
site.
You do not have to
slavishly stick to wording that describes
the image in your
tags – you can add extra information that the
search engines may find attractive, for example,
instead of typing in "MySite.com" as spelled
out by the logo graphic, you could put in "MySite.com,
earn cash, make money, paid to read e-mail"
etc. Don't go overboard though, or the search
engines may penalize you for spamming.
