Sandbox

I am very proud to announce the birth of our new nonprofit website called BirthingWithMidwives. You need this url to go to the site because the current default page is not really our home page. http://www.BirthingWithMidwives.com/index.php

Visitors are welcome to test the site. But if you leave any comments, please remember this is a family site. All registered users do need approval. But if you want to join for testing purposes, I will gladly let you if you will show respect for our site's values. But even if you don't want to register, some of the features are still available without registering.

We hope to "go public" very soon. I used a template called "nambia" but I personalized it with my own pictures. That was kind of tricky since the pictures rotate randomly as the page is renewed and each picture is actually a composite of several files.

I love customizing graphics. So, the whole site is very personalized that way.

I am using:

Jim Joomla Internal Messaging - I still need to figure out how to personalize the color scheme.
Noah's Classifieds - I've personalized the colors and the graphics.
Community Builder - I LOVE this component!
J’s Reactions
Joomlaboard Forum - I changed some of the icons and personalized the look a bit.
Mamblog
Sigsiu Online Business Index 2 - Great tool! - We will  use this to list midwives for women to find.
CB Gallery Module

Constructive criticism is welcome.

Very nice site and good use of graphics.

I would consider increasing the transparency/opaqueness of the image below the "most recently published" as it is a little hard to read.

On the menu do you really need to publish the administrator link

The related websites menu item looks kind of out of place down there

Thank you Brian,
I appreciate the constructive criticism.

I've removed the two links (administrator and related links) from where there were. You were right about them looking out of place. I don't really need to publish the adminstrator link. I'm the only one using it and I don't need a link. I moved the other link to the top menu where it looks better.

I also agree with you about the text at the top not being easy enough to read. I would like to fix that But I don't want to loose the effect of transparency I have there. However, if I change the font color to black I think it will make a big difference.  For that matter, I would love to change the style to list so that bullets are present. I just haven't figured out exactly which code I need to change and what file it is in. I don't really understand codes very well yet. My method of learning has been somewhat trial and error.  I chage things one code at a time and make note of what it did. Then change it back if I didn't like the effect. It's a slow process but it works.

If you can tell me where to find the code to change that particular font color, I sure would appreciate it.

Thanks again.

I go for the trial and error approach myself as well.

If you use firefox then there is a great tool called the Web Developers toolbar. One of the neat features of it is that you can make live edits to your css to see what happens.

I use both foxfire and internet explorer. But I have to admit that I am more in the habit of using explorer. After reading your email, I opened my site using Foxfire and noticed that the bullets show up on my list, just like I want. They do not show up in Explorer unless I set the list to less than 5.  I guess there isn't much I can do about that. Or is there?

Where do I find that tool you spoke of? Is it a download or adon? That sounds very helpful. I edit style sheets using Dreamweaver.

I did figure out where to change the font color on the list and it is now much better. It wasn't hard. I just had to look in the style sheet for my template.

In firefox click on tools-extensionsin the toolbar

this will take you to the site with all the best extensions for firefox. You will find the web dev toolbar there.

wow!  I'm impressed with your site -and the Namibia template!  Excellent work!  It has the same 'clean, uncluttered' look I am striving for in my own site...

I've had a look at the template and it appears each front-page image is made up of 6-7 different elements... clever work.  Can you advise me of the best way to duplicate this effect?  I have Photoshop CS2 to do the transperancy work, create layers for the cut-outs etc.,  but wonder how did you go about replacing the images supplied with the template to your own?  What size of image did you start with?  Methodology?  Any tips?

Would really appreciate your advice!

Best regards

RS

Thank you for the complement!  I'm glad you like my site. Changing the pictures was tricky but it was fun, too. It does work like a puzzle. But once you figure out the pieces, it isn't too hard. I just found the corner pieces and pieced them together to see what size of canvas I needed to work with (560 X 295). then I had to figure out the exact color to use for the background. That was easy. I just opened the file in Fireworks and copied the original color to get the color code. Then when I created my own pictures, I just copied this code and used it for my canvas color.

The other tricky part was finding out exactly where to line up the lines for the part that appears transparent. I honestly don't remember exactly how I figured this out but I used the original to figure it out. The tools in Fireworks made it fairly easy to recreate the lines and curves I needed to match the original. And I just faded my image to give the transparent effect.

When it came time to cut up my original into the four smaller pieces, I just cropped the canvas to the exact size of the original pieces. (top left corner was 229 X 154, top right corner was 331 X 154, lower left was 229 X 141 and the lower right was 331 X 141) I would crop my original work and save the file with a new name and then reopen the full piece and crop again, etc.

You will find the files you need for the corner pictures in the images folder. They are named img1, img2, img5, and img6. That's one set. Then the next set is img1_01, img2_01, img5_01 and img6_01. The remaining sets end in "02", "03", "04", etc.  Just open the picture files and you can find them easily enough. I saved my images with the exact same name as the originals and then just uploaded them to replace the originals.

I would love to figure out how to add more sets so more pictures would rotate. But that would take messing with the codes and that ususally gets me in trouble. 

Good luck and I hope my directions were clear enough. But if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.

Many thanks for the quick reply!  I already have my masks as WIP, making slow but steady progress.  Sounds like we're using the same methodology.  Thanks for the sizes!  Like you, I was just going tpo mosaic it all together to get the original image size, then crop them all to size in Photoshop using the layers as masks.

Again thanks

Will let you know when I get it all sorted!

Fantastic site -- a wonderful resource.  Great use of mapping, and I was thrilled to see George Stoney's ground-breaking film, "All My Babies," linked on the front page!