Hints & Help

What follows are a few tips for using HTML in your journal. I by no means know it all, but I have learned a lot and have an understanding of the basics. Most of the rest can probably be found in one of the sites in the menu below. I'll update the page as I discover new tips and sites.

* Instead of keeping your diary rings all on your front page, add them to an entry. You can always go back later and edit them if you want to and it gives your front page a cleaner, neater look. The same applies for online quizzes.

* If you use more than one drop-menu, remember to give them different numbers or your page will load with an error.

* If you don't like for your images to have a white border, try adding border="0"> at the end of your image code.

* If you're not sure what you want to do or a little inexperienced with HTML, try getting a free site and practicing there. I reccommend Batcave. They no longer allow free hotlinking from your images, but they're okay for practicing non-image designs. Also, their hosting is inexpensive if you should decide to get a paid site. There are plenty of free sites that still allow hotlinking, however, so be sure to look around (and read their hosting terms before signing up to see if linking is permitted with free sites).

* Try to save your design to a notepad (like the one yahoo provides with your email), the drafts folder of your email or a file on your computer. I found that doing this saved me lots of time and helped me repair errors I made while I was tweaking or practicing designs. Do the same for your guestbook.

* Get at least one book about basic HTML. The one I have helped immeasurably.

* It's important to test your links after changing things around or installing a new design. If there are any that don't work, fix them right away. Broken links and missing images are a nuisance.

* When adding the drop-menu code to an entry rather than your template (the way I did here, for example), remember that diaryland automatically inserts paragraph breaks in the entries. In order to avoid errors on your page, after posting it is necessary to go back through and edit the paragraph breaks out of the drop-menu code. It will then load with no problems.