New Affiliate Site - Need A Little Technical Help :) PrettyPrincess.US

hello,

i have not had any web design classes or any training at all. I taught myself to build my site by using a template and, well... by pretty much just messing around in dreamweaver, so im happy to have built what i have so far . The site is an affiliate online mall called PrettyPrincess.US for young women. I am really totally happy with look and design, and am working daily on making the categories and graphics in them more professional and streamlined. I like building it myself and want to continue, and i like the site reflecting the colors, young feel, and style that girls like me - who are going to shop at the site - are drawn to.

My problems are DEFINATELY in the technical area. I have two things i would truly appreciate some help with:

First, I have very little technical knowledge so i couldn't honestly tell you what my document type is. So this is obviously a big problem, lol, as that seems to be pretty important I just know that i create the pages in dreamweaver in html format. So...i guess if anyone could help me define my document type, that would be verrry helpful.

And second, since the site is an affiliate site, my pages are filled with various links...so most of the pages have to grab images and info from several different servers outside of my own site server. My actual site content and images load fast, yet the tables of affiliate links and affiliate link images tend to "play catch up" for a few seconds. So im wondering how, within the current layout design i have, to get the pages to load all at once and intact within the page design/frame/table structure? I centered as many of the tables, and text-center aligned everything i can, which helps, but doesnt totally do the trick.

I would truly appreciate any help The most updated/current pages on the site that i would be like for anyone to check out are in the "Dress Up" section of the site: http://www.prettyprincess.us/DressUp.html

once again, any help will be great!

hmmm....i thought these were super easy questions that everyone would be laughing that i even had to ask...but noone knows ???

does anyone know where i can atleast go to find out how to define my document type? i build the pages as html in dreamweaver...but i know there is a little java code...im pretty sure its just for the scroll boxes...but it may be for more...but i honestly have no clue how to define my doc type...and when i try to run my pages through a validator...none of the choices work...any help would be awesome...

and the other question about the links within the tables playing catch up?...if anyone knows how to get them to stay put ...id be verrry happy

thank you!

Hi PrettyPrincess... to start, my daughter is going to love your site! I'm afraid to show it to her!

The doc type should be defined if you are using dreamweaver. Whenever you make a new page, it declares the doc type at the top. Is that missing from your html page? Switch to CODE VIEW. At the very top, the first line of code- doesn't it have doc type blah blah blah written?

I don't have the answer to your other question. I checked out your site and since I have fast connection I didn't mind the second or two wait. Is it a problem for dial up people?

I don't know for a site that has so many pictures the loading seems normal to me. Photos take time and each one of the dressup categories has a lot of photos in it.

Sorry to ramble

thaaank you so much! oh definately not rambling either! i truly appreciate any advice that can be given... like i said, i have totally "winged the site" and web design is really out of my element so i know that there is alot that i am missing technically.

So as for the loading, i guess i was just worried that it made the site annoying for the shopper to see the pictures having to "jump into place" at first loading..but if that is a normal thing for pages with alot of photos, than that makes me feel alot better

and about the document type, i dont know why, but even though i build in dreamweaver 8, my pages dont have it ...in the code, my very tip top three lines of code are:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>prettyprincess.us</TITLE>

no doc type...and any validator i try gives me a no doc type error. and i have tried using Simple Tidy to fix it, but the doc type it assigns my page removes my center background completely.

not really sure what to do, because from what i have been reading, defining my doc type is going to be really important in terms of search engines...which as an affiliate mall, ill totally depend on

so...if anyone's got any ideas...


and thank u again for the response

Try this

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

or this one

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

See if those work for you.

aww...yeah i tried them...and they disable the java script code in my pages and cause my scroll boxes to disappear... thats the same thing that happened when i had the doc defined in simple tidy

...not sure what to do...