Messages

The rates vary depending on your specific needs. Please contact me on MSN messanger account danno_d_manno(at)yahoo.com to chat with me about what I can do for you.  I have time to get started on your project right away   If you cant get ahold of me there, I work with HostNed so stop by the live chat at hostned.com.

I am almost afraid to try and fix anything as it took me four days to repair problems before I finally figured out what Front Page does for a site. It is hard for me to sit and be patient on things like this.

What I would recommend to you is to get someone to do a "Site Redesign" job for you on this site using the same web building tool you use (FrontPage).  This will give your site the more crisp look and feel and will allow you to still make the minor changes and such but wont risk you trying the overhaul yourself risking messing up something important.  For example, I recently did a frontpage-based site redesign for a real estate office.  Here is how it used to look
http://web.archive.org/web/20050124045806/http://scenicrealtycompany.com/
and you can see it had good content on there but it just wasnt right.  I spent a few hours on this and got it looking like this:
http://scenicrealtycompany.com/
Now the site has a cleaner look and they can manage it a lot better.  I also made for them basic page templates so it is easier to make new pages in the future.

The second point about the buttons and all... can you elaborate?

When I put the mouse pointer over the button the image goes away.

The music part.. so you add a button and reference that to the music if someone wants to hear it?

Yep.

I like the site, but it is evident that it is one of the first sites you have built.  Hopefully we can get you some support here to polish it up a bit.  To start off with, I notice three major points for you.

1) Text:  Your text on the page should have more contrast.  Remember, just because YOU can read the text does not mean everyone else can.  Some people are using monitors without optimized contrast settings or alternative devices like Pocket PC's, etc...  You need good contrast between your text and background.  To achieve this, you can either make the text much darker (like black or navy) or you can put the text in "boxes" that have a solid color in the background.

2) Navigation:  Your mouseover links are spiffy, but if the pictures are broken, just soon stick to static pics or plain text for now until that is squared away. 

3) Sounds:  Sound is always tempting, but don't use it.  All of the net's major sites DO NOT use music and that is for a reason.  For example, I went to visit your site just now and had to quickly click BACK.. My sound was way up from playing a game earlier and my wife was snoozing in the same room!  Other examples are "at work" situations and a host of other reasons NOT to use music and sound.  If you insist to the end, have a "Play" button where a visitor can voluntarily opt to hear the sounds.

I just got this message in my email today and thought it was interesting.  Although it is not the best news, it is not THAT bad.  Mainly I was just impressed that I got domething that said it was from PayPal and it actually WAS FROM PAYPAL!

Subject:   Important News about the PayPal Money Market Fund
Date:   Mon 01/30/06 01:37 PM
==================================================================
PayPal
==================================================================
Important News from the PayPal Money Market Fund

Dear Customer,

PayPal's Money Market Fund has delivered competitive returns, with
no minimum investment or balance required. As a result, over the
years, many investors have placed their money in the Fund.

Even as the Fund has grown, PayPal has continued to pay the costs
of administering the Fund - without any reimbursement. However,
beginning March 1, the Fund will start to reimburse PayPal for a
portion of its expenses, which include legal, technical,
compliance and advisory services, and related charges that are
customary for mutual funds. As a result, the yield of the Fund
will be reduced by 0.25% (one quarter of one percent).

PayPal's Money Market Fund will continue to have no minimum
investment or balance. And you'll continue to have the same
immediate access to your money. (Note: Redemptions can occur only
on business days.)

Thanks for being part of the Money Market Fund.

Sincerely,

PayPal

Red is dangerous, but when used the right way it is HOT!  Your design is nice and teh use of red is right on.  Only problem I can see is the right column is not right when viewed in firefox.

Actually - I disabled my targetalert plugin and now it looks right.  I guess teh little icons that targetalert inserts in there is just enough to throw off the div columns or something.

Red is dangerous, but when used the right way it is HOT!  Your design is nice and teh use of red is right on.  Only problem I can see is the right column is not right when viewed in firefox.

Sorry if I insulted you -- no personal attack was meant towards you.  I do appreciate the help, and I am not sure if you are the same as who hosts HostNed, but I could string a list of emails back from customer service that are laughable.  I got one response from customer support that was more than a sentence long.  Hardly the "Customer Service dedicated to professionalism with a personal touch is our specialty" that is claimed on the main page.  Maybe I was just unlucky and got the guy who just got yelled at or something when my trouble tickets and emails came through.

Again you attack hostned but show no proof of these insulting things you are saying. If you ask them the location of sendmail (which you should just get from your welcome email link) and they answer you with the right answer, what more do you want?  You want to know how the guy's weekend went or about how his cat ran away?  If you get your answer the first time in plain english than that is great.  If they have at all told you that sendmail is working on the server, then I persoanlly request you take it for the truth.  I rarely need to open a support ticket, but when I do I do not want them to be busy dodging insults from a joker like you.  It is not the job of tech support to debug random scripts that people get off the internet and try to use on their web space.  If they offer you the service of random script debugging, that is good to know they have that available becuase the other hosts I have been with wouldn't even offer that.  Even though HostNed is premium service and can run just about all that is out there, scripts need to be tuned to the account for which they are running on -- especially CGI which is why they ARE tricky if compared to PHP.  With CGI you have shebangs, you have kickers, you have file permissionas and cgi-bins, you have backslashes and more.  With PHP you have none of that.  I gave you a PHP mail form that will work on any server HostNed has.  If you make a private folder for me, PM me the user/pass and I can upload all kinds of form to mail scripts and they will all work.

Does customer support even exist at HostNed?  I have yet to get any help whatsoever.  I have put forth so much effort is solving what should be a very simple problem that it is rediculous.

IMO, and in the opinion of so many others, HostNed has the best support in the industry - hands down.  Beleive me I have used many different companies for so many years.

They told me my options were to post a message on this dead-ass board

Please, DONT insult this baord.  Yes, it is new but HostNed has been planning this fourm for a long time taking in the input of many users and industry experts.  Personally I think it is wonderful and it is great that you got response on it right away!  Hey, what about the help I provided for you?  Do you think just because you are not intelligent enough to get this to work or intelligent enough to ask the right questions to troubleshoot your little email thing that it is everyone elses fault but your own?

Since their staff seemed to be less-than knowledgable regarding the subject, I am sure it will take them a long time to figure it out, so I think the best option is to go where the customer support staff have the willingness, knowledge and capacity to help me solve my problems.  It seems to be not very good business to let a customer languish for over a week trying to get a very simple problem solved.  As an example, it took them about four days of constant denial to even acknowledge that I existed as a paying customer.

Considering your 'already fading fast' reputation here my friend, I tend to not believe you about this.  Looks like you are on your own now.

For those trying to solve my techical problem

HAH!  Insult me then expect me to help you?  LOL LOL OMG ... LOL!!!

[Here is a sample form:]

Hi,

All hostned servers support PHP and should support sendmail, so I suggest to use a simple PHP-based sendmail script.

Here is a sample form:

Code Select Expand


<html>
<head>
<title>Send a message</title>
</head>
<body><form method="post" action="sendmail.php">
Email: <input name="email" type="text" /><br />"
Message:<br />
<textarea name="message" rows="15 cols="40">
</textarea><br />
<input type="submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

Now you need a sendmail.php script:
Create a file named sendmail.php and upload it to the same directory as the form.

Code Select Expand

<?
// Thanks to HostNed.com for this sendmail script
// Define variables from the form field input
$email = $_REQUEST['email'] ;
$message = $_REQUEST['message'] ;
// Replace the email address below with your email address
mail( "youraddress@example.com", "Feedback Form Results",
$message, "From: $email" );
// Place here a thank you page that indicates to the user that the form has submitted
header( "Location: thankyou.html" );
?>

Now just create your thank you page named thankyou.html and upload it to the same directory.  Here is a simple example:

Code Select Expand

<html>
<head>
<title>Thank You</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Thanks for using the form.&nbsp; Your message was submitted.</p>
<a href="form.html">Back to the form</a>
</body>
</html>