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Hello, and welcome to the latest issue of Snippets and Resources, finally
back after the summer break. I hope you had a great summer.

In this issue, we take a look at the BODY tag, an often overlooked tag, but
an important one none the less. There is also a new feature, each issue will
now have an article looking at more advanced aspects of site building. This
time it's all about PHP, which you'll be pleased to learn, is not as scary
or as difficult as it sounds.

As ever, we finish with a list of useful resources and tools, if there is
anything you would like to recommend for this section, just let me know:
mailto:justkate@kategilby.co.uk?subject="SnippetsSubscriberRecommendation"

Have a great month!

See you next time,
Kate
http://kategilby.co.uk
mailto:justkate@kategilby.co.uk

In this issue:

~*~ How to Have a Beautiful Body - A quick guide to the <.BODY>
tag by Kate Gilby

~*~ Bring Your Web Site to Life With PHP by Shelley Lowery

~*~ This Months Resources

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Webmasters! Do you need tools, hosting or services?
For a range of free and commercial add ons and extras
go here: http://kategilby.co.uk/bnsnip.html

Find the perfect keywords for your site and boost your traffic:
http://kategilby.co.uk/tsnip.html

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How to Have a Beautiful Body - A quick guide to the <.BODY> tag

by Kate Gilby

NB: This article contains snippets of HTML markup. In order for this to
display correctly in a browser I have added a full stop ( period ) after
the opening bracket. You will need to remove this before you use
the code.

In life a beautiful body can be difficult to achieve. In web design terms,
it
is very easy. Open any HTML page, and you will see the <.BODY> tag.
It will probably look something like this:

<.body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080"
alink="#ff0000">

This tag contains basic, but very important information about the way your
webpage should look. Let's take a look at each of those attributes.

1. bgcolor="#ffffff"
This tells the browser to display the background colour as white.

2. text="#000000"
This controls the colour of your text, in this case it is black.

3. link="#0000ff"
This is the link attribute, this tells your browser to display links
in blue.

4. vlink="#800080"
Visited links, this one is the standard aubergine.

5. alink="#ff0000">
The active link attribute, this one is set to display active links in red.

To see this web page in a browser window, click here:
http://kategilby.co.uk/bodytagex.html

Click on the link in the new page, it's just a standard email link. You
will see how it turns red when the new window opens. Click off the
link, and it changes to purple.

Now, we are going to edit the current settings, so go to View/Source
in your browsers menu. The page will open up in Notepad, or whichever
editor you have selected.

To change the colours all you need to do is remove the hex numbers
and replace them with your own choices. For example:

Change text="#000000" to text="#97E3C5

The text is now a light green. I wouldn't recommend this as a text
colour on a real webpage, black or very dark colours are much
easier on the eye.

Go through and adjust all the attributes, then reload the page and
take a look. Bear in mind, it is best to keep links in blue. If you
don't like the standard bright blue, choose a different shade. Also,
stick to white, or light coloured backgrounds, dark colours can look
good, but they can also make it hard to read the text.

You can also use the <.BODY> tag to adjust the margins of your page.
For example:

<.body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080"
alink="#ff0000" leftmargin="90" marginwidth="50">

If you open up http://kategilby.co.uk/bodytagex2.html you will see that
it contains the same basic information as the first page, but this time,
the text is further to the left. This is caused by the addition of the
attributes

leftmargin="500" marginwidth="50"

This margin is set too far to the left for most standard pages, but it does
serve as an example of how this attribute works. For most pages

leftmargin="10" marginwidth="20"

is sufficient. It is still ok to use the BODY tag to set your margins,
but if you have a large site, it is much better to use CSS.

Once you are happy with your changes, save the page to use as
a template.

Copyright Kate Gilby 2004

Kate Gilby lives in the UK, and is the editor of kate blogs:
http://kategilby.co.uk
a blog devoted to writing, web and graphic design. She is also the owner of
the
home business portal, kate-blogs biz: http://kate-blogs.kategilby.co.uk, in
addition
to the home and garden sites More Than Mint:
http://more-than-mint.kategilby.co.uk
and Decorating Divas: http://decorating-divas.kategilby.co.uk Her spare time
is
devoted to knitting fog and performing random acts of silliness.

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Bring Your Web Site to Life With PHP

By Shelley Lowery Copyright ? 2004

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, better known as PHP, is a highly popular,
server-side scripting language that can be embedded directly into HTML
coding.

PHP can do anything that CGI can do, such as process form data and
auto generate dynamic content, but PHP can do much more.

It can be used on all major operating systems and supports most
web servers.

PHP is used by inserting PHP code inside your web page's HTML code.
When the page is called, your server automatically executes the code.
What's more, your visitors don't need any special plug-ins for the code to
run, as it will be displayed just like your HTML coding.

As PHP is a server-side scripting language, although your visitors will not
need to install any new software, PHP must be set up on your server.

Following is a very simple script that will test your server to ensure PHP
is
installed. It is a standard PHP function called phpinfo, which instructs the
browser to print out information in regard to the set up of your server.

To use the script, simply copy the following three lines of code and paste
them into a plain text editor, such as Note Pad.

Note: To enable the code to display properly, a period has been added
following the opening bracket. You'll need to remove this period prior to
using the code.

<.?
phpinfo();
?>

Save the file as phpinfo.php and upload it to your server where you store
your HTML files.

To run the script, simply point your browser to the script address. It
should
look something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/phpinfo.php

If PHP is installed on your server, you will be presented with a page of
information about the PHP installed on your server.

If PHP isn't installed, you will be prompted to download the file. In this
case,
you'll need to contact your web host and ask them to install it, as it is
free
to download and install.

You can learn more about PHP and download it at http://www.PHP.net.

If you'd like to try some PHP scripts on your site, here are some great
scripts to get you started:

PhpAdsNew - Rotating Ads
http://phpadsnew.com/two/

If you'd like to have a rotating ad system on your web site, this great
script is
an open-source ad server that provides a professional ad management and
tracking system. Not only can you rotate banner ads, but you can also rotate
buttons, pop-ups, text ads, DHTML banners and much more.

PHP Message/Quote of the Day
http://www.interaction-design.org/scripts/quote_of_the_day/

If you're looking for a simple way to display a "Quote of the Day," this
script is
for you. It consists of a simple script that's easy to customize. You simply
add
any number of quotes, tips or whatever you'd like, into the database and the
script will display a new message each day.

BMachine - Blogging
http://boastology.com/

Would you like to start your own blog? This script will enable you to do
just
that. It's loaded with features, including calendar, file attachments, event
display,
unlimited categories, IP blocking, referrer tracking, search and much more.

Clicks Counter Pro - Link Tracking
http://www.clicks-counter-pro.com/

Testing and tracking your marketing strategies is an important part of doing
business. Clicks Counter Pro is a PHP script that will enable you to track
your
clicks, downloads and advertising campaigns with real time statistics. Very
reasonably priced.

Link Department - Link Indexing
http://www.hitcode.com/products/linkdept/

If you've ever wanted an easy way to set up a link indexing system on your
site, this script may be your answer. Link Department will enable you to
easily
create and maintain a link directory. The system is fully manageable and
completely template driven, so it will easily blend in with your existing
design.

PhpDig - Search Utility
http://www.phpdig.net/

If you would like to enable your visitors to search your site, PhpDig is a
web
spider and search engine utility you can install on your web site. This
powerful
script indexes your pages and builds a glossary of keywords found in the
page.

PhpBB - Bulletin Board
http://www.phpbb.com/

PhpBB is a fast and efficient, highly customizable, open- source bulletin
board system. This highly professional looking system will enable you to
create an interactive community on your web site and keep your visitors
coming back again and again.

To learn more about PHP, visit the following web sites:
http://www.alt-php-faq.org/
http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/

To find more PHP scripts, visit the following web sites:
http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/index.html
http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/

PHP is a freely distributed open-source language, which means if you would
like to learn the language, there is a wealth of information available on
the
Internet to assist you. Why not give it a try? You may be surprised how easy
it really is to write your own scripts.

Copyright ? Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, Web Design
Mastery. Quickly and easily learn how to design a professional web site in
the
easiest possible fashion -- with hundreds of copy and paste codes. Learning
web design simply doesn't get any easier than Web Design Mastery --
Guaranteed.
http://www.webdesignmastery.com

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Resources

Webmaster Tools Central: http://www.webmastertoolscentral.com/
Contains a huge selection of tools, resources, tutorials and other really
useful stuff.

Webmaster Toolkit: http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/
More free resources and tools.