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Showing off the vertical menus by Artisteer

Just for the fun of it, and also to make sure we can test them in QS, I have enabled a template made with Artisteer v24 Beta 2, using both the vertical and the top menu. Both menus are the same for now. That does not make sense, but again, it's just for testing purposes.

There are a couple of issues with the vertical menus in Artisteer v24.

Underlying submenu-items are not visible until you have clicked the top level-item. That is annoying. This issue does not show in the top-menu. When you hover "Features" in the top menu, you see that there is an underlying item "Screenshots". You don't have that option in the vertical menus, unless you reload the page Features.
Here you see that vertical menu really goes crazy. The long text from the menu item floats right into the main article. Very ugly :)
Even though the menus are identical in both cases, the "active-link" feature in the vertical menus only shows when you use this link (home), and it is not visible when you use this link (ALSO the homepage, but under a different url!). That is because there is an ugly JS hack to force class-active behaviour in the Artisteer vmenu.

All in all, I think the vertical menus are nice, but there are some annoying issues with it. I hope Artisteer will come up with solutions any time soon.

Looking forward to any comment.

27/02/2010 12:02:27 | Pieter | Login | Replies (5)

nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (25/02/2010 11:27:15)
If or hopefully when all is fixed with the vertical menus, our web sites will look and function more professional. Any thoughts how QS is going to eventually implement the vertical menus?

For the record, and I don't know about Joomla or Drupal, but in Wordpress you can't separate the pages to both menus at the same time. All pages can belong to either the top menu or vertical. The same goes with their blog. So for example, all the pages can be on the top menu, and the Blog's categories on the vertical menu,or vice versa.

We can gain another advantage over them if we would have the ability to decide which menu to use on the page level. So, some of our pages would belong to the top menu, and some to the vertical.
Pieter says: (27/02/2010 12:06:47)
Nick, i like the idea to have the option for a page to belong to either the vmenu, either the hmenu, or BOTH! By default they could be set to both.

It's just that this would require QS to run in some kind of "artisteer mode". I have no plans to enable 2 menus for the built-in QS template, nor the usual template-driven sites. By the way, the pro users creating their own templates already, never needed this. They were able to create menus their way, from day 1.

Adding the menu-selector to a page (root-level only) sounds like a minor coding effort.
Bob says: (27/02/2010 14:17:55)
Maybe it's just me but I don't see the point of having both menus if it's a repeat. The idea of the menus showing different pages would be pretty cool.

At the moment I'd never use the vertical menu because I think it is too ugly and too clunky. There are some great fly-out menu around, all CSS, and I think Artisteer should look at the whole process again.

I think Artisteer has stumbled and, after we've all come to expect perfection, this is a real surprise. Maybe they'll shock us yet - after all, it's a great idea.

Bob

Bob
Tep says: (03/03/2010 11:18:49)
Is it possible to download the Artisteer beta and are the images protected in the beta or must it be purchased?
Thanks
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (03/03/2010 18:35:31)
Tep, you can download the Artsiteer beta and use it any way you want if you have a valid license for it. If you don't have a license, then you can download it, use it, but you can't save your templates, and I'm not sure if this is changed, but either your exported templates will have a trial watermark all over it, or you won't be able to export at all.

The photos are somehow protected, so no one can use them outside the program. In case you meant copyright protection, use them as you want, as long as you use the photos in a template and not distributing the photos individually. Check their forums, there has been numerous discussions about this topic.

New AutoQS - www.zijneral.be

Most popular site on this server

www.teqpad.com

Something else

Some of you already know I like to play music. Last summer we played a concert in the neighboorhood. Tonight the bass-player gave me the DVD of the concert. I extracted one song, Cocaine (Eric Clapton). I hope you like. For those who never saw me in real life, I am the one playing guitar - and I sing as well. I'm sorry for that :) My 4 year old daughter was having a great time jumping and dancing right before our nose. Very funny...

Have a nice party tonight !

Another extract: our version of "I Shot the Sherrif"

Finally, at the end of the show, we played a 8 minute version of Sultans of Swing (poor audience :). I uploaded only 2 minutes...

31/12/2009 11:55:41 | Pieter | Login | Replies (11)

nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (31/12/2009 03:37:22)
That was great. Post more similar videos, including rehearsals! Your voice has a nice vibrato which you don't here that much with todays singers. I'm looking forward for some of your original songs, as you are a songwriter too.

This was really good.
Voyager says: (31/12/2009 09:47:29)
Good for Pieter !! Bravo !!!
Voyager says: (31/12/2009 10:03:52)

btw: Cocaine was written by J.J. Cale and became famous with Eric Clapton...
doc says: (31/12/2009 22:12:38)
Pieter...can be nice if you show the "unplugged" "the secret of Pieter Cooreman" in a cold song room just one years ago.
short but nice video... i've heard some song from Pieter i like his music....looks like a mix between Dire Straits, Eagles, Eric Clapton and so on...
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (31/12/2009 22:20:00)
In your case, it would be more appropriate to sing "I shot Joomla" instead !!!
Karl says: (06/01/2010 20:46:38)
Cool Pieter. I guess the main question now is just when do you find time to have children?

Your daughter very much reminds me of my grand daughter.

My youngest son (age 16) also plays guitar. Has a Paul Reed Smith, a Gibson Les Paul (and a couple of acoustics). He's a Pink Floyd fan.

If you guys are into guitars, see http://www.fineacoustics.com/shop which I am almost finished.

Happy New year everyone.
Karl
Pieter says: (06/01/2010 21:24:54)
Thx Karl. Do I spot a PDShop?
Do you know you can blend a PDShop nicely into a QuickerSite? Have a look at http://www.snapmarket.it.

Get in touch in case you like the custom ASP/VBScripts needed to make this happen. I will ask my customer how we can share this setup.
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (06/01/2010 21:33:39)
Very nice, Karl.

I have setup a few PDSHOP web sites too. Not any more though. I will be using QS with ECWID, so I can have a more controlled, modern and better looking sites. Plus, for me at least, it's a real pain to populate PDSHOP with Items. Some of PDSHOPS' workflow irritates the hell out of me. Their costs are more or less the same too. Actually, updating QS is always free, which is not the case with PDSHOP, and also for me the most important thing: Re Branding rights.

I can tell, you already put a lot of hours in the site. From my experience, you could save a lot of time with QS and ECWID.

Karl, you know we are friends, and I'm not criticizing your work - I would never do that. I'm just conveying my opinion regarding PDSHOP Vs QS with ECWID for e-commerce web sites.
Karl says: (07/01/2010 15:48:34)
Pieter,
That's one of Doc's sites. Very cool. I would be interested in the asp code, because as you know pdshop can be a pain to set up graphics. See http://71.18.246.14/ which is almost live.

Nick, I have not had time to explore ecwid, but will try it soon. I have one more ecommerce site on the back burner. Does it handle gift certificates, multiple categories per item? I hate the pdshop editor - been after them for more than 2 years to put a decent editor in place.
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (07/01/2010 17:54:39)
Hi Karl,

Multiple Categories yes, Gift Certificates, No. Gift certificates are suggested, and voted for by some people, but so far the company has not picked up this idea yet. When you go to their web site, you will see what people are suggesting to them. Also, each registered user gets 10 votes to vote for the different ideas. In return the company posts if any of the ideas get accepted, planned, started, or completed. Very cool. It's free, very modern, and it looks like they will be improving the product constantly, just like Artisteer does, and of course
Pieter, with QuickerSite.

Just humor yourself, give it a 1-2 hour try. Even if you can't use it for your next project because of the gift certificates, you will have an idea what it can do, for the project after that.
Pieter says: (07/01/2010 20:17:14)
Pdshop is a decent webshop, nothing more, nothing less. It is not the flexible web application that turns everything inside out, like QuickerSite. But for a shop, that is not need in most cases.

Let's not forget about 1 thing: as long as you do it right, you can turn a QS into a powerful webshop just with a good implementation of PayPal buttons (via a custom script, like it's done on the demo site). PayPal offers a shopping card, product-options, payment via Credit Card and PayPal, follow-up on payments, invoicing, recurring payments, payment requests, etc... You really do not need a dedicated shopping card software to start selling online. I will convert a PDShop that i did very recently to a QuickerSite very soon. The shop articles are not well indexed by Google, so I have to switch to QuickerSite to get that part right...

Happy New Year 2010!

Auto-Site-Creator is available for Windows 2000/2003/2008

The v26 Guestbook is a SEO-booster

I created the guestbook on www.quickersite.com 3 days ago. Before I even announced it via a mailing, Google picked it up as being the most important page of QS.com. That is amazing. One the reasons might be that this page is currently the homepage. But still... it's a free page, brand new, and all of a sudden, it beats all other QS-pages in Google. Yesterday, I had the best Google Adsense day in months.

So I suggest you start using the QS v26 Guestbook immediately. It will boost your site's SEO.

Actually, we call it Guestbook. In reality, it's a full blown BLOG module. I guess I should be starting to sell QS-features much better :)

01/12/2009 10:40:41 | Pieter | Login | Replies (11)

Tep says: (01/12/2009 11:43:38)
Google is funny sometimes, grat to find this out Pieter..
doc says: (01/12/2009 13:11:13)
.... i fall in love when you say...

"I guess I should be starting to sell QS-features much better"
Voyager says: (01/12/2009 21:24:21)
I don't understand. Where is the Guestbook ? In what home page ?

Full blow blog ? The other "blog" is different ?

"Confusion will be my epitaph", King Crimson
Voyager says: (01/12/2009 22:19:20)
This is rather strange.

The Indexed page on google is

www.quickersite.com (!) and the Title is "Future of QuickerSite? | QuickerSite - Easy CMS for MS IIS 5/6/7"

clicking that you go to "http://www.quickersite.com/r/future-for-quickersite.html";, the friendly url.

This should mean something. Google has NOT indexed the "redirection" friendly url but something else.
Pieter says: (01/12/2009 22:22:28)
Voyager, where have you been lately? Check http://www.quickersite.com/r/future-for-quickersite.html. Down that page, you can leave a reply, pretty much like on a blog. By default, I use blockquotes for replies. But in the backsite, you can template-drive basically any element of the guestbook. Very flexible!
Pieter says: (01/12/2009 22:28:58)
That is because that "guestbook" page is my current startpage. Meantime, I changed the title of that page to "The future of QuickerSite- Have your say". I assume it sounds less confusing than "The Future of QuickerSite?". Well that is the title-tag Google indexed. I'm curious when it will change.
Voyager says: (01/12/2009 23:16:23)
I see.

Mind you! you have changed your default page (url and everything) and now your home page page rank is N/A from PR 4 you had.

Backlinks also to that page are gone.
Pieter says: (01/12/2009 23:19:12)
I don't care about PageRank. Adsense is doing well... Adsense pays better than PageRank
Voyager says: (01/12/2009 23:24:23)
Page Rank and Adsense are both from Google.

Adsense benefits from organic traffic and PR brings more traffic. So PR is important.

Anyway, i'm glad adsense is performing well, since i brought you into it..
Voyager says: (23/12/2009 13:35:13)

I like the guestbook / commenting new feature.

BUT since it takes a lof of screen space, it should be hidden at first and only display "Leave your Comment" or something. And then open the full module.

imho
Tep says: (29/12/2009 03:21:10)
Voyager:

I use this Constant:

<script type="text/javascript">
function anzeigen(das) {
if (document.getElementById(das).style.display=='none') {
document.getElementById(das).style.display='block';
}
else {
document.getElementById(das).style.display='none';
}
}
</script>

<table width="100%" border="0">
<tr>
<td> <div align="left"><a href="javascript:anzeigen('one');">GUESTBOOK</a></div><br>
<div style="display: none;" id="one">
<div>[QS_GUESTBOOK:Guestbook1]</div>
</div></td>
</tr>
</table>

Replace the [QS_GUESTBOOK:Guestbook1] with yours.

It's Tag Cloud Funtime!

It's Tag Cloud Fun time! (thanks to http://www.tag-cloud.de/). When you click a link in the "cloud", you will be redirected to the search page of QuickerSite. I needed a small codechange to get this done. I'll post it here if someone also wants this.

13/10/2009 13:46:54 | Pieter | Login | Replies (22)

Les says: (13/10/2009 15:06:48)
We need a "Like" button (see Facebook) if you keep coming up with these goodies!

"Les likes this"
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (13/10/2009 17:12:11)
It's very cool. And yes, can you please post the code?

Thanks.
Pieter says: (13/10/2009 20:59:18)
The codechange is to be done in asp/process_search.asp. On top of that page, you find:

search.value=left(Request.Form ("svalue"),100)

Right below, you can add:
if search.value="" then search.value=left(Request.QueryString ("svalue"),100)

This way, you can use the QueryString to perform searches. That is how I could use http://wwww.site.com/default.asp?pageAction=search&sValue= on http://www.tag-cloud.de/ to enable the search feature on this site.
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (14/10/2009 03:24:51)
Works as advertised. Doc should be happy. He talked about tag clouds a few months ago, and I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

TAG CLOUD !!!
doc says: (16/10/2009 21:54:07)
ah ah ah ah ah

DOC like that!

Pieter, did you think can be used on "server way"?
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (16/10/2009 23:58:01)
I hope you are happy Pieter! I'm using this stupid thing everywhere now. And surprise, surprise, I have not seen anyone who does not want it.

The only thing I don't like though, and there is nothing we can do, if you have a RSS feed displaying in your template (side bar) from an external source, ie: RSS feeds from foxnews.com, the repetitive words from their Feeds are also showing up, which in return the QS search engine can't find those words, for obvious reasons.

Very nice looking, unique and fun. I wonder if those words that show up have a subliminal effects though, which would be a plus. Apparently Coke used it in the past with their TV ads, so as the Beatles with some of their songs...

If it really works or not, it's a different question, that no one can really tell. For every 100 scientists that say it works, there are another 100 scientists with the opposite opinion.
Pieter says: (17/10/2009 13:46:29)
You can use a custom script to export the full content of your site (all pages, all topics/posts from a blog/forum) and use this script on a free page. This way, http://www.tag-cloud.de/ can index all the content of a site, and make up its mind on the cloud. This works very well. This way you don't include the rss in your templates. However, feeds in your pages would also be included.
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (17/10/2009 21:18:25)
That's pretty clever Pieter.
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (18/10/2009 08:07:08)
Another possibility is to manually edit cloud_data.xml. It looks straight forward. I like this method better, since you have 100% control over the content. It changes from being a "real" tag cloud, but hey...
Tep says: (18/10/2009 09:24:34)
Morning Folks!

I am using something else, maybe you would like to take a look:

www.tsgkoenigslutter.de

and scroll to the bottom of the page.... you will see a carousel... with links to...

You can find it on http://www.flshow.net

Take care...

Tep
Pieter says: (18/10/2009 10:27:46)
In theory it would even be possible to feed this cloud dynamically via a custom script in QS. The swf files takes a parameter {cloud_data: "cloud_data.xml"}. You could change that to a custom asp page that exports all keywords (and importance) for the site. That would require some work to create the xml-output of course...
Pieter says: (18/10/2009 10:28:28)
Tep, I like that Carousel! Thanks for posting it here!
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (18/10/2009 10:41:41)
Thanks Tep,

Very interesting, and a very nice way to have a menu. I will test it tomorrow to link up to different catalogs.
Tep says: (18/10/2009 10:48:36)
Folks,

yes it´s a free flash app anyway... and it reads it´s items from an xml.file to... so it would be interesting to know if you, Pieter, are writing a script to read xml files....

Please let me know, as this would really be a nice addon for QS...

Thanks
tep
Tep says: (18/10/2009 10:52:07)
OH,

yesterda< I used a nice function to translate a website in to different languages...

www.tsgkoenigslutter.de

Look at the header.
It translates the website via google.translate
If someone is interested in having the script, let me know.

Tep
Tep says: (18/10/2009 11:57:16)
Oh Folks

take a look:
if you scrollup this side now, you will see the Flash Cloud is allways in front of the menu navigation.

Put this in your Flash Include and the menu navigation will appear in the front again:

<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (18/10/2009 12:06:56)
Tep, about the translation. It messes up the Artisteer menus.

What works though, is if you install the Google toolbar in the browser, and activate the translation. In fact it will automatically detect the different languages, and ask you if you want the site translated. This method does not mess up the menus. The drawback is that, your foreign visitors have to do the leg work to help themselves (install the Google toolbar, and activate the translation).
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (18/10/2009 12:08:43)
You should always use the transparent parameter with all flash objects, specially your flash headers.
Karl says: (09/01/2010 02:17:23)
All right I know I'm not the most technical person, but I don't understand what this cloud is doing or where it gets it data
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (09/01/2010 02:47:01)
Karl, initially their web site is creating the data from the content of the web site. You can customize the Words, Colors and links directly from inside the cloud_data.xml file. Open it with notepad and go crazy... Furthermore, you can add new Words, or delete any of them you don't like.

Pieter has instruction on top of this topic to what you need to do to get things started.
Karl says: (09/01/2010 15:16:50)
Nick, But what is its purpose? Benefits?
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (09/01/2010 18:16:38)
If you click on the words, it will show you which pages contain the words. It is mainly for looks. It is unique and modern way of displaying your site's tag cloud. How many web sites have you seen having something like this?

Poll for QuickerSite

I am about to launch a useful Poll manager for QuickerSite. You can have unlimited polls, also on one page. Have a look at http://www.quickersite.com/r/default.asp?iID=MEJIFK. It is pretty basic. But you can have polls in banners, or in pages, or both. And it is AJAX driven. So no page-refresh after you voted. I found out that AJAX is very easy and straightforward, also for classic ASP. I just needed a dozen of lines of JavaScript!

08/10/2009 14:35:20 | Pieter | Login | Replies (24)

Pieter says: (08/10/2009 18:54:38)
I would like to start using this new poll thing on http://www.quickersite.com/poll

Any feedback would be appreciated :)
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (08/10/2009 19:12:24)
This is one of the things that we have vaguely discussed in the past, and never thought it would ever materialize. The example shows that the polls are exactly on par with any standard polling application out there. It does it's job and displays the results afterwards.

The real question is, are you going to release it to us now, or do we have to wait for V26? My vote to this poll is, create a patch and release it now please. This is another major feature addition to QuickerSite. Good job Pieter, once again...
Pieter says: (08/10/2009 19:15:10)
Nick, I will release it as soon as it is bug-free. I found some bugs already now that I created 4 polls on 1 page. I will fix them already. Please report any issue.
Les says: (08/10/2009 19:17:46)
me like!
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (08/10/2009 19:48:47)
So V25 becomes even better !!!!!! It's X'mass for the third time this year !!!!! (V24, V25, and this)
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (08/10/2009 19:54:30)
Before you changed the script to not allow multiple votes per computer I guess, Bob already managed to vote a few times for the Calendar over E-COMMERCE !!!
Tep says: (08/10/2009 20:04:30)
I´m looking forward to the poll.
Good feauture..
Oh what happened to the Calandar? Did it work?
I thought it was going to be on 2.5.
Is it?
lherrou says: (08/10/2009 20:19:08)
Nice. I look forward to adding this to more than one site.
GazOfOz says: (08/10/2009 22:12:01)
Yes this is a great addition.
doc says: (08/10/2009 22:44:26)
nice feature...
Bob says: (08/10/2009 23:38:46)
I am completely innocent of these charges!! Although it's nice to see we're keeping up with eCommerce!

I'm going down a different route now
jrone says: (09/10/2009 09:08:42)
I would like to have a poll integrated. At the moment I use custom asp for a poll on my QS site, which is cumbersome. I would like to see how the poll is being implemented in the backsite of QS.
One remark. I noticed that after voting or clicking "See results" there is no back-button in order to show the original vote-box.
Best,
Jan
Pieter says: (09/10/2009 13:17:46)
Jan, thx for the suggestion. I will add a back to go back the ballot (in case someone can still vote of course)
Pieter says: (09/10/2009 20:19:26)
Jan, I added a "Vote Now!" link in the result-section. It will only be available when you still can vote. I have reset all polls, so you can test again.

This is quite an exciting toy actually. Every time you vote, or you click the "view results" or "vote now"-links, a server-roundtrip is done in the background. For me it looks like it's "instant". But that is probably because I live only 40 kilometers from where my server is located. How "fast" or slow do these links work from Australia (Gary) or California (Nick)?
GazOfOz says: (09/10/2009 22:34:49)
For me it is quick but not instant
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (09/10/2009 22:56:28)
For me it was instant.
rand says: (11/10/2009 20:48:30)
I voted wait - but the result was so instant (Canada) that I would like to change my vote to Now. Great stuff
Pieter says: (11/10/2009 20:51:45)
The ones who want to wait are on the lead Rand. You missed your chance
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (11/10/2009 21:14:54)
There is a third choice missing from the poll. How about releasing the polls code now, and in a few weeks tome, releasing an update for it that will include the Quiz feature. Like that, everybody would be happy !!!
doc says: (17/10/2009 00:07:14)
wow....i can add some vote (6/7) before chrome 2.0 stop me..in..Ctrl+shift+N incognito mode...then close and re-open it....
doc
doc says: (17/10/2009 00:08:42)
...and of course...mine vote was for "Polenta party" !

doc
Pieter says: (17/10/2009 09:24:37)
Doc, it's true that you can vote multiple times. I have configured it so that each IP address can vote 5 times. After 5 times, you will no longer be able to vote. Some polls block IP's after 1 vote. But that doesn't make sense in my opinion, because sometimes you have companies, schools, etc, and you don't want to block them after 1 person voted. Anyway, a poll is just a poll. It's not a scientific survey of course
doc says: (17/10/2009 11:15:12)
..i agree...right way

doc
Tep says: (18/10/2009 17:25:12)
So Pieter,

after having a look in the backsite of the Demo-Qs I mst agree:

We need it and it looks great to!

So, I will ask the quaestion we all need to be answered:
when will it be available?

Tep

NOW we're talking!

I like these...

It's time to wake up again

Ok. The upload Artisteer ZIP to QS and the automation of this process is just great. But there are some issues. First of all: it 's only going to be available for users who run their own server. The vast majority of my customers use shared hosting. So this is a "no go"... Next, there are some major security risks (people not uploading templates, but all sorts of crap).

I am thinking of setting up a dedicated QuickerSite that does nothing but accept your submissions (Artisteer ZIP archived) and install them on that site. These zip files (and so the QuickerSite templates) will then be available to all customers. This way we avoid quite some issues, and I also realize an old dream: providing a HUGE catalogue of free templates for QuickerSite users, why not, by category.

So this process would be simple: I create a simple QS form, where you upload the zip, along with some basic info, and a category. You upload your ZIP, and in the background, the site automates the creation of the QS template. The template will then be available to you and to all other customers. You will be able to preview the template, and I will automate the creation of a little screenshot, that will be available in the section. This sounds like a huge project, but in reality, it is probably only a 1 night job.

How does that sound?

30/09/2009 23:32:20 | Pieter | Login | Replies (5)

nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (30/09/2009 19:58:41)
Sounds great.
Bob says: (01/10/2009 00:41:26)
Just for a change, I'm going to be negative!

If you do it this way, you've got no quality control over the templates. What you'll end up with is a load of, very similar, standard designs. On the other hand I guess all the big template sites have their share of rubbish.

Also, some designers will want to keep their designs private and therefore won't use the resource. This is especially true of the templates that don't look like Artisteer!

Where would you stand with the Artisteer images? Is this redistribution? Is it a problem only for reselling?

If the problem is with unzipping I still think the full version should have the ability to process files FTP'd to a folder.

Bob
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (01/10/2009 01:39:40)
http://www.artisteer.com/?post_id=104271&p=forum_post

Posted: 4/4/2009
Quote message

Hello,

Based on the information I have and previous customer service communication I'd like to confirm that what Marc wrote above is correct.

Artisteer includes 3 types of graphics:
1. Header background photos.
These are public domain photos that can be distributed and re-distributed in any way without restrictions.

2. Header foreground photos (photo objects).
These are licensed from a 3rd party for use by Artisteer customers on their and their individual clients' websites. They cannot be redistributed in a standalone or altered form, which means they cannot be resold or included in web templates intended for mass distribution/resale. Artisteer users can use them for creating individual websites - whether theirs or their client's. Mainly listing such templates for resale is not allowed.

3. Glares and other art and graphic effects.
These are created by our team and offered to Artisteer customers for any type of use and redistribution when included in templates they create, even if templates are intended for mass redistribution/resale.

Templates created with Artisteer can also be edited in any form anyone desires, unless the person creating them restricts their modification or use. In other words, except for #2 or unlicensed product use, you are the original creator of your template and can put your own licensing terms on it.

In Artisteer version 2.1 we've also added a new template export option allowing you to disable the default "created with Artisteer" footnote, or include your author information instead.

Hope this helps!

Paul Hudson
Artisteer Team

Bob, concentrate on point 2. We are fine... as long as we use them for our web sites or our clients web sites. Furthermore, nobody is reselling anything here. This is the reasoning behind those objects being included in the QuickerTemplates.com templates. They are not distributed (key point here) as STAND ALONE by me or by Pieter. They are included in our templates, which is permitted. Furthermore, no one has bothered us yet regarding this issue... so let's all chill and create templates.

My personal feeling for those who don't want to share their creations, and nobody is putting a gun on their heads, simply don't use Pieter's FREE service.

Furthermore, who is going to decide which Templates are "rubbish" without hurting the creators feelings and alienating them?

Any thoughts Pieter, others?
doc says: (01/10/2009 08:04:49)
HUGE templates are a great idea...and this way can be easy to access.

@ Bob, i'm sure quality template will not uploaded

in short, can be a good sharing idea
Pieter says: (01/10/2009 08:32:54)
Bob, http://demo.quickersite.com is back. Customers (only) can logon to the backsite and upload their zips. They then just have to copy/paste the template-text from the demo backsite to their backsite... That is a very useful workaround for now. It's a minute-job.

The "central repository" of templates is an old idea that can finally be realized rather easily. I am not sure quality will be low here. I would be using this to provide templates myself in the first place. And Nick will also use it for his. We'll quickly have 200 templates to share, I'm sure. Of course nobody will like them all.

Yesterday I have finalized the zip-thing (secured mainly). v25 is ready to be launched any time soon now.

It's time to faint away...

http://www.qs2008.org/zip/index.htm

28/09/2009 18:16:10 | Pieter | Login | Replies (16)

Bob says: (28/09/2009 18:35:17)
Brilliant, just brilliant. You know how people put "lol" all over their comments nowadays? Well this really did make me laugh out loud.

If you don't have the subscribe block, does it just ignore the search box?

Very well done. I hope this means you do really well in the Artisteer forums

Bob
Pieter says: (28/09/2009 18:48:47)
If you don't have the subscribe block, does it just ignore the search box?

yes it does!

Talking about the Artisteer Forums. I could use some help from you guys . Check out http://www.artisteer.com/Default.aspx?post_id=106387&p=forum_post&forum_id=9
Les says: (28/09/2009 19:33:09)
Brilliant!!!

makes me wonder... how hard would it be to customise a Artisteer Template and to add extra feautures
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (28/09/2009 20:35:33)
Very funny Pieter. You should spend some time in actually developing QS, as oppose to making fake videos. Wow, your imagination is pretty wild. Where do you come up with this stuff?

Seriously though, this is the best thing for QS to happen this time around. I think after this, instead you promoting Artisteer, Artisteer will be using the QS example to others, brilliant marketing move.

I wonder with this development, if QuickerTemplates.com will explode with contributions, or since no one has a need for it now, it will be rendered useless... But since it was not setup to generate any income, one way or another will be fine with me.
Pieter says: (28/09/2009 22:30:00)
QuickerTemplates.com not needed? Don't make me laugh! This site is the best what happened to QS. I have many hosted customers who go look over there. I just put up a site that was based on http://www.soldierside.com/ena24/showThumb.aspx?FSR=0&maxSize=175&img=%2Fena24%2Fuserfiles%2Fgallery2%2F4%5Forange%2Ejpg The customer came to me and wanted that template... I can't show anything right now, but I will do so when the site is finished.
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (28/09/2009 22:50:21)
Good to know Pieter. In that case I will be placing more Templates there, and I'm hoping now that more people can share their templates. We need more variety. Although Artisteer Templates do look pretty much the same, my taste is different than Pieter's and so on... For example I prefer bigger banners, while Pieter prefers smaller banners...

I keep saying this for a long time, but now I'm getting motivated again to update the site to have flash banners and tutorials on flash components. We have no reason/excuses not to have our web sites look as good as any other web site.

I watched the video at least 5 times, and I still think it's a fake!
Pieter says: (28/09/2009 23:02:45)
The video is not fake. But I have not mentioned a small detail: you need a (free) 3rd party component for the unzipping-part. So, many of us will not be able to use this feature, as this component might not be installed on shared hosting plans. Only users who run their own server (or can convince their hosting company to register the .dll) will be able to use it. For the others, the link "Upload zip template" will not even be there...
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (28/09/2009 23:22:04)
In that case, maybe setting up a complete working V25 Demo site will do the trick. We would upload the templates, and get the converted QS template html code to be inserted in our web sites.

The Database will reset itself once an hour, and also clean up the Userfiles folder. When it was up, I used to use the demo site all the time to experiment things.
Pieter says: (28/09/2009 23:25:37)
NOW i know who was hackin' that site all the time

Nick, what an EXCELLENT idea about that demo site. You still have to upload the files yourself, but indeed, the HTML can be generated in some central system. Great thinking ... for a stupid!!!
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (28/09/2009 23:31:15)
Another solution could be to ftp the Artisteer template as we do now, and in this case, bypass the uploading and unzipping process, but process the template conversion part.

There must be a way to overcome this, since most of us I'm sure, are using Virtual Hosting.
Pieter says: (28/09/2009 23:35:51)
Nick, I'm sure there must be a way to bypass this limitation indeed. I guess this will be possible with some http-calls from the hosting server to mine, where mine returns the individual files via some streaming... I have never looked into that option. But it sounds like a technical possibility.

You are right about most users use shared hosting. There are quite a few customers who run their own server(s) though. But it's a minority.
Bob says: (28/09/2009 23:36:33)
I agree with Pieter, the new approach makes templates a simple solution for lots of users but there will still be loads of people who don't want to produce their own templates, or even buy Artisteer.

If anything the simplicity will encourage people to share their designs.
Bob says: (28/09/2009 23:40:48)
Why not have a a "New Template" or "New Artisteer Template" option under setup. With the Artisteer option you just tell QS where you've uploaded the files and hit GO.

Bob
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (29/09/2009 02:40:25)
To fight the "stupid hacker" problem may I suggest a demo site for QS customers only? So it will accessible through the Intranet.It won't be a 100% way to keep undesirables out, but I can't imagine any of us trying to harm QS, specially if you consider how loyal and descent most of us are here.
Pieter says: (29/09/2009 08:21:29)
Nick, another great idea. I will enable demo.quickersite.com for this purpose. I will take care asap. It will be the playground for customers. And it will support the new unzip feature.
doc says: (01/10/2009 08:07:25)
great idea... as usual...

Embedded (iFramed) Google Maps currently throw JS errors!

QuickerSite.com now available for mobile browsers

Artisteer v23 works fine with QuickerSite v24

Performance tips

For some months I noticed the overall performance of QuickerSite.com is somewhat slow. I have been looking into that. Here are my findings.

When using templates in QuickerSite, performance is always a little slower than using the built-in table design. That is because the template needs to be loaded and merged with many dynamic elements. A “normal” (15 pages?) QuickerSite – table-driven- takes around 90 ms to load. The same website with a custom template would take 150 ms (or so)

I want to share some performance tips:

A small performance-gain can be achieved by removing all white spaces in templates. Especially the Artisteer templates come with MANY white spaces. When you remove all of them (well, not all, but all double white spaces at least), you can reduce the size of a template from 26 to 7 kB. This affects the speed at which QS can handle the template. The performance gain is not major, but for this website, it was 200ms.
The most important performance gain can be achieved by removing all constants and vbscripts you don’t need. This website had in total about 40 constants and vbscripts. When I removed about 15 of them, I noticed a significant performance-boost on this site. The pages loaded 2 times faster.

I hope this will help you to finetune performance in QS. Enjoy QS!

17/09/2009 13:37:19 | Pieter | Login | Replies (10)

Tep says: (17/09/2009 12:14:38)
Hi Pieter,

yep I have noticed the loading time is slower using templates.

One Question though: with contants and vbscripts... do you mean them in use or all that have been written and are not in use?
Tep says: (17/09/2009 12:15:43)
Oh,

and something you don´t want to have on your site is an rssfead from your OWN site... this will slow it down by sekonds (20-30sek) !
Pieter says: (17/09/2009 12:19:37)
Tep, i mean all constants/vbscripts, whether they are in use or not.

The feed-problem is not always occurring. It depends on the architecture of the hosting server. Some servers cannot connect to themselves (routing issue). This will indeed cause major problems. But this is not the normal situation. This website loads 2 "own" feeds (blog & news), on every page! They are not causing major issues.
Pieter says: (17/09/2009 12:21:39)
BTW Tep, i now understand why you needed the script yesterday ;) In your case you can indeed better connect directly to the tblPage table. This way, you do not need to connect via the httprequest component in ASP.
Tep says: (17/09/2009 12:57:48)

Yep, I had 3 or 4 RSS Feeds from my own side and that didn´t half slow everything down.

Just got rid of half of my vbscripts/constants....

You will not believe the difference, I stopped the clock:

before deleting the scripts: 30 sek
after deleting the scripts: 5 sek

Is this a huge difference or not????

Thanks Pieter...
Pieter says: (17/09/2009 13:35:43)
Tep, it's huge, but 5 seconds is still a very slow site... Something must still go wrong somehow...
I had 1,2 seconds before I deleted the scripts, 600 ms after...
Tep says: (17/09/2009 13:52:34)
Well I have still got about 15 scripts running...
Maybe that´s why...
Bob says: (17/09/2009 14:00:23)
I'm finding the whole Internet really slow at the moment. When I use a speed tester I get really good results but popular sites (like Paypal today!!) are just incredibly slow
Pieter says: (18/09/2009 17:47:52)
Another tip: removing all line breaks in a template can also speed-up the site. Again, not a sensational difference, but still... It also helps to keep the output-html smaller. You can easily remove line-breaks with online tools like on http://textfixer.com/tools/remove-line-breaks.php ... or any other
doc says: (23/09/2009 23:04:51)
good coding it's a right way, but we can do more with images in two ways:
1) ON the images:
-use flat color instead shadowed color
-manually "clean" every logo jpeg images
-re-use graphical elements when you can
-choose right format (jpg,gif, png)
2) BEHIND THE IMAGES:
a)every graphical files (expecially jpegs) bring some "hidden" information about it's properties (feature, gps info,software, shoot tech data etc etc).
b) But web-speaking we don't need it, so we can remove it and save loading time & bandwidth.
c) Personally i set-up all images, then clean it and publish on web.
d)software you can use are: JPEG CLEANER, IRFAN VIEW, JHEAD or Yafla (but some people report some problem with it)

article to read more:
http://netzreport.googlepages.com/hidden_data_in_jpeg_files.html

this just my personal view...

doc

QuickerSite with table-driven template

Like the new design?

It took 2 hours to setup including the rotator script with the reviews on top of each page. Any feedback? Thx :)

14/09/2009 22:44:12 | Pieter | Login | Replies (12)

nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (14/09/2009 23:33:56)
I saw it earlier, and I thought it was static text until I read this posting. Looks good, and definitely moving in the direction, although I can't fully comment until I see how to set it up, and looking at all the possibilities it will offer.

Anything to move away from static sites, whether it's flash, script or other, will get my vote. We are now in position to make good looking modern web sites, and with QS engine to control the content, we can do it in half the time we would need in other CMSs.

Any thoughts on the V25 release date, or releasing the list of all the new features and fixes? Any more pleasant surprises?
Tep says: (15/09/2009 06:42:21)
Yeah, I thought it was static to...
That´s the way I think. Good stuff!

I agree with Nick: it would be nice not only to see what youre suprises are
Pieter says: (15/09/2009 08:25:24)
Nick, Tep, thx for the feedback.
Have a look at the script: www.quickersite.com/userfiles/file/contentrotator.txt

It's a custom content rotator. Can easily be used for any other purpose (rotating images, rotating css, etc...)
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (15/09/2009 10:50:16)
Thanks a million Pieter, I will be using this for my projects for sure:

I can't help to wonder the following though: You are generating a random number between 1 and 14, and yet there are only 12 quotes. My logic tells me that if the 'number' is 13 or 14 no action will be taken. Yet I reloaded the page many times, and every single time a quote came up. Where is my logic failing?

This script reminds me of the good old days of Turbo Basic, or Turbo Pascal back in College in the late 80's

Tomorrow, I will try to add a timing loop to it, so the quote will change every 10 seconds or so. I'm wondering if this can work, or the loop will prevent the rest of the page to load...
GazOfOz says: (15/09/2009 10:57:26)
Ah Nick
You are missing the Case Else that looks after all other numbers.

Gary
Pieter says: (15/09/2009 12:00:49)
You can add some "weight" to the elements.

Image you generate random numbers between 0 and 20, but you only have 10 items. You can force some items to appear more frequently than others by doing this:

select case number
case 1,2,3,4,5
'this will be more often true than the next cases...
case 6
case 7
case ...
end select
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (15/09/2009 18:41:19)
Thanks Gary,

I'm heading to my eye doctor, obviously I'm getting blind.

@ Pieter: Instead of text, how can we can display pictures?
Pieter says: (15/09/2009 22:11:16)
Nick, response.write "<img src='' />" instead of <p>?
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (15/09/2009 23:09:57)
Thanks Pieter, you certainly rock!
doc says: (16/09/2009 23:14:40)
this template are much better!

for nick, you can see in action an "image rotator" i set-up some month ago:
www.collidiscanzo.it
on every reload image change....smooth and easy

doc
nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (17/09/2009 01:57:03)
Very nice Doc.
doc says: (25/09/2009 21:39:33)
thanks Tep!

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