RS site design help

Caroline · Post by **Caroline** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:44 am

i am thinking about revamping my gallery's look. im pretty good with a computer, but i am site-design retarded so i need some advice. as a point of reference i have to give a shout out to chanth for a sec because i love the design of this site:

http://www.chanth.com/lastunicorn.html

is there an html trick to get out of the usual 'box w/ borders' look, or do i just need to get creative with the banners? for those of you with custom borders, are u guys just making fancy wallpapers with built-in borders? if so, how do i do that? (am i making sense to anyone?...)

i can take criticism pretty well, so any replies, pms, whatever are greatly appreciated! if someone is bored and wants to help me single handedly, i would appreciate that too! this is something that may take me a while as i do not have a whole lot of free time (shockingly)!

RoboFlonne · Post by **RoboFlonne** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 5:03 pm

Maybe you just need an animated Top and Bottom Banner?

miz ducky · Post by **miz ducky** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 7:58 pm

I've wondered about this as well. Can someone who deviated from the set up that we're given tell us how to make our RS site look different too?

I've seen people use picture backgrounds and wondered how they do that when things seem to be set in the format that we're given.

Moop · Post by **Moop** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:22 pm

I may be completely missing what you mean, so I'm sorry if I'm stating the obvious...but do you know that if you use choose "Global" from the dropdown menu in 'Edit Site Graphics' that you can add your own custom background, footer and borders?

Shampoo · Post by **Shampoo** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:46 pm

I'd be more than happy to give a quickie note about it
if noone else has yet.

What I do is simply use the measurements given on
RS where the banner cannot go over 570 pixels in width
(the height is free for all which is where you can really
have fun w/ your banner!)

and then extend my bleed from the top and round my corners in my graphic
so when I add the banner to my front page its rounded
and flows w/ the square format we have
Heres what my banner looks like

http://www.rubberslug.com/user/f9ced022 ... title2.jpg

you do the same for the bottom banner althou
the trick to get it super even for all pages when you start
hitting the categories of your cels is
that all your thumbnails must be the same size
and your square format doesnt exceed the max which is
590 width

As the lovely Moop pointed out, all the settings and measurements
are given in the global and home drop down menu in "edit graphics"

Hope that helps some! ^_^

toonybabe · Post by **toonybabe** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:29 pm

Cooooool! I just redid my layout! Thanks Moop and Shampoo for the advice! :yourock:

miz ducky · Post by **miz ducky** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 12:24 am

I love your background Toonybabe!! It's great with the black and white Sonic banner.

Moop

Thanks for stating the obvious! I actually Never noticed that before. Please excuse my lack of attention. For some reason, I must have always ignored it because it is in brackets. I can't believe that it was sitting in front of my face all this time.

Thank You!

Shampoo

I don't know what it means to extend the bleed. I use photoshop, but I have not idea what to do with it in general. So everything that I manage to pull of is pretty basic. Can you give a brief description of how you make those corners?

Thanks for your input!!

klet · Post by **klet** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:01 am

It's all about messing around within the parameters. You can get rid of the "box" by making your page background, content background, and border all the same color. That's how mine is at the moment. You can soften the box look by just making your page background and border the same color. You also can choose whatever color you want rather than picking one of the preset color schemes. RS uses the same codes that photoshop, html, etc. use for colors:

http://www.pagetutor.com/common/bgcolors1536.png

You can also mess around with your home banner by sticking one on the right or left rather than in the center. That's what I like about my current home page--no one else really has this on RS:

http://misfit.rubberslug.com/gallery/home.asp

Also, though RS says that you have a limit on the number of pixels for your width, it's actually not true.

It's just that having a larger pic width will stretch your page layout, and having a smaller one will squish it. For example, my links page has a pic that's 704x400:

http://misfit.rubberslug.com/gallery/links.asp

So, yeah. It's all about playing around. You can also do stuff like getting rid of the gallery name at the top of each page by uploading a small, clear gif as your "subpage banner."

Of course, there's a lot nicer galleries out there than mine. I don't have much experience with photoshop, so I haven't made any really nice banners.

miz ducky · Post by **miz ducky** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:34 am

Klet,

Maybe you can help me. I messed around with the size of my subpage banner when I was first uploading it. If it was ever Over the size limit, it was always shrunk to fit the size restriction and it never stretched the page.

I had tried to get it to stretch to a larger banner because I noticed that when I opened an individual item (especially a pan), it would push the borders and make the regular sized banner left justified again.

After toying around with the check box options (I think the one that forced the larger pics to 300pix), I got to a point where there isn't a gap in the subpage banner any more when I open any kind of individual item. So I just left it at that.

My subpage banner shows on all my pages. How did you get a different banner on each page?

Sorry, everyone, I keep asking so many questions. I just don't have the patience to fuss with it a whole lot to figure things out on my own.

Shampoo · Post by **Shampoo** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 12:48 pm

miz ducky wrote:
Shampoo

I don't know what it means to extend the bleed. I use photoshop, but I have not idea what to do with it in general. So everything that I manage to pull of is pretty basic. Can you give a brief description of how you make those corners?

Sorry about that

I meant was that you can extend the height of the graphic
to include designs whether to mimic a pop out of the border
like I did w/ the umbrella peeking beyond the 'border'
or just simple rounded corners.

As for how to make rounded corners I work
solely on Illustrator but it can also be done in photoshop.
^_^

Just make a selection w/ your rectangle marquee and
then go to Select>Modify>Smooth and punch in the
amount of pixels you want it to smooth.

If you want to transform the selection w/o drawing the
marquee rectangle again you go to
Selection> transform selection

For your other questions about how to get different
banners-- look under the Home drop down menu in
Edit graphics.
You can set banners for your homepages alone
and then in global are the banners you upload to
show up in all your RS pages.

If you want a 2nd banner underneath your global banner
like.. lets say you wanted a wishlist banner besides
your general global banner.. just
go to the individual drop down for "wishlist" and pop it in
the wishlist banner.

I think playing around w/ the edit graphics
features *is* the best way to see it.

I hope this m,akes sense?

klet · Post by **klet** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:19 pm

miz ducky wrote:I had tried to get it to stretch to a larger banner because I noticed that when I opened an individual item (especially a pan), it would push the borders and make the regular sized banner left justified again.

See, I never have had a subpage banner, so I'm not entirely sure how to deal with that one. It might in fact shrink to fit the 570.

If you don't have a subpage banner loaded, then no banner shows up in individual series or individual cels.

http://misfit.rubberslug.com/gallery/ma ... esID=23300

http://misfit.rubberslug.com/gallery/in ... mID=164631

miz ducky wrote:My subpage banner shows on all my pages. How did you get a different banner on each page?

That one's easy enough. When you go into each subpage to upload a banner (wishlist, links, feedback, etc) there are two places to upload. Just delete the one that's in the "subpage" spot and upload one into the specialized spot (wishlist, links, whatever it is). Voila, different banners for each page!

Once you delete (or upload) the "Subpage banner" it disappears from (or shows up in) every upload section for your subpages. So, in other words, you only have to delete or upload it once.

Like Shampoo implied, you can have both a universal "subpage banner" and a individual subpage banner (wishlist, whatever). The universal one will just be on top of the individual one, and the universal will still show up when you click on a series or a cel. I personally don't like the look of one stacked on the other, which is why I forgo a universal "subpage banner" altogether.

Now, if you just have the wishlist, links, etc. banners up with no subpage banner, RS will automatically put your gallery title at the top of the page. It will also do this if you choose to upload a "Home Right Banner" or a "Home Left Banner" rather than just a centered "Home Banner."

If you want to avoid this, upload a small, clear gif into the "Home Banner" or "Subpage Banner" slot (whichever space you're trying to get rid of the gallery title for). Here's the spacer I'm using (right click and hit "Save target as"):

http://www.rubberslug.com/graph/spacer.gif

Anyway, hope that helped!

sugarcels · Post by **sugarcels** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:22 pm

Hmm. I've been thinking of changing my layout (I didn't like it much) - I think I'll try the "rounded banner" thing. Hope it works, I use PS a lot but there are still things I can't do

miz ducky · Post by **miz ducky** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 2:03 pm

Shampoo, Klet, :yourock:

Thank you so much for explaining everything. I guess I picked the wrong place for my new banner, and I didn't want to use the SubPage Banner after all.

I hope I'm not the only one who learned a lot from this thread!

Thanks!!!

klet · Post by **klet** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 3:12 pm

You're more than welcome.

Sparta101 · Post by **Sparta101** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 6:13 pm

If anyone needs any help with there gallery designs just pm me and maybe we can work something out I have done a few gallery designs for rubberslug members all are under my banners section in my gallery.