Tutorial on creating an auction template?

[bubblebabeuk]

I lost 3 hours today ](*,) reading every single thing on creating your own Auction Template in html, but I still am not clear what I am supposed to do!

I would really like to be able to do one myself using dreamweaver 8, which is what I used to create my website.

Does anyone know of a tutorial [-o< or step by step instructions for creating auction templates?

Sorry to be a pain, I appreciate this is a popular topic and has been talked about lots, but I couldn't actually see a complete tutorial on the subject?

Help me please [-o<

[Lizabeads]

Me too !

[bubblebabeuk]

LOL I thought I actually had a response! I should be so lucky!

BTW I think I might have sort of worked it out, if you copy source on someone elses template, then put it in your html editor, you can by fiddling and changing things kinda work out what does what! and make one completely of your own?

Thats what I am trying at the minute!

[meitali]

ellie, yes, this is correct, but i must say that personally, i learned much more by playing with it myself :) i only tried to view a source code that way once, and it took me about 3 seconds to quit :)

i like to work in dreamweaver in the split mode of the work area, and i work mainly in the code part, but i like it that stuff appear immediately in the design view half and i don't have to switch windows to a browser (although i do have the file open in a browser window, and i constantly save on dreamweaver and refresh the browser because it doesn't look the same in the browser or in dreamweaver's design view). i also like that you can click an item in the design view and it will get highlighted in the code. i learned a lot of html that way!

take a white paper, and sketch your template on it. it will help if you visualize it as a grid, although not all squares of the grid have to be the same size.

i'm still not really good at this, so at this stage, i only have different widths of columns in a same table, but not different heights. that's ok for me because it works perfectly well with my template :)

anyway- once you have it sketched, get into dreamweaver and make a table (that's in the "commons" tab in the toolbar) - i don't know how to determine different widths of the colums in that stage, so what i did is i made a table of just 2 cells, and i altered their width inside the code- you'll see there's a total width of the table, and the respective widths of each column, so just play with it. my template has 2 tables like that, because back when i was just starting that was the only way i figured out to do this (because in each row i have different widths of a column). now i'm pretty sure i can do this all in one table, but i just don't need it, because you can't tell the difference anyway. the line i have in the bottom of my template with the links to my other auctions is actually a 3rd table, because again, i didn't know how to have one row with 3 cells in it when the other rows only have 2 :) now i know how to do it, but i don't need to change anything because it looks just the way i want it too look anyway :)

then in each cell you add the content as you have it in your sketch! for example, i have pics in the left colum of the upper and lower tables, and i also have another template that has another column with pics to the right of the bottom table (i have an auction ending tonight where i used that one, the pics are not amazing unfortunately, but you can get the idea of how the page is structured). my titles are also .jpg files that i uploaded and added just like any other image, and they just stay fixed in my code.

each time i write a new auction, i upload my images to the internet (i use photobucket.com), i open dreamweaver, i click on a pick in the design view to get it highlighted in the code (i could do this manually, it's just so much faster doing it this way :)), and replace what's between the quotes in the img src tag with the url for the pic. i usually have about 4 pics in an auction, so that's all the work that needs to be done!

then i write the text description (sometimes i play a little with paragrafs and line breaks to make it "look right", depending on the size of the main pic), remember to save and check in a browser to see how it will look, and just copy and past it all to the html area when you list an auction!

that's about all i know about this, i'm faaaar from being an expert about html, there's still so much to learn, but it's great that with quite basic knowledge one can still build a useable page- i give myself credit that my template is at least decent :lol:

you are welcome to check out my auctions to see what i was referring to :)

credit on getting me started on html goes to former-web-designer-now-beadmaker sarah hornik :) i can't remember what precisely she taught me (as mr. smiley once said- "after a while, i just know stuff"), but thanks to her help and guidance i got started in this :)

i hope this helps, if you have any questions let me know, and i hope i know enough of this to answer them! :D

good luck,
meital

[BrakerBeads]

Ok...want the cheap and dirty way???

Go get a free HTML editor: http://www.chami.com/html-kit/

Then buy an auction template off of ebay: http://stores.ebay.com/Enchanting-Templates/store-front.html

Once you can "see" a good template.....then you can tweak it to become your own.

That is what I did. I replaced the background with a picture I drew in paint (it's black and white) .

I added photos and more info....learned some very basic html.

It worked for me. It's not super stellar or fancy ....it gets the job done.

Good luck! ~NancyB

[Howaco]

Chris put this info together for me because I begged for some help with templates!

http://www.chrisfisherart.com/Template%20Tutorial.htm

[AbbyC]

This won't help you with Dreamweaver, but I make my templates using robshelp.com. He has a free online application that makes it oh so easy. It is free, and he also has an image hosting service, which I use, that costs $8.00/month.

I bought a template on ebay and could never figure out how to use the darn thing.

Cheers,

[jaccarney]

if you decide not to do it yourself, i'll design one for ya, if you like, (we sell them on our website design site for $25) and i have a video tutorial for you on how to edit it easily for each listing (includes a matching "about me" page) both for EBay.