Website Design Forum

**ICI** · 05-09-2006, 12:38 AM

My web site is www.coloradophones.com . I'm totally new at this. For some reason my site comes up on the left side of my screen instead of in the center as the others on this site do. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance

**moondog** · 05-09-2006, 04:57 AM

For the beginner it's good, but why did You put so many layers on that page?
For beginners, tables can do that easier and it can be centered as well.

That page was created with Frontpage, did it?
Dreamweaver is my advice, if you use WYSIWYG editor.

About images!
Images are very big (I mean about bytes). You must resize the image!
For example: image with two telephones is 900x520 pixels, but on page it is 167x91.

. WHY? It doesn't reduce the image size in bytes! You must resize the image by yourself! Use some program for image editing and fix that problem.

Start from beggining with Your layout in your mind and try to rearrange.

good luck

**designer007** · 05-09-2006, 06:41 AM

yes..
agree with moondog

**KellyElizabeth** · 05-11-2006, 06:03 PM

Well, you definitely don't want to use tables. Your site is pretty impressive for a beginner! Div layers, PHP includes and css are the best and most efficient way of getting the job done.

If you are familiar with div layers, you can manipulate your layout into being centered by setting the margins to negative margins. If you want to go this route, just let me know.

**vangogh** · 05-12-2006, 01:09 AM

ICI you're not doing anything wrong. Your page will come up on the left by default. You have to code it so it gets centered. The way I center my pages is to wrap a div around everythng inside the body tag and then use a little css so:

<body>
<div id="page">
all your code
</div>
</body>

and then the css:

div#page {width:some px; margin:0 auto}

That should center your page in any size window. You'll also need to add a proper doctype at the top of your page for it to work in Internet Explorer.

**moondog** · 05-12-2006, 07:04 AM

Ok, vangogh and kelly, You're right.

But ICI said that he was very new in designing web pages.
I think that DIVs and tabeless layout will be confusinh for him.
And of course, I think that tabless layout and css are the best way to make pages.

He must start thinking properly to use css and split layout in logical DIVS.
There are so many 2-columns and 3-columns free CSS layout with nice explanation.

And certainly, he didn't do anything wrong. He wants to learn and he ask for advice. That's a good way to do something. Go on ICI!

**vangogh** · 05:09 PM

You're right moondog and maybe I should have come up with another solution. I think though that way the site has been coded my suggestion will still be the easiest to implement. Let me rephrase the code a bit so it can be copy paste.

<body>
<div style="width:730px; margin:0 auto">
all of your code here
</div>
</body>

ICI, if add the code beginning <div style.... and add it just below your opening <body> tag and add the </div> just above the closing </body> tag and leave the rest of your code in between you should get a centered page.

You will needed a proper doctype like I mentioned above. Place this code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

at the top of every one of your pages. It should be the first thing on every page even above the opening <html> tag.

I think that will be the easiest way to center the page, though I have another suggestion as well that won't require the doctype or the css.

<body>
<table align="center">
<tr>
<td>
all your code here
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>

Wrapping all of your code in a new table and setting the table to be align="center" should also work to center your pages in the browser window. I belive that the rest of your code will still work with this idea. I'm sure it will with the first suggestion.

Again though it wasn't anything you did wrong. The default is for the page to be aligned in the top left corner.

I hope the code I have here makes sense and works for you. If for any reason it doesn't please post again here and I and others will be happy to help more.