ctaylor2

I think you need to shorten the width of your navigational list items - the last nav link is spilling onto another row and then the main content is pushed off centre.

To make your content centre you can use margin: 0 auto. You need to specify a width to make this work though. If you look at the css for my site: http://www.bolsover.derbyshire.sch.uk/wp-content/themes/bolsoverschool/style.css I use the class: .centred { margin:0 auto; width:880px; } For the id main-wrap which surrounds the main part of the page

Found a hack to enable max-width in ie6 here if you want to use it: min/max-width fix for IE6 - CSS - Snipplr

Ah, got you. Without seeing a live version of the page it's a little difficult to say what might be causing the problem as I can't see which classes apply to what. I can see a that the id 'page' and 'page-home' have a min-width: 920px. This means anything over 920px wide it will expand. Try changing it to max-width: 1280px. The only prob with that though is I don't think IE6 supports min/max widths.

Designing for variable width monitors can always be a problem. Could you be a little clearer with what your problem is. When you say you would like to display the background do you mean that the background image is not repeated correctly? I'm not familiar with the theme, could you provide a screenshot or preferably a live link so I can have a tinker. Thanks

@studio Yeah, it's all by little ol me. @p858snake Thanks for that. I like that idea so I might put some links in the footer. I've put links to the Rss and Email subscriptions in the news and blog sidebars. @Simcfc73 Thanks for your kind comments.

@webman No probs at all with Wordpress - it's so flexible it's more like a CMS than a blog platform. I'm pretty familiar with it as I freelance as a designer in my free time tho and have developed with it before. But I would definitely recommend it to anyone. If anyone is interested in using it let me know as I've got loads of useful resources bookmarked. @matt40k Thanks for spotting the invalidation - it's mostly due to the google maps link in the footer which because the doc type is XHTML strict doesn't like invalid characters - I'm planning to get around to fixing it soon. @mossj, @dringer Thanks for spotting the IE8 error - not really managed to test in it yet as I'm Mac bound at home and the school only had IE6/7 at the moment. I'm tempted to force it into IE7 compatibility mode but I'll try see what's causing it next week first. Thanks. Thanks for everyone else's comments.

Hi guys I've redesigned and updated my schools website and would love any feedback (good and bad) you guys have. Have a gander here: www.bolsover.derbyshire.sch.uk Thanks!

Thanks, I'll give it a go!

I want to conduct a questionnaire with visitors of our school website to get feedback on design, usability, features etc. However I don't want the message prompting the questionnaire showing internally to students (all of our classroom computers show the school website as their homepage). Does anyone know a way to do this at all? Thanks

No probs mate

Sorry I can't sort this for you. To be honest one of the main problems is that the site is rather bloated with bad code and isn't very semantically designed (not criticising you btw, this is the kind of code generated by front page). Have a look at the number of validation errors it generates!: [invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.bws.wilts.sch.uk/News/News.html - W3C Markup Validator As the styling isn't seperated from the content these kind of errors can be a reoccurant pain in the backside I'm afraid You could try a table cell but I've not coded table based layouts before so I'm not sure where to start, but again it's bad design practice and I would really recommend it. I'll try and have another look at it on monday for you - I'm off soon to get my weekend started!

Ah, think it might be an IE6 bug, looks fine in firefox (see below) http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/4223/screenshotln0.th.jpg Can you try changing what I gave you to this: #pscroller2 { background-color:lavender; border:1px solid black; height:26px; /*left:450px;*/ margin:0 auto; padding:3px; /*position:absolute;*/ width:240px margin: 0 auto; display: inline; /*sometimes fixed ie6 bugs*/ } Are you using ie6 to view your site? Chris

Hmmm. I'm using a plug-in for firefox called Firebug which allows me to play around with the css on a site and I seem to have the box centred on the screen fine - could you replace this #pscroller2 section with this code in the header (I've commented out what I don't think you need): #pscroller2 { background-color:lavender; border:1px solid black; height:26px; /*left:450px;*/ margin:0 auto; padding:3px; /*position:absolute;*/ width:240px margin: 0 auto; }

Hi Paul How are you adding this box to your page? What Content Management System are you using? Chris

Sorry, yes you need to delete 'left: 450px.'

Hi PWaite You can centre content by amending the CSS for that element to add 'margin: 0 auto' and remove any other positioning: #pscroller2 { background-color:lavender; border:1px solid black; height:26px; left:450px; margin:0 auto; padding:3px; }

Like others have said SEO can be a complex area. Sorting your title tags is important and including meta tags won't hurt. The most important thing is that you have up to date and relevant content on your site. Other factors in higher search rankings include being linked to by other relevant websites (the text that they use in the hyperlink can be relevant as well). I've got some links for you - hope they help. Beginner's Guide to SEO: Quickie Dos and Don'ts - Search Engine Guide Blog 10 SEO Techniques All Top Web Sites Should Use | Freelance Folder SEOmoz | The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet

Just thought I'd say hi. I'm a publications officer at The Bolsover School in Derbyshire - mainly take care of the school newsletter, SIM's stuff and the school website which I've recently redesigned using Wordpress as a backend (I do freelance web design, illustration and graphic design out of school as well). Have a look at the school site here: The Bolsover School - A Specialist Business and Enterprise Secondary School.

Here's some resources I used whilst learning. HTML HTML: An Interactive Tutorial: www.davesite.com/*webstation/html/ Introduction to HTML: Dave Raggett's Introduction to HTML What Beautiful HTML Code Looks like: What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like Handy list of HTML codes for characters like the copyright symbol etc: ⌘C ⌘V Character XHTML Overview: http://webmonkey.wired.com/*webmonkey/00/50/index2a.html CSS CSS from the ground Up: www.wpdfd.com/issues/*70/css_from_the_ground_up 70 Expert Ideas for CSS coding: 70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding | CSS | Smashing Magazine Learning CSS Positioning: www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/*html-training/css/positioning/ I'd recommend you just start building some simple sites so you get used to thinking in the right way - learn by doing is best for me. Once you get used to the concepts then I'd also recommend subscribing to some blogs on the subject: look fro Design Float and Smashing Magazine for some useful links.