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Intimidated by those fancy greetings you see in the party books? Don't think you can
join in because you don't know how to make a bright colorful greeting?
Well you can even if you just type in a "plain jane" greeting (that has
no chance of messing up the book), but even if you want a fancy greeting,
party signing CAN be easy. As easy as copy and paste!
Here's how!
The first thing to remember is that making a book greeting is the same as making
any other .html file. You create a page just for your signature. If you want more
than one greeting you create an individual file for each one and keep then together
either by putting them in their own directory or add "grtng" to the beginning of
the file name. Some people are fortunate and don't need to edit visually, but I
do. So, having my greetings as a .html file helps when I need to edit or want to change a
greeting. You can use an editor to create your greetings as well, just make sure
to remove the <head> and <body> tags. They aren't necessary for signing books
and can actually cause problems. Once your greetings are created, you can use our
"Lazy Man's Way To Sign Books" as shown below.
The rest is all HTML but there are a few things to remember. The most important of these
is the following.
Always close all your tags. One failed closure will force the book owner to spend a great
deal of time trying to find your mistake because it affects everything after your signature.
So please, for your sanity and the book owner's sanity, close out all tags.
For example, most signatures look better centered so you would open with <center> but you
need to remember to close it with </center>. Every time you open a <center> you close it
with a </center>. When your greeting is finished, you may want to count each opening tag
and make sure you have an equal number of closing tags. So if you have 3 <center>'s and 5
opening <font> tags, you would need to make sure you have 3 </center>'s and 5 closing
</font> tags. More on fonts later, just be aware that whatever you open you must close.
The exception to this is <br> tag. This adds spaces and breaks and does not need a closing tag.
One neat thing you can do with your greeting is add images. This is done much the same way as you
would for a page on your site, except you have to use the entire address for the image. For
example, the address for this image:
is - http://www.thesitefights.com/inkwell/images/balloons1.gif
It is also a good idea to put in the dimensions of the image so the browser knows how much space
to allow for it, which makes downloading faster. The entire code for the above image would be
<img src="http://www.thesitefights.com/inkwell/balloons1.gif" width="123" height="182" border="0">
If you don't know the width and height, that's ok. It will just take longer for the image to load.
But while we are talking about loading images, there are a few cautions to keep in mind:
1. It is better to use images smaller in kb size than larger ones. One of the these I do to check
kb size is start to send it to someone over ICQ. I select "Send File", then I browse for the image.
When I select the image, in the ICQ dialogue box there will be the size of the file. Once I see what
that is, I hit "Cancel" (not "send"). It is best to keep your image file sizes below 20 kb for
guestbooks, and the smaller the better. If you are giving an award, it is almost always better to
email it to the recipient rather than make it a part of your guestbook greeting.
2. Don't load up on images. Select 3 or 4 that you like. The more images
you have the longer it takes to load your greeting and the entire guestbook.
3. Never rename your images once they are in use and never pull them off
the site you've uploaded them onto If you do either of these things, the images you have placed in
every book you have signed will show up broken. So choose your images carefully and be polite: leave
them up under the same name.
4. Finally, you will want to read the terms of service for your webspace provider. Many, including
Geocities and Tripod, do not allow image linking and replace your images with their logos. And a few
may even close your account and delete your website if they find that you have attempted to place
images into a guestbook or elsewhere. But don't dispair if your host doesn't allow you to link images
from your site. There are other ways to make a colorful and pretty greeting. If you are dead set on
using images, why not try Site Fights Hosting?
(Yes, I left out the the on purpose.) Create a spirit page there and show the world how much
you love your team! And the bonus? They allow you to link images to guestbooks.
Another way you can make your signature colorful and in the party spirit is through font face, color
and style. Each has their own coding, and much of the coding can be combined to reduce the number of
opening tags. First, here are the tags to open font changes:
<font color="######"> to change color with the # equal to a 6 digit hex number
<font size=""> to make the size bigger use +# inside the "" or to make the size smaller use -# inside the ""
<font face="name of font"> to make the font a type face of your choice
<b> to make the writing bold
<i> to italicize your writing
<u> to underline your writing
<s> to strikethrough your writing
Whenever you use any of the above, you MUST close the opening tags with </font>, </b>,
</i>, </u> or </s> or risk affecting every entry in the book after yours. If you
make a lot of font changes, however, it can get very confusing trying to figure our how many
closing tags you need. One way to reduce the number of tags is to combine the font tags into
one long tag. For example the coding for this sprinkle
~*~
looks like this:
<font color="#FFFFFF" face="Comic Sans MS"> <b> ~ <font color="#FFFF00">* </font> ~ </b> </font>
Notice how the font face is only in the first tag? But it shows up in the entire coding because
only the font color is change for the little yellow star. Notice how the color for the star is
closed, but there is a closure also at the end of the code? That closure is for the opening code.
If you count, there are two opening font tags and two closing font tags.
Now...want to add some color? Here's one of the best color charts I have seen:
Some Other Color Chart Links:
HYPE's Color Specifier for Netscape v.3
ZSPC Super Color Chart
Finally, many people use tables to make neat contained greetings. This whole page is done in
tables. A real big caution with tables. Tags must be closed. If you leave your <table> tag
without a </table> tag, the page will be nothing but a blank background in netscape. And
since most people don't want or like to deal with finding the missing codes in tables, they are
more than likely going to delete a broken table entry than try to fix it. So here is a sample
of a table greeting:
~*~*pad, pad*~*~
You have been Party Sprinkled by
a Quill from the Site Fights
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Here is what the code looks like:
<table BORDER=3 COLS=2 WIDTH="85%" BACKGROUND="../images/pawstl2s.jpg" align="center">
<tr><td align="center">
<h2><font color="#910048">~*~*pad, pad*~*~<br>
You have been Party Sprinkled by<br>
a Quill from the Site Fights</font></h2>
</td><td ROWSPAN="2" align="center">
<img SRC="../images/fdusted.gif" height=141 width=196></td>
</tr><tr>
<td align="center">
<br><img SRC="../images/spirit_stickl.gif" height=32 width=32>
<img SRC="../images/spirit_stickr.gif" height=32 width=32>
</td></tr>
</table>
Notice how each tag is on its own line. If you are new to tables or not very good at them,
this is the best way to code a table. That way you can easily find each open tag and its
corresponding closing tag. The images here do not have the complete url as they are part
of a webpage, but if you are using a table for your greeting, you still must use the
entire url for all images.
Now, "The Lazy Man's Guide" to signing guestbooks. Once you have a greeting made up,
the first thing you need to do is test it in a HTML sensitive book.
I have a Testing
Book you are welcome to use. If you sign this book, I will fix any coding errors and send the
correct html code to you.
Once you are sure the code is free of errors, copy and paste the coding into notepad,
creating a text file (.txt) of the greeting. At the top of the file, above the coding,
put your information: name, email, site name, and site url. Save the file in your greetings
directory. When it's time to go book signing, open your text file and copy and paste
everything from the file into the book. It's fast and easy, with all the work done and no
worries about html errors. I have signed 30 or more books a week this way. You can always
add a more personal note in plain type beneath your fancy greeting if you are so inclined.
And there you have it! If you have any questions, DScribe
is more than willing to help, so don't hesitate to drop her a line. Now go on out and . . .
SHARE THE PARTY SPIRIT!
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