g'day,

just updated our web site added some new pages.

let us know what you think?

also are guest books outdated now? seems lots of visitors don't see
the need or whatever so maybe we should weed it out?

see you:

http://www.gardenlen.com/


With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

Len,

Very cool approach. Are you purchasing all the rough materials in your
strawbale garden (straw, mushroom compost, sugarcane remnants) or is
that all available locally (don't see how you manage THAT in a small
yard! )?

How long does it take for the materials to break down inside the
strawbales?

Thanks for sharing!

Its great that you''re able to produce your own website, but a little
more design and a little less banners would really make it better. The
banners, while you may think they are useful, really don't match the
website and just bulk-up the page, (think doughnuts, not steak and
eggs).

g'day gonzo,

yes i purchase it but it comes from local suppliers not retail outlet.

as the height of the medium has reduced i'd say it is well on the way
to be broken down especially the leaves and softer bits, the grass hay
i used for mulch over the mushy compost is breaking down and getting
thin so i am currently topping that up by placing our kitchen scraps
on the top of the old mulch and covering that with new mulch in this
case sugar cane mulch.


On 26 Aug 2006 07:52:53 -0700, "gonzo" wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

g'day happybattles,

not real sure waht you mean?

this apge ahs been running for over 7 years now and very ealy on i got
some constructive criticism that i follwed and to date have no other
comments apart from positive ones.

when i use banners apart from my own they are to mainly promote other
web pages that othes have online and generally connected to the
subject matter.

and i have always placed those banners to the bottom of the pages so
the imprtant information comes up first and gives the reader something
to peruse as the page fully loads

now i'm just a common garden type gardener who has learnt to use html
code and create a web page, i'm no fancy web master. and i see their
pages many times they are often hard to navigate and very slow to load
not simple at all.

i could easily provide text links for other pages but then hey that
would be a trifle boring wouldn't it?

could you maybe be more specific about

"The banners, while you may think they are useful, really don't match the
website and just bulk-up the page, (think doughnuts, not steak and
eggs)."

tia

On 26 Aug 2006 08:20:49 -0700, "Happybattles"
wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

when i use banners apart from my own they are to mainly promote other
web pages that othes have online and generally connected to the
subject matter.

Its not that the banners aren't connected to the subject matter, but
they look like coupons scattered on a dinging room table. My
suggestion: Get smaller banners, no more than 40x40 pixels, from the
websites you are linking too. Or, even better, group the banners into
more specific subjects. Then provide a link to those subjects. Then
put the banner on one side and a description of the website, what they
can find, how it would be useful and the website address. Also,
linking the banner straight to the website is useful. It would go
somethign like this:

table border=1 bordercolor="black" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=6
tr
tdimg src="http://putalinktothebannerhere"
alt="websitenamehere"/td
td
bWebsitename/b: Description - make sure you put all the info here
like a newspaper reporter. Maybe even put a rating like *** for a
great resource or * for a slightly useful website.
/td
/tr
tr
tdRinse, repeat./td
tdRinse, repeat./td
/tr
/table


and i have always placed those banners to the bottom of the pages so
the imprtant information comes up first and gives the reader something
to peruse as the page fully loads

That is one way to do it. A more useful and professional approach is
to get smaller images and/or save the image-heavy pages for pages other
than your main page.


now i'm just a common garden type gardener who has learnt to use html
code and create a web page, i'm no fancy web master. and i see their
pages many times they are often hard to navigate and very slow to load
not simple at all.


True true.

i could easily provide text links for other pages but then hey that
would be a trifle boring wouldn't it?


Yes it would. Images make it easier for friends to show what they've
found because they don't have to read, they just look at the color and
shapes.

Overall you have a successful website. I can help - at no charge - but
I need some info about your web server.

1) Are you running it off your home computer?
2) Is it a Windows server or Linux (Apache)?
3) Do you have ASP privledges? If you're not sure, ask the company you
pay to host your website.

If your website is on a Windows server and you have ASP privledges,
then I can create for you a very nice website which will be very easy
for you update, change and alter. You won't be able to change the
basic layout, but adding links, changing text and such will be very
easy with little instruction, which I will include with the ZIP file I
send you. Installation will be easy too, as you already know how to
put files on your website.

g'day happybattles,

thanks for replying.

i will take that code and put it onto my page and see how i can use it
i am always willing to learn new things though i may not fully
understand how it all works.

with those banners i can insert code to change the size or i can use
the picture viewer to do that for me, i will look at that side of it,
i ahve done some tidying up of the frontpage.

snipped

1) Are you running it off your home computer?

yes i run it form our home pc.

2) Is it a Windows server or Linux (Apache)?
3) Do you have ASP privledges? If you're not sure, ask the company you
pay to host your website.

not sure about what is meant bythe above? my isp allocates me some web
space to run a page in that is how it works.

i don't pay for nor can afford to pay for a webmaster.

all i pay i an anual fee for the domain name.

the basic layout of the frontpage was done for me by a friend at the
time, her link is in my salutation line toward the bottom of the page,
so she did the banner and the tables for me, and i just added the
rest.

snipped
send you. Installation will be easy too, as you already know how to
put files on your website.

not sure how far i want to go with it at this time, but i thank you
for your offer. we are pensioners on limited income it would be nice
to get some gratuity form those who use the site BUT dunno.

a question for you though "what is involved in setting up a donation
link"? maybe that may work? not looking to millions but something to
supplement would be nice.

tia

With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

On 16 Sep 2006 08:17:28 -0700, "Happybattles"
wrote:

snipped

table border=1 bordercolor="black" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=6
tr
tdimg src="http://putalinktothebannerhere"
alt="websitenamehere"/td
td
bWebsitename/b: Description - make sure you put all the info here
like a newspaper reporter. Maybe even put a rating like *** for a
great resource or * for a slightly useful website.
/td
/tr
tr
tdRinse, repeat./td
tdRinse, repeat./td
/tr
/table

tried using the above code dunno must be me i got some fram up but
nothing in the information i substituted showed as a live link.

here is wha i did:

table border=1 bordercolor="black" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=6
tr
tdimg src="img src="the_vege'_garden_logo.gif"
alt="The Vegetable Patch"/td
td
bThe Vegetable Patch/b: Gavin has links with the local Organic
Growers Club, his page is full of good information for all Organic
Gardeners.
/td
/tr
tr
tdRinse, repeat./td
tdRinse, repeat./td
/tr
/table


the only thing i can figure is that i need to include the a href="
along with the img src= code to create a live link??
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

"Happybattles" wrote in
oups.com:

*snip: website improvement suggestions*

While we're talking website improvement, I'd like to suggest that anyone
doing websites takes the time to read Jakob Nielsen's top 10 homepage
mistakes and avoid those things. Most of them (like not opening pages in
new windows) don't require much knowledge of web development to
implement.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

I'm not affiliated, I just happen to agree with most of what he writes.

Puckdropper
--
Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it.

To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm

the only thing i can figure is that i need to include the a href="
along with the img src= code to create a live link??
With peace and brightest of blessings,


Correct, to use an image as a link do the following:

a href="website.com"
img src="image.jpg"
/a

I wasn't looking to get paid for anything, but I'd really like to see
your site traffic increase and you actually make a living from your
passion.

Since you pay your ISP for the webspace, you are probably running on a
Linux or Unix server... for which I can do nothing. If you ever switch
to a paid server, expect to pay $9-$25 per month for an ASP server. If
you ever do switch, I can create something nice for you.

As for a donation link, visit www.paypal.com and make an account. It
takes a couple of days to verify it, but they provide you with a link
you can use for donations.

Another idea is to chaning your webisite into one which uses a
pay-for-access feature. That means you'd have to spend a lot of time
doing reasearch at the library. But, you can help people by
introducing them to new ideas, methods and a little history of gardens
(think hanging gardens).

Also, to reduce the workload and improve your site even more, find
friends who know things about gardening or related topics and allow
them to post articles on yoru website. People love to give advice.

Expect to charge $1 per month to start out. Most people would be
willing to pay that even just out of curiosity.

However, all of this will require an ASP server for me to do it, or
$100 per page for a professional to do it. A one-time cost of about
$35 is required for the site certificate to ensure nobody can steal
passwords. That's usually good for a year. Renewals are usually half
the price.

Another question: Are you connected to the internet all the time? Also
- do you run Windows on your home computer? I may have a way around
the pay-for-ASP feature.

g'day happybattles,

you're a very switched on person by the sounds of it, me i'm an old
foggy if i can put it that way just rying to get the hang of computers
and this technology online.

yes we would all like to earn some respecatble money but then there i
usually a price to pay for that, and i guess one would need moderators
and be able to generate topical gardening topics to keep people coming
back at least on a weekly basis? and a lot more bandwidth than what
our isp offers for a free homepage, and of course then the isp doens't
provide service for business pages which is what we would become if we
generated income.

for me i'm from the old school of "if we oldies don't pass down what
we know then the youngies won't have the opportunity to do likewise
and lots of information/experiences is going to be lost. that's how i
learnt as i grew up".

you can see we have generated app 50k in hits from the site over about
8 years, and yes if all those people where paid memebers or even paid
once we would have supplemented our income, but this old brain just
can't see that happening, and maybe if i went that way my opportunity
to help others may just fade away. and as i am also there to help
people of our own age groups who ahve never gardened then there is
going to be those who simply can't apy anything (just like us).

on the paypal thingy i have read where people especially over here
have had problems ie.,. getting their money whatever? out of paypal.

so the $9 to $25 i would assume USD rate? is quiet a lot of money for
us, currently we pay app' $17AUD a year for the domain name, not
through our isp but another source. so a monthly bill on top of our
isp charges of around $59AUD would be out of the question, and i
suppose you could answer by saying 'yes but if you generate enough
income that will be covered' and i can see that maybe? but then the
only income we get may only cover the costs of earning it.

the only pool of friends i realy have are who i chat to online.

my connection is a broadband connection so it is connected at all
times when teh computer is on. and i am currently running win xp hm,
but would realy like to move to linux.



On 18 Sep 2006 11:45:43 -0700, "Happybattles"
wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

E-mail me at XX

Just take out the X's when you send the email. I'll send you a website
to download something nice. Run a virus scan if you want on it.

g'day hb,

i sent you and e/m did you recieve it?

ta

On 19 Sep 2006 19:35:39 -0700, "Happybattles"
wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

Yep, dont check my email every day, but i think i got it back to ya,
unless i messed something up.
gardenlen wrote:
g'day hb,

i sent you and e/m did you recieve it?

ta

On 19 Sep 2006 19:35:39 -0700, "Happybattles"
wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

Happybattles Yep, dont check my email every day, but i think i got it back to ya,
unless i messed something up.
gardenlen wrote:
g'day hb,

i sent you and e/m did you recieve it?

ta

On 19 Sep 2006 19:35:39 -0700, "Happybattles"
wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

len i just wanted to let u know that i finally got a chance to take a
peek in and see how your bale garden was doing it sure looks like it
took off and did great .
im still trying to get our youngest son to finish my frame for my raised
garden beds but hopefully will get them done before winter lol.
everyone here and your site as well has really helped a lot as far as
giving me information on how to go about doing them.
thank u and everyone here as well for the info that was given.
cyaaaaa, sockiescat.