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How to create your own customized "Web Template"

Published January 3, 2012 by Cakes-And-Tarts

“You don’t have to be an expert to be able to create something unique.”

There are many web templates around the net if you search for them. Yeah, you can download them; sometimes for free and sometimes you have to pay for them. But, what if you can’t seem to find the right template that you wish to use and place in your site?

You’ll have to wither hire someone to create something for you, which is expensive, or you can make your own.

“But I don’t know how to code!”
So? Start learning along the way.

“What do I need?”

  1. Yourself. “Be prepared to have your patience tested.” Frustration is normal but if this happens, take a break and treat yourself to a cup of coffee or chocolate.
  2. A site. In this tutorial we’re going to use the CSS Zen Garden as a sample site.
  3. For those who don’t know how to code html and/or css, there are easy to understand instructions in w3schools.
  4. Photoshop or any image editing tool.
  5. Komodo Edit or any html/css editor.
  6. IE tester and the following browsers: Chrome; Firefox; Safari.

Why do I need this?You will use these to see how your site looks from one browser to another. Template editors use these for checking purposes. More often than not, web sites look different from one browser window to another due to some codes behind them. The lower versions of IE seems to have the most bugs compared to the last three browsers mentioned above.

“What to do with these? Where do I start?”
  • Go to CSS Zen Garden and download the html file of the site. You can also download the css file and change the codes from there.  Or you can just download the html and css here.

As much as possible, please do not change the html document. Think of html as a body of a human person and the css is the clothes you want that person to wear. We only change the clothes and not the body in this activity.

  • The next step, I call it, “getting to know you.” Almost similar to asking a stranger his name and spending time with that person; you’re going to “get to know” your site (the html). In CSS Zen Garden, the site is divided into different divisions. (e.g. Participation, Benefits, Requirements, Header, etc). Get to know their names and how they are placed around the file.
  • Go to photoshop and design how you want your site to look like. Be creative and unleash your imagination. Nothing can go wrong here. Of course in designing your web template, consider the users who would go to your site. Save your file in psd form so that you can still use the images later.
  • Now, open your Komodo Edit then your css file. Edit your codes in a way that the placement of the elements are in the same way on how you placed the elements in your psd file. Don’t worry if your psd file and html site don’t look the same, you can still edit it later. What we’re concerned for now is if you can move the elements according to what you want. Call this your “practice stage in manipulating the css codes” before the real fun+pressure begins.
  • Go back to your psd file. Now, think like a doctor because you’ll be dissecting your design to certain parts and save them as image files to be placed in your site via the css file. You can also think of it as puzzle pieces. Remember the divisions you used in moving the elements around the site? You can use the divisions background to place your dissected image and like a puzzle piece you put them together.
  • Take your time editing and remember not to stress yourself. Use the IE tester and the different browsers to check your work. If you find that you’re stuck on a certain dilemma especially on how your site is different in the lower versions of IE, always remember to use the net to search for the answers. There are codes you can use to determine whether the browser used to read your site is an Internet Explorer or others.

© Copyright Helm Ehmy Ilarde. All rights reserved.
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MyLot: An Easy Way to Make Money For People

Published December 31, 2011 by Cakes-And-Tarts

What is MyLot?
 is a social discussion site that encourages users to communicate with other people under a particular interest. Users can post new discussions as well as comment under a topic started by another user. What’s interesting in MyLot is that it could be another open forum for a group of people brought together by a common interest. However unlike how forum sites are separated from one interest group to the other, MyLot is a site that comprises it all. Users are allowed to pick certain interest groups they wish to take part in and can also participate in other interest group discussions without the difficulty of searching around the web for them.

Connecting with People
Users are also encouraged to make friends around the site. It’s as if MyLot is telling you to connect with other people, communicate with them, ask and answer questions, publish your opinion, and what’s more? The users that uses MyLot as a discussion site are also paid in real life money. So instead of being involved in an activity that you can’t benefit from, aside from wasting your time around the forums by chatting with the other users, why not join MyLot? You can still communicate with the users but you are also putting extra money into your pocket, isn’t that much better compared to the former?

Another Feature

Aside for a discussion group, MyLot has other features such as a search engine. Users, that uses the search engine under MyLot like it’s just another common search engine you can find in google, yahoo, bing, and other browser sites, are rewarded with cash from time to time. When I was made known about this, I was thinking, “How many times have I used google to search for something that I needed?” And I could almost cry because I could not count them all. If I had used MyLot’s engine instead of googling without receiving something in return (Well of course aside for the sites I’m looking for), maybe I could have made almost tens of thousands of dollars already.

My Experience

Though I have been a member of MyLot for quite some time now, I am still a beginner in MyLot’s environment maybe due to the fact that I am always too busy with school work and of having some difficulty in browsing around the site which looked like a messy journal of an adventurer who likes to write down, clumsily, every single detail he sees in a foreign place. I usually comment on other people’s posts under a specific topic or engage in simple tasks with instructions created by users in exchange for a certain amount of cash and read through people’s discussions. With all those activities, I’ve accumulated only accumulated $4  and some cents. Truthfully, it’s not a site where people who would want to become rich ASAP would like; because MyLot is pays the user depending on his rank, the content and popularity of his started discussions, the number of people who posted and the relevance of the user’s comments under other users’ discussions. It is a site that wishes it’s users to connect and enjoy people’s company and the rewards they receive just by doing what they like.

There was once a time where I wished to earn as fast as possible in MyLot too but this is the site that also taught me to be patient and enjoy what comes my way instead of diving head on and forgetting the feeling of being happy in what ever I do.

Join or Not to Join?

I remembered starting a discussion entitled, “Never let an opportunity pass you by” and MyLot users posted their comments right away agreeing that fortune never waits for you until you are fortune yourself. I am not telling you to sign up right away because of what I can get if you click the link below. What I’m saying is that, I got many things in MyLot worth more than what I bargained for; I learned that adults, more often than not, think worse than kids; I saw older people than me became depressed due to what happened to their lives and was able to get over their problems gradually by repeatedly discussing to other people what happened to his and her lives; I realized that even experts can be confused, dumb-founded and surprised at how people, decades younger than them, can be at their same level of thinking, know what they studied for years just by spending seconds browsing through the net and the last but definitely not the least, I am still having a hell of a fun in MyLot!

Payment Processor: PayPal

Thank you so much for reading through all those…words. If you wish to join MyLot, click this link or the banner below. My username is SinfulRose. And I am looking forward to meeting you in MyLot and becoming friends! Have a nice day and Happy MyLotting!

Disclaimer: The following pictures seen above are taken from the official MyLot site and from the google search engine.

© Copyright Helm Ehmy Ilarde. All rights reserved.
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Why is it a need to go to school?

Published December 11, 2011 by Cakes-And-Tarts

I know my title is my way of whining. But “what is school supposed to be?”
“What does the school teaches that studying by yourself cannot give?”
Why do I go to school? So far from twenty years of going to school, I would say, ‘I still am going to school to get my diploma.’ I guess you could say, I’m tired of going to school. But it is a must for me to go because I need to learn what I must in my field. That’s only during college where subjects are, at least, more focused to ones chosen profession. In high school and below, subjects are generalized from minor to major subjects. Students even take up subjects without any relevance to their chosen career path. (Poor kids and thank you, God, I’m done with them.)
But what does the school educate it’s students? (Most of the time…to memorize?)
From what I know, school is supposed to be a place where knowledge are passed to the students or the younger generation. It is supposed to be a place where the youth acquire the knowledge and discoveries of the previous generations and acquire the skills they need for their chosen careers. But why is it students are, most of the time than not, forced to memorize their notes or what the teachers “teaches” them. The purpose of acquiring knowledge is now destroyed by this method of ‘studying’, if studying means memorizing.
I know how to memorize, thank you, but I don’t know how to study. And I almost forgot the purpose of it since I only memorized its meaning. If I were to ask you, do you know how to study? Would you be able to answer without giving me the process of memorization?

Lately, I’ve come to know the term mnemonic. It is a technique people uses to remember things from names and faces to words spoken by people talking in front of them. It was discovered centuries ago, used by famous people, and yet only few remembers how to use it nowadays. It was then that I discovered how futile it was for teachers ‘teaching’ their students to study when they themselves only know how to memorize. What’s my basis for this? I asked one of my teachers how he remembers the things listed in the book and his answer made the cold hands of dread creep up on my spine during that time, “I just memorize them. And you should too since it’ll be showing up in the quiz next meeting”. And I never even got half of them right despite I crammed to remember it all. I just stumbled a bit and everything just dropped to the ground. On another teacher, whose teaching style I very much like, would repeat the same questions everyday, during her oral recitation time, just to stick those technical terms in the students’ heads at the same time stick the answers to those questions that tends to show up in her exams. She would always ask those questions everyday, just for her students to register, recall and remember the words. But despite her effort only few pays much attention, unfortunately. And it was only later then that I realized that she was letting us memorize the term but understand the meaning behind it. Because when I asked a fellow classmate,about some things related to that teacher’s lesson, who was my classmate too under that subject, he can still remember the meaning but not the term used.

All in all, I do not say that going to school only stresses students and kills their brain cells thus it is bad for them. Nor do I say that one should never go to school because teachers are incompetent. No. I only wish to convey to teachers,especially the grade school and high school faculty, what I’ve learned so far and my wish that they should pass down the correct technique of studying to their students and using those techniques to give them the ability to remember their lessons and and the ability to never forget them for the next decade or  more and to the students, to also take the initiative to even use their imagination to remember, and not memorize, everything they’ve learned. Because despite the teachers’ efforts to let you remember, if you yourself do not wish to remember, nothing will happen and you’ll forget it all. And as my last message for this day, to the teacher who told me, and insisted, humans are using 100% of their brain already when I asked ‘how many percent does an average human use in the current generation?’, Ma’am, how wrong you are. lol

Comments, suggestions, criticisms and questions are always welcome. Please, if as much as possible, leave a comment after you read this. Thanks in advance and have a good day!

© Copyright Helm Ehmy Ilarde. All rights reserved.
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