Help needed on web development matters

[Drunken Poncho]

As many of you may know im in a band called Void. Our website is located at http://www.voidonline.tk. At the moment it sucks because i have it in a simple swish sidebar and free asp hosting because its so much easier to update news and stuff like that on it.

I use swish because im lazy and i know how to use it alot. I have swishMax which im also decent with. I also have flash but dont know the ins and outs of it really.

I want to make a site in swish or flash that is quick loading. This i never seem to manage. Everything ends up too big file size wise. I have no idea how to compress graphics to relatively small sizes and still keep their quality.

Also i would like to keep the easy updateability of the current site. Like a news section in asp or php. I am familiar with asp and access but as much php or mysql. Especially not mysql. I would liek to aviod php and use asp, but im not sure how to cross connect between asp and swish.

Anyone got any ideas ? Im sick of the new site. Its too boring. I have until the start of March to finish and release a new site to coincide with our debut e.p.

Thanks in advance,
Chris Traverse

[Kezzer]

Heh, on the graphics note, that's pretty easy. I learnt a few things.

If the image uses solid colours (i.e. you make it in photoshop) and doesn't include photographs you would usually save it as a .gif. Now all i ever get is "no you never save files as gifs because this is for animation". This statement is wrong. Gifs can support 256 colours, if you're using software such as photoshop you can select how many colours you want. The best setting would be no dither, lowest possible amount of colours used and interlaced to row. This way you can change say a bmp of a drawing from 1.59MB down to 13.8KB if you've been using MS paint (example taken from other day )

JPG's, jpg's and jpegs are for photos or complex pics made up in some graphics software. Adjust the quality for what suits you

That's all i use really. The way i keep my site is simple. Hardly any pictures whatsoever and mostly 'code' to make it look nice. My site looks nice (imo) and it loads quick 'cause there's only one image at the top of the page.

Hope that helps although it's not much but it's something. Your best bet would be to start learning some simple mark-up languages and learn how to use photoshop. If you want to update the site regularly then PHP and MySQL may be the way you want to go. There are other methods. MySQL is actually a very simple language using the basic principles of the english dictionary, for example "INSERT", "ALTER" and so forth.

[Drunken Poncho]

http://www.lf004c7756.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk is my previous attempt at a flash/swish whatever site. click the big quote thing to lauch it. As you will sure agree it takes way to long to load, even with the preloader. Its more a question of updatability than of design values. Does anyone know of a way to use asp in things like swishmax or flash ? Any links that could point me in the right direction ?

Thanks again,
Chris Traverse

p.s kezzer, your website is an orange blob ! when is version 2 avaliable to veiw ?

[Theo]

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...tutorial2.html

A very easy little flash/php/mysql tutorial, there. Perfect for the beginner who hath no clueth where to start.