Guestbook Customization Gone Wrong...Can you help?

I was customizing my guestbook by implementing my headers, footers, sidebars, etc. It was going fine, and I had the look I was shooting for here.

The administration page looks OK too. However, when I hit "sign the guestbook", it's whacked. I'm not an HTML expert by any means, but I get around OK. I've tried and tried to figure out what the problem is, but I'm just hitting a brick wall.

Can you see what I'm missing? I think the problem might be that I don't know much about php. Everything I learned about it, I learned in the past couple hours reading the support forum here!

I sure appreciate any help!

Johann
webmaster@cancun-discounts.com

jsweb wrote:I was customizing my guestbook. . .

The administration page looks OK too. However, when I hit "sign the guestbook", it's whacked. I'm not an HTML expert by any means, but I get around OK. I've tried and tried to figure out what the problem is, but I'm just hitting a brick wall.

Can you see what I'm missing? I think the problem might be that I don't know much about php. Everything I learned about it, I learned in the past couple hours reading the support forum here!

I sure appreciate any help!

Johann
webmaster@cancun-discounts.com

The problem is in the tables nesting - you may need to extend the side columns for rowspan=2 (off the top of my head - I think that's the term for it).
Looks like you have put a lot of work into it and it looks very nice - but you may not really want to have all the fancy links leading away from your guestbook entry page unless you realllllly don't want people signing your guestbook to begin with....

That's just a thought from another webpage designer

I guess I'm not sure how to implement that. The headers and the footers are the same throughout, so why would one page be fine and the next be weird?

I understand what you're saying about the links, but I'm just trying to fit it into our site at http://www.cancun-discounts.com. This way it has the same navigation structure as the rest of our pages. Thanks for the advice, though, I'm always open to suggestions!

Johann
webmaster@cancun-discounts.com

jsweb wrote:I guess I'm not sure how to implement that. The headers and the footers are the same throughout, so why would one page be fine and the next be weird?

Because the tables nest slightly differently from one page to the next.

Did you also put something like this in your index.php file ?
<?php include('/home/xxxxxx/public_html/guestbook/header.php'); ?>
above goes at the top of the index.php and this goes at the bottom.
<?php include('/home/xxxxxx/public_html/guestbook/footer.php'); ?>

Click my guestbook link below. Works like a charm.

JTD wrote:Did you also put something like this in your index.php file ?
<?php include('/home/xxxxxx/public_html/guestbook/header.php'); ?>
above goes at the top of the index.php and this goes at the bottom.
<?php include('/home/xxxxxx/public_html/guestbook/footer.php'); ?>

Click my guestbook link below. Works like a charm.

Just looking at your guestbook and the guestbook at JSWeb's - your's does not have all the side columns on your "sign the gb" page - JSWeb implied that the columns were wanted for the "sign the gb" page - Not sure why it is wanted, but that's what JSWeb seems to be saying above....

ET - That's right. I'm trying to achieve a seamless integration of the guestbook into our site at http://www.cancun-discounts.com. I want my navigation structure to be present and identical on all my pages.

JTD - I'm not using PHP to achieve the effect seen at http://www.cancun-discounts.com/guidebook/. I just edited the header and footer with my own, and it worked out really well on the main page and on the administration page. For some reason it's just whacked on the "sign the guestbook" page, and I see now that the "Submit" button doesn't even work. I must have messed something up.

What page is it that needs edited for this page to be put back to normal? Is it form.php? entry.php? It says "addentry.php" but that isn't a choice in the administration, so I'm guessing it's a compilation php of several things, which might be the problem.

Johann
http://www.cancun-discounts.com

Well I was just showing you how mine was done. As far as what page I have no idea. I have two files header.php and footer.php. That are called up in the index.php with the code I showed you. And as far as the administration page part I dont use it myself. I edit all my files via FTP. Since enableing permissions far enough in the admin section is just asking to have something changed for you if you ever do get hacked for some reason.

JTD - Thanks for your help. I may have to end up switching to PHP as you've done, but I was hoping that all the work I did with the headers and footers wouldn't be for nothing. I wonder, though, why does your guestbook posting page not have your sidebars? Is that by choice, or does that page not work for you either (that's the one that I'm having trouble with...)

Johann
http://www.cancun-discounts.com

Did you just follow my instructions of a previous thread and just copy the HTML from before where you wish the guestbook to be into the header.php file and the HTML from after into the footer.php file? I looked at your addentry page and saw you have 2 body tags.

jsweb wrote:JTD - Thanks for your help. I may have to end up switching to PHP as you've done, but I was hoping that all the work I did with the headers and footers wouldn't be for nothing.

A view-source reveals that you are missing several opening and closing table cells. Like ET stated earlier - you don't have the tables nested in the correct format and like Carbonize points out, you have two body tags. You have the string for form improperly syntaxed and you seemingly have a lot of duplications like

is in two different locatoins. Generally the code looks pretty mucked up. I'd be available at a professional rate to clean the code up for you.

Anonymous wrote:I'd be available at a professional rate to clean the code up for you.

Now thats funny. Even funnier is the fact they are touting for business and forgot to say how the person could contact them. Anyways integrating the guestbook into a website is reasonably simple (not as simple as the guestbook I am working on but ho hum) and a search of this forum will provide several different ways of achieving it.

jsweb wrote:JTD - Thanks for your help. I may have to end up switching to PHP as you've done, but I was hoping that all the work I did with the headers and footers wouldn't be for nothing. I wonder, though, why does your guestbook posting page not have your sidebars? Is that by choice, or does that page not work for you either (that's the one that I'm having trouble with...)

Johann
http://www.cancun-discounts.com

Go take alook at my addentry.php again. About a 5 second fix to make it look like the index.php page. And I must give credit to carb for teaching me what limited php I do know.

OK. I figured it out. I could see the missing tags when I viewed source on the addentry page, but because I don't really understand PHP very well, I couldn't figure out which page it was pulling from that was messed up. I don't know why I didn't think of it before (duh), but I just downloaded AG from this site, and uploaded it to my server, sans the header and footer. Poof! Everything looks fine. (http://www.cancun-discounts.com/addentry.php).

I had read all the info I could find in the forum and what messed me up was one post that said you would have to put your HTML into all the individual pages. I'm sure I just misunderstood the post, but that's what I did. Then, I realized how dumb that was, and deleted it all out, but obviously accidentally deleted something important in the process.

I knew I needed to fix my tables like JTD had said, and the body tag like Guest had said, but I couldn't figure out in what file the tables were incorrect because I didn't understand the PHP well enough. If I could have found the HTML, I could have fixed it. That part I know.

Carbonize - Customizing the guestbook is very easy. I just made it harder than it needed to be and messed it up. I don't understand what you mean by "touting for business, but left no way to contact them". I left my e-mail in two messages above, and in our guestbook, there is a "Contact Us" link in the main header bar, and an e-mail link in the footer. What more do you want? We certainly weren't "touting for business" on this board, we were just looking for help, and you guys have all been great. Thank you for everything!

Johann
http://www.cancun-discounts.com

Carb wasnt referring to you in that post. He was speaking to some goober who wanted money to help you.